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This tutorial assumes that you have gone through the steps of designing your form and collecting data and are now ready to start producing reports of your data.
Begin by opening up Analysis for your project. First, select your project from the listbox in the Project window. Then, select the Analysis menu item from the Project window.
You should see a dialog box labelled Chart Properties appear. This box contains a list of your questions on the left, and the possible plot types on the right.
Start by making a simple table of one of your multiple choice questions. Do this by selecting the multiple choice question in the left listbox, and selecting Table from the listbox on the right, then clicking OK.
The Table will appear in the upper left corner of the screen. Move the table to the center of the screen. You can do this by positioning the mouse pointer over the table, clicking and holding the left mouse button, positioning the mouse in the center of the screen, and releasing the mouse button. This operation is known as drag and drop. Drag and drop works on all objects in Analysis report pages.
Now change the table into a pie chart. You can do this one of two ways:
a. Right-click on the table, then select Properties from the popup menu. You will be presented with the Chart properties dialog box again. Simply change your selection from Table to 2D Pie Plot and click OK.
b. You can make a floating toolbar for all the plot types visible if you click on View|Plot type. Once you make the Plot type toolbar visible click on the table on your report page, then click on the icon on the left shaped like a pie. This will change the table to a pie immediately.
Note: The icons on the left of the PLOT toolbar are for 2-dimensional shapes, whereas the icons on the right are for 3-dimensional shapes. Use the type that looks best to you.
Experiment with the different plot types. Try to change the pie chart into a bar plot, a histogram, and a horizontal bar chart. Try to change the chart into a 3-D chart. You will find that pie charts, bar plots, histograms, and horizontal bar charts all display your data as pictures and text, whereas tables display your data in a text format.
Graphical plots can be resized. Try resizing your current plot by clicking on one of the corners, i.e. the handles, and dragging the handle in and out to resize the box. When satisfied with the size, let go of the mouse button and the plot will be redrawn to fit the new size.
Next, save your report page so that if you need to exit the program, you will be able to return the state of the report to the last time you saved. You can do this by selecting Save from the File menu. When the window comes up prompting for a name, give it a descriptive name like MyFirstReport.EZR, then click OK.
Note: The .EZR extension stands for EZReport format. EZReport is the sister program to SURVEYWin FastStats Analysis.
When you are ready to continue, select the Zoom menu, then select 50%. This will display the page smaller so that you can view the entire page at once without having to use the scrollbars.
Click on Analysis | Plot. This will bring up the Chart Properties window. This is not changing the chart already on the page, but it is creating a new one. Remember that if you want to change the chart already on the page, you should select it and either right click and choose Properties.
Next, select a multiple choice question from the left. Try to use a different one than in the first chart, if possible. Select a plot type of your own choosing on the right, then click OK. Another chart will appear in the upper left corner of the screen. Use drag and drop to move the chart away from the first chart so that the two do not overlap.
Resize the second chart to be approximately the same size as the first one, for consistency. Line up the charts on the page. If the heading of one chart appears to overlap the chart, drag the heading away from the chart slightly to give it some room.
Sometimes it is useful to display the same data in two different ways on the same page, such as in both a table and a histogram. Although you can do this by simply creating another table with the same question, it is much faster to make a copy of the plot already on the page. You can do this by selecting the plot, then selecting Edit | Clone. A new copy of the plot will appear on the page just below the other one. Drag and drop it in a location on the page away from other plots.
Naturally no report can be expressed entirely on a single page. To create a new page, select Page | New. You will be presented with a blank page to work with. The top of the screen should now read: Raosoft FastStats Page 2 of 2. Every time you add a new page, the page count gets incremented and you automatically start on the new page.
To navigate between pages, use the Next, Previous, Home, and End functions located also in the Page menu. Home refers to the first page in the report, whereas End is the last page.
If you want to delete a page for some reason, go to that page, then select Page | Delete page. Since you cannot retrieve your page after you deleted, it is strongly recommended that you save your work before doing this.
It is convenient for the user to be able to produce reports of several of their questions at once. Analysis allows you to handle such questions in volume by copying the current page for each question and placing each plot on a separate report page.
To do this, first save your report. Next, go to the page you want to use as a template for all the other questions. Please note that the page you use as a template must contain a table of some sort on it, otherwise the operation will fail.
Select Display all from the EZPlot menu. A dialog box will come up with a list of questions. By default, all the questions in the form are selected. You can deselect the ones you don’t want to appear in the report. When ready, click OK to produce the report.
You will see a message: "X pages selected" where X is the number of questions you selected in the list. X number of pages will then be created with the same format as the template page, except that the data set is a different question for each.
A fast, powerful tool for analyzing large numbers of questions and records is the Summary. This option creates a table for all questions that you select and saves it into a text file for export to other programs.
To do this, select Analysis | Summary. A list of questions will come up on the left, with a preview of the summary on the right. Select the questions you want to appear in the summary, then click the right arrow button to put them into the preview space. When satisfied, click Save to save it to a file. Enter a descriptive name for the summary, such as ‘1992 XYZ Summary.TXT'
You can copy charts and tables to the clipboard by clicking on them and then selecting File | Save to clipboard from the menu. You may then paste these pictures into other applications.
Text may be added to any report by selecting Object | Plain text in the Report page. Any text item then already on the screen may be edited with Object | Properties. This includes the main headings for tables, but not for each individual response. You are able to provide explanations, summaries , and conclusions right on the page with your charts.
Other items, such as lines, boxes, frames, and rulers, are found in the Object menu as well. simply select and item from the menu, place the crosshairs that appear where you want the object to be placed, and click the left mouse button. You can move and resize the objects just like charts.
Font and colors of drawing objects and text in charts are changed by selecting Format | Font. Colors of chart bars or pie slices are changed from the Chart properties dialog, accessible from Analysis | Plot.
The main screen of SURVEYWin contains the Stats menu which has Sample size and Margin of error options. Other statistics are available in analysis.
Sample size lets you determine the right sample size for your work and Hypothesis Testing lets you test whether two groups are statistically the same or whether chance can explain the observed differences.
If you want to know the minimum sample size required to supply a specified level of confidence and accuracy, use the Sample size option. For the hypothesis you are testing you will need to estimate the proportion of the population giving a response. For example, if you expect somewhere between 20 to 30 percent of the population to give a specific response to your question, then Sample Size will show you the minimum sample size if 20 percent respond, or 30 percent. The larger of the two sample sizes will be the one that would assure you of the desired precision.
Supply first the level of confidence and the margin of error that you want your sample size to attain. Then for each value of response in favor that you supply, Sample size will show you the minimum sample required to achieve that level of accuracy.
Basically, you will supply three pieces of information (responses in favor, margin of error, and level of confidence). The Sample size command then provides the minimum sample size required to meet those three conditions.
Sample size is arranged in convenient fashion to let you change any one of your input parameters, with the result displayed on the same screen. You are able to quickly change parameters to study different scenarios. This command very efficiently lets you explore the implications of different parameters. Below is the Sample Size screen.
You may display multiple scenarios at the same time by selecting Edit | Add column from the menu. You may have as many scenarios as fit on the screen.
| Population Size: | The number of people about whom you are gathering information. This could be the number of people who work for your company, or the number of customers your company has. There is very little difference between a sample of twenty thousand and a sample of two billion, so if you are working with a large group, having an exact number doesn’t matter. |
| Sample: | The set of all responses. |
| Sample Size: | The number of responses you have collected (or will collect) in your database. This depends on population size, response in favor, confidence level, and margin of error. |
| Margin of Error: | The amount by which your results are likely to be wrong. If the number of positive responses is 72%, then the real number of responses (which you are likely to get if you ask every single person) ranges from 67% to 77% (which is 72 ± 5). |
| Response in Favor: | The percentage of "positive" responses. If you’re looking at people who eat corn chips, and 72% of your sample claims to eat corn chips, then the response in favor is 72. |
| Standard Deviation: | Standard deviation is defined as: sqrt(avg(sqr(x)) - sqr(avg(x))). A small standard deviation that most of the responses in the sample are similar. A large standard deviation means that the responses are not similar. |
| Confidence: | For a confidence level of 90%, if a survey were repeated 100 times, then the response in favor will vary by less than the margin of error 90 of those 100 times. This is a measure of how accurate your measurement is. |
| Standard Error: | Standard error is similar to standard deviation, except that the avg(x) function is replaced by f(x)=sum(x)/[count(x) + 1]. Thus, the standard error is almost the same as standard deviation when the sample size is large. |
A hypothesis test compares the means of two groups to determine whether they come from the same population, at some given level of confidence.
The summary results are displayed in the screen template. Initially, they reflect the results from the preset values of the parameters. You may change the Confidence Level, Hypothesis Value, Sample Size, and Response Rate parameters as appropriate to your test.
Hypothesis Value is the difference between the two population means (Group A minus Group B). Its preset value is zero, implying that the two populations are the same. As an example, if the hypothesis were that Group A is larger than Group B by a value of 10, then the number 10 would be supplied for this value.
The Confidence Level is default set at a value of 90 percent. You may want to change this value to 95 or 99 percent if you want a higher level of confidence.
The Type of Test is set to two-sided test. If you want to change this to either a left-sided or right-sided test, depending upon the hypothesis, then select the appropriate levels of confidence to match your hypothesis. (Remember that the hypothesized value is testing for Group A minus Group B when you select for left-sided or right-sided test.)
For number values, you will need to supply additional values for each of the two groups, Group A and Group B. These will be Sample Mean and Standard Deviation/Standard Error.