Once you have built your crosstab and run your report, you can export it. Here we have a crosstab that examines the relationship between age of the survey respondents and those respondents who visit TGI Friday's the most.
A standard format is used to present the data from the crosstab with results shown for the sample, weighted, vertical, horizontal and the index. This data is shown for the total number of people who took the survey and the information is presented under the heading of STUDY UNIVERSE. On the right side of the crosstab is the data for the respondents in the sample who stated that they drank Monster energy drink in the last 6 months.
Here we take a closer look at the criteria of unweighted and weighted. In this example, unweighted refers to the number of survey respondents who drank Monster energy drinks in the last 6 months.. It is the sample size. Weighted refers to the projected number of adults in the United States who meet the criteria of the column and the row. In this case, the criteria for the column is having drank Monster energy drink in the last 6 months and the row criteria is being an adult 18 or over in one of the age groups in the crosstab.
The total number of respondents in this sample is 2634. This figure can be found in the column called UNWEIGHTED. Of those individuals who drank Monster in the last 6 months, the breakdown by age is as follows:
The unweighted figure includes just a small percent of the population, but the weighted figure shows how many people would fall into each of these categories if we project the sample figures to represent the U.S. population of adults 18 and over except for people who live in Alaska and Hawaii. Note, that 000 is added to each figure.
In this example, 2,634,000 people in the United States, excluding Alaska and Hawaii, would state that they have drank Monster energy drinks in the last 6 months. This is the weighted figure for this crosstab. The unweighted and weighted figures for the 18-24 age group are 466 and 2,511,000 respectively. The weighted figure for people in the 25-34 age group is 4,346,000 and according to the crosstab, the weighted figure for individuals 65 years of age and older is only 578,000 which is the smallest group included in this crosstab..
The vertical % and the horizontal % provides useful information for our example where we look at the age of the individuals surveyed who stated that they have drank Monster energy drink in the last 6 months.
Vertical refers to the percentage of people who have a given characteristic as defined by the column heading. In our example, the given characteristic is having drank Monster energy drink in the last 6 months. When analyzing the information for the vertical percent, you would give the information in the vertical column first (percent who selected Monster) and then the information in the horizontal row (age group). So, for the vertical percent in our example, you would state the information in the following way:
Of the respondents who drank Monster energy drink in the last 6 months,
Horizontal refers to the percentage of people who have a given characteristic as defined by the row heading. In the example presented here, the given characteristic is the age group of the survey respondent. When analyzing the data for the horizontal percent, you would give the information in the horizontal row first (age group of respondent) and then the information in the vertical column (percent who drank Monster)
For our example, you would report the horizontal percent in the format used below:
The Index
The index assesses the likelihood, as compared to the total population, of meeting the specifications of both the column and the row. In our example, the index looks at the likelihood of meeting the specification of having drank Monster energy drink in the last 6 months, and the specification of belonging in one of the age groups shown in the crosstab.
When reading Simmons data, the index represents the U.S. adult population with 100 being the average.
Here we are going to interpret the index numbers for a question that looks at the age ranges for people who state that they have drank Monster energy drink in the last 6 months.
The index for respondents in the 18-24 age group is 151.
For the 25-34 age group, the index is 168.
The index for the 45-54 age group is 97.
Respondents in the 55-64 age group have an index of 51.
The last age group in this crosstab is respondents who are 65-69 years old and the index for this group is 26.
Asterisks are used in Simmons to draw your attention to those instances where the sample size is so small that the projections may be unstable. In these instances it is recommended to only use this data with caution. Simmons suggests that users obtain additional data from another source to corroborate the information that has an asterisk in the Simmons report. Data with an asterisk means that the sample size is below 50 and is less likely to be reliable. It should be used with caution.
