Axis expressions

An axis expression defines how you want a variable to appear when you tabulate it in UNICOM Intelligence Reporter - Survey Tabulation. An axis expression can apply to a categorical, numeric, text, date, or Boolean variable. For example:

▪For a single response variable that stores answers to a question that asks respondents to provide a rating for a product, an axis expression might assign a factor to each category and special elements to show the mean value and the standard deviation.

▪For a multiple response variable that stores answers to a question that asks respondents to select responses from a list that has both positive and negative categories, an axis expression might define special net elements to show the number of respondents who chose one or more positive responses and one or more negative responses.

▪For a numeric variable that stores respondents' ages as a numeric value, an axis expression might define elements that band the ages into age groups, and a special element to show the mean value calculated from the raw numeric values.

▪For a text variable that stores respondents' addresses, an axis expression might define elements based on city names or postal codes.

▪For a Boolean variable, an axis expression might define two elements, one for True values and one for False.

In some data sets, axis expressions may be predefined (stored in the metadata) for all or some of the variables. However, creating axis expressions in UNICOM Intelligence Reporter - Survey Tabulation is easy. You can select the variable whose axis expression you want to define or modify and choose the Edit option on the Variables menu. This opens the Edit Variable dialog box, which has simple and script views. For numeric variables, there is a third view that makes banding easy. See Working with variables for more information.