Types of data in the cells

Many table cells consist of counts created by a series of conditions or filters. As you can see from the examples above, these conditions are created by columns and codes in the general form cn’p’ (for example, c109’1’).

There are three other kinds of information that can be used to compute cells in a table:

First, the conditions can be set up so that every time a record satisfies an arithmetic or numeric condition, the count in the cell is increased by one. You will normally do this when the question on the questionnaire requires a numeric response that will be entered directly into the data as it stands (for example, age, number of products tried) rather than a response that will be represented in the data file by a specific code (for example, Green=1, Red=2).

In the table below, age ranges have been set up so that every time a respondent whose age is, say, 45 passes through the tabulation section, the count in the relevant cell is incremented by 1. There are 30 respondents whose ages lie between 45 and 54, six of them men and 24 of them women.

Sample Table 3
Bread Purchase survey

Table 3 Page 3
Base: All respondents Absolutes

Total Male Female

Base 200 44 156
21 - 24 9 2 7
25 - 34 59 10 49
35 - 44 49 11 38
45 - 54 30 6 24
55 - 64 35 7 28
65 and Over 18 8 10

Second, there is arithmetic information itself. In the table below, the contents of the cells are not counts of individuals fulfilling conditions; in this case, the base is the number of loaves of bread bought by all respondents who bought bread over the period of a month. The figures in the row reading ‘1 – 5 Loaves’ are the total number of loaves bought by those respondents who purchased between 1 and 5 loaves in that month. 94 loaves were purchased during the month by people who bought between 1 and 5 loaves altogether.

Tables of this type are generally created when the questionnaire requires the interviewer to write down the exact number the respondent says rather than circling a code representing a range of numbers. When the data is entered on the computer, the columns assigned to this question contain the exact number the respondent gave; for example, if they bought 15 loaves of bread, the number 15 will appear in the data rather than, say, a ‘3’ indicating that they bought between 10 and 15 loaves.

Third, there are statistical functions such as means. The bottom of this table shows the mean number of loaves bought per respondent who bought bread.

Sample Table 4
Bread Purchase survey

Table Page 4
Base: Number of Loaves Bought Absolutes

Base Male Female

Total Respondents 190 44 146
Who Bought Bread

Number of Loaves Bought

Base 2988 720 2268
1 - 5 Loaves 94 19 75
6 - 10 Loaves 319 33 286
11 - 15 Loaves 328 39 289
16 - 20 Loaves 427 225 202
21 - 25 Loaves 1266 291 975

Mean Number of Loaves 15.7 16.6 15.5