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Print layout charts (beta)

Updated at 2020-04-13 19:27:36 UTC

A new “print layout” chart type is designed to display charts and tables in a style parallel to online and print publications.  These have a variety of placement options and export to PowerPoint with precise placement of bars, data, summary statistics, and labels.  And like the rest of Protobi it is interactive.

Protobi print layout chart showing factors that make action movies compelling. Question text on left, horizontal bars on right showing percentages for factors like 'Plot' (80%), 'Action scenes' (78%), 'Tension' (72%), etc. Mean scores displayed next to bars.

In this illustrative example, respondents were asked to rate what factors make an action movie or series compelling to watch.  The original question was a series of rating on a five point scale.  By default, these ratings are displayed as independent distributions like below:

Protobi default chart view showing six separate rating scale distributions for movie factors. Each factor (Plot, Action scenes, Tension, Cool weapons, Actor abilities, Realism) displayed as individual horizontal stacked bar chart with five-point scale (Very compelling to Not at all compelling).

To choose the print layout, press the square edit icon and choose "Chart type..." to bring up the following dialog.  Select the button labeled “beta” (soon to be renamed “print”):

Protobi Chart Type dialog showing chart options. Grid of buttons includes horizontal bars, vertical bars, table, 'beta' (highlighted with red box), 'slide', and text wrapping options (wrap, nowrap, clip, scroll). Beta option is for print layout.

A number of customizations are possible.  To display labels above the bars, select the element, then drag the red margin handle make the left margin very thin.  This is often useful response text for each item is longer.  

Protobi print layout chart with element selected (blue header). Red margin handle visible on left side. Chart shows movie factor ratings with bars and percentages. Drag handle to adjust left margin for label placement.

Select additional statistics, such as the mean, from the Statistics... dialog:

Protobi Statistics dialog showing checkboxes for various statistics. Options include Percent, Count, Basis (N), Mean (checked), Standard Deviation, Standard Error, Median, and Confidence Interval. Dialog has Calculate and Done buttons.

Use the Format... dialog to selectively hide on or more series:

Protobi Format dialog showing five-point rating scale options. Checkboxes for 'Very compelling', 'Quite compelling', 'Somewhat compelling', 'Not very compelling' (highlighted), and 'Not at all compelling'. Options to hide selected values or create summary statistics. Protobi print layout chart showing movie factors with simplified three-category display. Bars show 'Very/Quite compelling', 'Somewhat compelling', and 'Not very/at all compelling' with percentages. Question text appears above each bar, mean scores displayed.

You can further coalesce bars that correspond to top-box summary statistics to plot just the summaries, in this case the top-2 box score.  Under the Chart Type... dialog choose Additional options... and check "coalesceBars".

Protobi Chart Type dialog showing Additional options expanded section. Multiple checkboxes visible including 'coalesceBars' (checked), 'hideNA', 'showAllTicks', and others. Standard chart type buttons shown above options section.

Print layout charts can be cross-tabbed by one or more variables.  

Protobi print layout chart with crosstab by gender. Question text on left, showing factors for action movies. Each factor has two horizontal bars - one for Male (dark blue, shown first with values like 88%, 86%) and one for Female (light blue, shown second with values like 73%, 69%).

For simplicity, multiple crosstab banners are treated as  independent  rather than nested variables.

Protobi print layout chart with multiple crosstab banners. Question text on left. Right side shows six factors with four bars each representing Gender (Male/Female) and Age groups (18-34, 35+). Each factor displays pattern of responses across demographic segments with percentages.

Print layout charts can be used to visualize groups of: 

  • Numeric questions
  • Ranking questions
  • Ratings questions
  • Categorical questions
  • Checkbox questions

Below is an example of a collection of numeric variables binned into ranges. In numeric groups, use the "Round by..." dialog to adjust value bins. 

Protobi print layout chart showing numeric variables binned into ranges. Five items (s8v1 through s8v5) each display horizontal stacked bars divided into range segments like '0-10', '10-20', '20-30', '30-40', '40-50', '50-60', '60+'. Different colored segments show distribution across ranges with percentages and means.

Chart colors

You can an existing color scheme for a chart from the "Color..." dialog. 

2-point color themes like "ascending" and "descending" will display as a gradient scale when applied to questions with more than two possible values. 

Value label and statistics

By default value labels will match the color of the legend symbol. Statistics take on the first color of the color theme. 

To change all value labels and statistics to black text, go to the more properties menu. Deselect "legendLabelColors". The attribute should have a blue x like the image below.

Result:

Slide layout

Presentations continue to be the medium for communicating ideas in corporations.  You can set many Protobi chart types include print layout charts to a slide layout:

To select slide layout, open Chart Options... from the context menu and select "slide". The exact size, orientation, and placement are derived from the template presentation associated with your project or organization, and defaults to Protobi's standard 4:3 layout.

Export to PowerPoint

Print layout charts export to PowerPoint as native PowerPoint chart objects overlaid above a native PowerPoint table object with all the cell values.

Print layout charts export as composites that provide a lot of options for your presentation.  The main chart body exports as a PowerPoint-native chart object with embedded data, so that you can edit the chart type, data, etc.

PowerPoint view showing exported Protobi print layout chart. Left side shows PowerPoint thumbnails panel with multiple slides. Main area displays chart about action movie factors with horizontal bars and percentages, matching Protobi print layout format. PowerPoint ribbon visible at top.

You can delete the chart object to expose a more precise reflection of the online layout as PowerPoint-native editable shape objects.  These are grouped together so you can resize it.

And you can delete that group of shape objects to expose a PowerPoint-native editable table with all the cell data neatly organized.  (The cell values are formatted white so as not to show through the prior charts but you can select the table and set the font color)