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TopBoxTornado for multiple ratings

Updated at 2019-06-26 16:42:58 UTC
Small tornado chart icon showing 4-5 horizontal bars in green and blue colors extending left and right from center axis, representing diverging stacked bar chart format used for displaying opposing response categories.

A TopBoxTornado plot is a concise way to present top-box scores, and rate multiple items on Likert-type scales.

Protobi tornado chart titled 'q5' showing conflict perceptions in America. Five topics listed with diverging horizontal bars: 'Democrats and Republicans' (81.8% vs 12.4%), 'Poor and rich people' (56.9% vs 35.7%), 'Immigrants and people born in US' (52.4% vs 39.1%), 'Blacks and whites' (37.2% vs 54.6%), 'Young and old' (28.0% vs 67.3%). Green bars left show 'Very strong conflicts', blue bars right show 'Not very strong or no conflicts'.

Market research surveys often ask respondents to rate multiple items e.g., "How much do you agree with the following statements?" The response scale could be 5-, 7-, 10- or 11-point scales.

An effective way to present the results is to look at top-box scores, showing percentages for the top one, two or three scale items, e.g., "Somewhat agree or Strongly agree."

However, there are some instances where the client also wants to know the bottom-box score. The tornado plot is a visually interesting way to show both top- and bottom-box. The middle scale points (and any missing/NA values) are hidden.

Export to PowerPoint

These also export to PowerPoint as native Office chart objects:

PowerPoint slide showing tornado chart export from Protobi. Title placeholder at top 'Click to edit Master title style'. Chart displays q5 conflict data with same 5 categories as previous image, using green bars for 'Very strong or strong conflicts' and blue for 'Not very strong or no conflicts'. Horizontal axis labeled from -100% to 100%. Protobi logo bottom left, 'xSource: q5' citation bottom center, page number 2 bottom right.

Create a TopBoxTornado

To create a TopBoxTornado chart in Protobi, press the blue square edit icon for a group of rating questions and select "Edit JSON...." Then specify a chartType attribute:

{
        "chartType": "TopBoxTornado"
    }

The default is to show the bottom-two box scores on the left and the top-two box scores on the right, using the format attribute to identify the boxes and sorting them to identify top vs bottom.

You can override the defaults by specifying a chartOptions attribute as well:

{
        "chartType": "TopBoxTornado",
        "chartOptions": {
           "left": [1,2],
           "right": [4,5],
           "leftTitle": "Very strong or strong conflicts",
           "rightTitle": "Not very strong or no conflicts",
          "leftColor": "purple",
          "rightColor": "gold"
    }

The left and right options specify one or more values to include. You can list one, two or more. If you don't list any, Protobi assumes the first value from the format attribute.

If no title is specified, the titles are inferred from the formatted values.

The colors can be any CSS color, e.g., "#39C" or "blue".