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Welcome to the Protobi Glossary! This page serves as a helpful reference for the key terms and concepts used in Protobi, your go-to platform for streamlining research and data analysis. Whether you're new to Protobi or a seasoned user, this glossary will help clarify any unfamiliar terminology and ensure you're fully equipped to navigate our platform with ease.

## Market research terms

- **Survey**  
  A set of questions asked of respondents to help a researcher understand the market.

- **Wave**  
  Surveys are often fielded in waves. Many surveys are one-and-done with a single
  wave. Other surveys, often called tracker surveys, are fielded in multiple waves
  over time. Waves may be annual, quarterly, monthly, weekly, or more frequent.
  Some surveys are fielded continuously, and waves are defined after the fact by
  grouping respondents into particular weeks or months.

- **Respondent**  
  A person who answered the survey.

- **Question**  
  A query in a survey that you, as the research designer, wish respondents to
  answer — such as "How old are you?" or "Which of the following products have
  you purchased in the last month?"

- **Response data table**  
  Survey engines export data as data tables, typically in a format such as Excel,
  SPSS, or CSV (extensions `.xlsx`, `.sav`, `.csv`). Data tables typically have one
  row per respondent and one or more columns per question. A survey question may
  correspond to more than one column, especially if it is a compound or grid
  question. For example, in "Which of the following products have you purchased
  in the last month?", each product may have its own data column. Questions
  typically have question numbers to identify them, such as **Q1** or **Q2a**.

- **Frequency table**  
  Shows the frequency of each response. For instance, for a question like "How
  old are you?", a frequency table would show the number and percent of
  respondents at each age.

- **Cross table**  
  A cross table (often called a crosstab) shows the correlation of two or more
  questions. For example, we may wish to see product interest crossed by age of
  respondent, to understand how product interest varies by age. The dependent
  variable — in this case, **Product interest** — is called the stub, and the
  independent variable — in this case, **Age** — is called the banner. Each stub
  value gets a row, and each banner value gets a column.

- **Loop**  
  Surveys may include subsections that are asked multiple times of each
  respondent. For instance, a doctor may be asked about three recent patients,
  or a consumer may be asked about five recent shopping experiences. In the
  survey program, the repeated questions may be programmed as a loop in which
  they all share the same question ID, with another index tracking the
  iteration. This is efficient for studies that ask about multiple instances,
  and we recommend it for all patient chart studies and multiple-product
  surveys.

- **Flat file**  
  A response data table that has one row per respondent, with many columns per
  respondent — flattening out grid questions and loop questions. You can
  recognize a flat file because it has many data columns, typically with
  variable suffixes separated by underscores (`_`) or dashes followed by
  letters/numbers. Also called a "wide" file.

- **Stacked file**  
  A response data table that has one row per respondent per loop iteration.
  This is efficient because repeated questions keep the same identifiers, and
  multiple iterations are exported as different rows that can be easily
  aggregated. Also called a "tall" file.

## Protobi terms

- **Attributes**  
  The properties represented by "key":"value" pairs that you see in each element's JSON. Different attributes can take a string, numeric, array, or object as a value.

- **Autogroup**  
  A feature of the advanced button that organizes elements into groups based on the name of the data column.

- **Children Attribute**  
  An array (list) of child elements, separated by commas.

- **Compact Group**  
  A group with child elements that have collapsed distributions. Each child element will show a compacted value (e.g., mean, top 2 box, etc.). The full distribution can be seen when the triangle next to a child element is pressed.

- **Compactto Attribute**  
  A value or an array of values (e.g., mean, top 2 box, etc.) that are displayed when a group is in its compact (collapsed) form.

- **Complement Testing**  
  Crosstab significance testing where each column is compared with the average of all other columns (excluding itself).

- **DisplayKey**  
  A string alias assigned to a key for display purposes. If there is no displayKey assigned, an element will show the key label as the default.

- **Element Attribute**  
  Seen as an option in the "More properties…" dialog. Reference a key in the element attribute to use a different question as the data source. Data is interpolated from that element, after applying its coding, transforms, etc.

- **Elements**  
  Each question in your survey is represented as a chart in Protobi, often referred to as "Elements".

- **Field Attribute**  
  Seen as an option in the "More properties…" dialog. Reference a key in the field attribute to use a different question as the data source. Unlike using the element attribute, using field will not apply the original element's coding, transforms, etc.

- **Footnote**  
  Text for footnote at the bottom of an element.

- **Format**  
  The label that is attached to a raw value.

- **Frequencies**  
  Frequencies are the bars seen in a chart. They represent how often a value is chosen. Toggle the "#/%" on the toolbar to see frequencies as counts rather than percentages.

- **Global Filter**  
  Filters saved as a named subset in the global button. When a global filter is on, it limits both current filters and baseline filters. Scenarios only limit current filters and are still compared to whatever population is set as the baseline (usually all respondents by default).

- **JSON**  
  JavaScript Object Notation is a minimal, readable format for structuring data. JSON is the basis of Protobi elements, which determines how questions are displayed (structure, formats, etc.).

- **Key**  
  The column name in the data file that directly correlates to a question.

- **MaxValue**  
  Reference value by which to scale bars for this element. Useful when compacting to means, so that bars can be drawn for means relative to some value.

- **NA Values**  
  A value that is blank in the data file. This can be due to a skip pattern, survey logic that doesn't force an answer, or a profile variable that doesn't have a recorded value.

- **Parent**  
  A group with sub-elements (children). Parents often do not contain data values themselves.

- **Project Elements**  
  Elements are the code that determines how each question is displayed in Protobi. Protobi uses JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) code. Project elements aggregate all the JSON elements in the project.

- **Scenario**  
  A current filter, or a combination of current filters, saved as a named subset in the scenarios button. Scenarios only limit current filters and are still compared to whatever population is set as the baseline (usually all respondents by default). If you want to limit the survey to a particular subset and make that subset your baseline, use a global filter instead.

- **Select an Element**  
  To select an element, press on the header of the element. This includes the display key, or the white space to the right of the display key. Another way to select an element is to press the context menu and choose the first option.

- **ShowMissing Attribute**  
  Determines whether to show or hide missing values. "Yes" means always show, "No" means never show, and the default means using the current setting from the [NA] button in the toolbar.

- **Split**  
  Delimiter to split values for this element. For example, "," will split a comma-delimited string into a multiple-response array.

- **Toolbar**  
  The toolbar is the row of buttons seen at the top of the tool. Different buttons let you save, modify, and export the data.

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