Using Advanced Statistics
Advanced users of SurveyMaker may like to
delve more deeply into the responses in their
data files, using some of the more advanced
statistical procedures in the ADVANCED module.
These procedures are easily accessible from
the Reports Menu, but need not concern the
beginning user or novice survey taker.

SurveyMaker is not a statistical package, and
makes no attempt to perform the whole range of
statistical procedures and tests.  It simply
provides several extra procedures that are
especially useful in survey work.

SurveyMaker provides two kinds of advanced
features: frequency plots and cross-plots.  A
frequency plot is a graph of the frequency of
occurrence of various answers to one selected
question item.  A cross-plot is a graph of the
relationship between two selected items.
To use the advanced features, just select that
option from the Reports Menu.  You will see
the menu for the Advanced module.  From there,
you first open a data file from which you want
to scan responses, and then you choose either
the frequency scan procedures or the cross-
plot procedures.

To run a frequency plot from the selected data
file, just take that menu option.  When you
see the list of key-word descriptors for the
various question items, move the cursor to the
item you want to plot, hit the Enter key to
mark it (the descriptor will "light up") and
hit Ctrl-End to proceed.

You can set the data filter to scan responses
for a subpopulation if you like, just as you
learned to do in building the full survey
report.
To run a cross-plot from the selected data
file, just take that option from the Advanced
Procedures Menu.  When you see the list of
key-word descriptors for the various question
items, move the cursor to the first item you
want to plot (the x-axis), and hit the Enter
key to mark it.  Mark the second item (the
y-axis) the same way. Hit Ctrl-End to proceed.
Adjust the data filter as you like, and
proceed with the scan.

You get two choices for viewing the frequency
plot: a histogram and a table of percentiles
and deciles.

You get three choices for viewing the cross-
plot: a simple scatter-plot, a cross-tab
matrix, and a regression plot.  Each gives you
the correlation coefficient of the joint
distribution, using the Pearson formula.