Now that you have been introduced to the WinCross menus and some of the application features, what follows is a suggested procedure for using WinCross to produce your reports. This section will further acquaint you with the WinCross menus and features.
All studies have unique aspects and different researchers approach projects in different ways. For these reasons, there is no “single way” to use an application as feature-laden and flexible as WinCross. However, since all projects involve the same process—creating tables to process data—we offer the following points as one approach to using WinCross. Practical experience with the application will lead you to the best methods of approaching your projects.
1. Define table and banner specifications before you begin
Before using WinCross, you should have a good idea about the type of information you want to generate and the options and statistics you will want to use for the tables in your report. Some questions to consider are:
Careful planning before you begin to enter the actual specifications can save you from encountering problems later, thereby requiring extra effort. In a perfect world, both table and banner specifications would be known long before you are ready for data processing—this is rarely the case, however. Fortunately, WinCross lets you easily modify your specifications at any stage.
2. Specify your initial settings
Profile Settings contain the initial settings for your job and are used when you are creating a new job. Job Settings initially contain the settings from the selected profile for new jobs or the settings from an old job created in a previous version of WinCross. Use Setup|Job Settings to specify settings for table presentation. The settings for each job are saved to that job’s file (*.job). Settings can be changed for specific tables and specific rows within tables using the Setup|Tables function. Further global changes can be made with the options found on the Setup|Globally Modify Tables menu. You will develop your own setup strategies as you use WinCross.
3. Enter your table and banner specifications
When your data file is a variable type file, use Setup|Express Tables from Variable Data to easily create tables. Choose the variables you want to create tables for, either as individual tables or as multiple variables combined into one table.
For other data types, use Setup|Tables to enter your table specifications and logic.
Use Setup|Banners or Setup|Banner Templates from Variable Data to enter your banner specifications and logic.
You might want to use Setup|Glossary Variables to write commands for test statements, recoding, assigning or computing current and new variables. Setup|Glossary Variables also lets you save a revised data file—a special feature that goes beyond “data cleaning.”
4. Prepare for table printing
Use Setup|Job Title to specify the text to appear at the top and/or bottom of your table pages. Next, you will want to use several items from the Setup menu: review Setup|Job Settings, JobSettings|Page Layout for table layout and presentation options. Use JobSettings|Page Layout to specify font style, size, color and other effects for Plain Text Reports. For Enhanced Text Reports you can use Job Settings|Enhanced Text Reports for presentation options, including font style, size, color and other effects. Use Tools|Spell Checker to check the spelling in your tables. If you want to produce charts, use Run|Charts after running tables and formatting charts using Setup|Chart Content and Setup|Chart Style.
5. Load the data file
Before you create tables, use File|Open|Open Data to select the data filetype and load the data file. You can view All, Partial or None of the data. Regardless of how you choose to view the data, all of the data is loaded. If you select None, no data is viewable. Engaging the Read only function improves load time, but prevents editing of the data file.
| Note:If you are using a variable data file (*.csv, *.tsv, *.tab, *.sav, *.xls, *.xlsx, *.xlsm), the file must be open prior to specifying table and banner settings (step 3, above). |
6. Examine and prepare data files
As this suggested procedure demonstrates, you do not need data to set up your WinCross job. However, you should examine your data thoroughly before you run your tables.
For variable data files (*.csv, *.tsv, *.tab, *.sav, *.xls, *.xlsx, *.xlsm), select File|Print|Data File Information to print information about your data file. The data file information listing allows you to check the column location and width, Variable Name from Data File and the Abbreviated Variable Name. The column location and width information is especially helpful when using WinCross functions such as SCAN, E (Everywhere) and SKIP.
You want to run your tables with “clean” data. This means there is no variable that has values or codes that are out-of-range for that particular variable and there are no respondents who have data for questions they should not have been asked. For example, say the survey that collected the data had a Question 3 that asked “Do you smoke?” and a Question 4 that asked “How many packs per day?” You do not want a data file that shows “no” as the answer to Question 3 and “2 packs” as the answer to Question 4.
If you have “dirty” data, you can use the table filters and row logic to manipulate the responses that appear on the table or you can actually change the data using Setup|Glossary Variables. You can create test statements in the glossary to perform lookup cleaning and data exploration. Once you run and review the test statements, you can write instructions to RECODE, ASSIGN or COMPUTE variables and export a “corrected” data file based on those instructions.
You can discover data anomalies by performing frequency distributions when you use Run|Frequency.
A frequency is a list of the full distribution of values for a given field. It displays the values in sorted order showing the value, the frequency, the cumulative sum of the values, the percent, the cumulative percent and a variety of descriptive statistics regarding the entire distribution.
7. Run the job
There are several operations to perform before you run tables, all done using Run|Tables. Here you specify which tables and banners to run and you specify the number of cases and number of records per case. Before you run tables, Run|Tables lets you check your logic syntax or run tables without data.
Each table is a potential chart and each banner column is a potential series that can be graphed. If you want to produce charts, be sure to select Setup|Chart Content and Setup|Chart Style after running tables. Then you can use Run|Charts to write your charts to Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint and/or Word.
8. Print the results
Use the Page Layout tab of Setup|JobSettings to specify page layout. Use File|Printer Setup to change printer settings. Choose File|Print Preview to view your report before printing it. Choose File|Print to print your reports.
9. Carefully check your results
It is essential. WinCross performs according to your specifications, but only you can verify that you have not made specification errors. For example, check frequency counts against a frequency, check means on the total to make sure that you have excluded appropriate data, check banner points and perform other standard quality control checks.
10. Save the job file, the report log and the report
Files can be saved with their current names or with different names. The job file (*.job) contains job specifications. The report log file (*.lg) contains information about the run, such as the data file used, the number of cases and so on. The report file (*.rpt) contains the results of your crosstabs, marginals, frequency, sample balancing or factor analysis in a plain text format. Reports can be saved in other formats such as Enhanced Text Format (*.xml), Microsoft Rich Text Format (*.rtf), Microsoft Excel (*.xls or *.xlsx), Microsoft PowerPoint (*.pptx), or Adobe PDF (*.pdf). The data file is not saved as a part of any of these files. Use the File|Save options or the Save Data As option of Setup|Glossary Variables to save your files with the names you choose.
11. Make necessary modifications
As often happens, you or someone associated with your job wants to make changes after you have set up many tables. It is easy to make such changes using WinCross. The Setup|Globally Modify Tables menu options let you make global changes to table options, statistics and filters. It may be necessary to use Setup|Tables, Setup|Banners, Setup|Glossary Variables or to make changes using the Setup|Job Settings menu. The job circumstances and your own WinCross work preferences dictate which features you will use. You will want to run the tables again, print the results and save the revised files.
Related topics:
Setup|Express Tables from Variable Data