Cross tabulation is a method used to show how different items interrelate, commonly used in surveys, market research, and financial reporting. It helps to understand the factors affecting data elements and formulate hypotheses about future outcomes. It can be done manually or with computer programs.
Cross tabulation is a method used to create graphs that show how different items interrelate. This allows those creating and reviewing charts to see where two or more pieces of data are directly related or affect each other. Cross tabulation is commonly used in surveys, market research and sometimes even financial reporting when it is clear that multiple pieces of information affect each other’s outcome.
The use of cross tabulation is also sometimes referred to as chi-square. The way these tables are set up shows the results of various variables when compared against each other. For example, a person might be creating a table of how many men and women drive green versus blue cars. To collect the data, this person would have to interview several people and write down the information. If he interviewed 40 people, the table he created from that data might look something like this:
Sex
green car
Blue car
Masculine
9
13
Feminine
12
6
Cross tabulation brings benefits even in everyday life. A person can use it to track their family’s monthly expenses over a period of time, and even school-age children are taught to compile simple data this way. A visual representation of large amounts of variable data is often easier for people to understand than pages and pages of written data.
In industry, data like this is very important when trying to predict market trends, review financial variables over an extended period of time, and even track an entire country’s health records. It is very common for these tables to include many variables, and several different tables can even be grouped together to compare and contrast dozens of elements. Cross tabulation is used in many areas such as marketing, product management, and sometimes even in team surveys.
The cross-tabulation process tends to provide a more complete picture of past and current trends, as well as possible future outcomes. It helps those analyzing data to understand what factors affect its elements, formulate hypotheses about what might happen if new information or an element is added, and see what information should not be in predictions.
The cross tabulation method has been around for many years, but in the past, people were forced to manually gather, organize and compile all the data into hand-made tables and reports. In modern times, this is usually done with computer programs that can organize data, add complex math problems, and create complete tables almost automatically. It is up to the user to check the information for discrepancies or errors and forward it to the appropriate persons.
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