Comparing Survey Responses over Two Time Periods
How to display the same data six different ways
I’ve been working with a few local councils over the last year. One thing that regularly pops up is the need to display and compare data over two time periods. I scoured the web to find a good example and came across one local council’s website showing a comparison of their performance from 2019 to 2020. This cross-sectional data looks at seven main measures and are displayed using percentages in a standard table. I’ve changed the results slightly for anonymity purposes, but it looks a little something like the table below.
How many different ways could we effectively display this data? I’ve come up with six variations, all with positives and negatives. Let’s review.
Display 1 — Clustered bar chart
This is by far the most frequent display that comes across my desk. It normally looks a little something like the one below.
While a clustered bar chart can be a valid option to use, I recommend that you steer away from the standard Excel template as there a a few design flaws that increase the…
