Defining external filters and contexts

The external filters and contexts are defined from the Analyses or Reports windows. Once defined, the filter or context can be applied to reports and analyses in Snap XMP Desktop and Snap XMP Online.

1. Click Analyses or Reports  on the Snap XMP Desktop toolbar.
2. Click on Define External Filter/Context  . This opens the Define External Filter/Context dialog.
3. Select the Filter tab to enter a filter or the Context tab to enter a context.
4. Click Add to add a new filter or context variable to the list. Select from the list of variables in the selected survey and click OK.
5. Use Move Up and Move Down to change the order of the list.
6. Select the variable that you wish to apply a mask to and enter the name of the mask variable in the Mask field (this must be in the format of variable@context).

Applying external filters and contexts

External filters or contexts allow you to filter the cases used in an analysis or report without changing the analysis or report definition. This is useful for testing the filters available in Snap XMP Online.

Apply a filter or context for an analysis by:

1. Click Analyses on the Snap XMP Desktop toolbar.
2. Open the analysis in the Analysis Display dialog.
3. Click on Apply External Filter/Context  . This opens the Apply External Filter/Context dialog. If this is disabled then select Allow additional filters on the Analysis Definition dialog.

Apply a filter or context for a report by:

1. Click Reports  on the Snap XMP Desktop toolbar.
2. Select the Report and click Execute/Check Report on the Reports toolbar.
3. Click the Filter/Context button. This opens the Apply External Filter/Context dialog.

In the Apply External Filter/Context dialog:

1. Select the Filter or Context tab.
2. Select the code(s) in the selected variable(s) in the list to apply a filter or context.
3. If you have applied a mask to the filter, the filter codes displayed will depend on the mask settings.

4. Click OK to apply the filters and contexts to the analysis or report.

The post Using external filters and contexts appeared first on SnapSurveys.

Context values allow you to select data that is relevant to that individual or department.

Steps for generating context reports

1. Create variables for the items that will produce the individual reports. These are your context variables.
2. Create any derived variables needed to analyse your context data relative to other data or a benchmark.
3. Create your reports, referencing the context for each item that you want to personalise.
4. Add context filters to your reports to select the appropriate data.
5. Test your reports by setting the context manually.
6. Set up your reports to run automatically through all the context values.

Setting up a derived variable to analyse your data

If you wish to include some comparison charts, showing how the subject of the report compares to the average, then you cannot use a filter, as this would only use the subject data. Instead, you must create a derived variable that you can use to break down your data.

This example shows you how to set up a derived variable for the Crocodile Rock Cafe survey supplied with Snap XMP Desktop, allowing you to compare ratings for the current (contextualised) location with ratings for all locations. It allows comparisons between the current location and all locations (including the current) and other locations (all locations excluding the current location).

1. Open the Crocodile Rock Cafe survey supplied with Snap XMP Desktop.
2. Click on the Snap toolbar to display the Variables window.
3. Click on the Variables window toolbar to add a new variable.
4. Specify the Variable details:
   • Name: CComparison
   • Label: Compare context to all
   • Type: Derived (the variable will derive its data from Q0, the existing location question).
   • Response: Multiple (each respondent will fall into two cases).
5. Double click in the first code label and click the Insert button. Select Variable Field from the drop-down list.

6. Select Q0 (the location) as the Variable, and Context as the Aspect. This will give the selected location as the code label. Press OK to return to the variable definition.

7. In the Values field, enter Q0=Q0@context. This code will be used when the response applies to the specified location.
8. In the next Label field, enter Other sites. Then enter NOT(Q0=Q0@context) as the Value. This code will be used when the response does not apply to the specified location.
9. In the next Label field and enter All sites. Then enter True as the Value.

10. Click to save the comparison variable.

Creating a comparison bar chart

You can use a context variable to create a comparison bar chart that compares the results of the subject of the report to a benchmark value or the data for other subjects.

To set up the comparison chart you need to:

• create derived variables for the comparisons you wish to make
• define the chart
• set the context to test the chart

This example uses the Crocodile Rock Cafe survey to compare the average amount spent at one site with amounts spent at other sites.

1. Click to display the Analysis Definition dialog for a chart.
2. Select the chart style Bar Counts from the drop-down list.
3. Type the names of the derived variable into the Analysis field, for example CComparison.
4. Check the Transpose box.
5. Select Means & Significances from the Calculate list and enter Q5 as the variable to use.

6. Change to the Notes/Titles tab and click in the Title field
7. Enter the title of your chart, using the Insert button to open the Variable field... dialog and insert the Label Aspect of Q5 and the Context Aspect of Q0 in the title.
8. Clear the Chart Axis titles.

9. Click Apply to see your chart. It will have no data for the subject as no context has been set.

10. Select File|Context Values to open the Context Values dialog.
11. Double click the global context value to open it. This allows you to set the context to a specific value.
12. Set the Variable to Q0 (the location) and the Value to 1. This sets the current context to Bristol.

13. Click to save the context.
14. Click on the chart toolbar to update the chart. The context information will appear.

The post Producing a comparison report using a context value appeared first on SnapSurveys.

The example shows a context value for all months of the year. An instruction is defined that is only included if the context is January. It assumes that you have a context variable Month.

1. Enter not(Month@context=1) in the NA box to only use the Information instruction when the month has been set to 1 (January).

2. Select File|Context values and open the global context.
3. Set the month to January in the global context.

4. When you run the report, check if the January instruction has been included.
5. Change the month in the global context and run the report again. Check that the January instruction has been omitted.

The post Conditional inclusion based on context appeared first on SnapSurveys.

This can be used to:

• create one large report containing multiple versions of the report, one for each context
• create a separate PDF for each iteration of the context

The examples use the Crocodile Rock Cafe survey that is supplied with Snap.

Creating the Context Data Set

1. Open the Crocodile Rock Cafe survey supplied with Snap.
2. Set up your Context Data Set. For this example, it uses the single variable Q0 (the location question) as the context. This enables you to automatically create a report for each possible value of location.

3. Click to save the context.
4. Before using the context check that the global context value is not set.

Running the report with sub reports

1. Click to open the Reports window.
2. Double click the report to open it. In this example, the Summary report is used.
3. In Filter, enter the context filter, in this case Q0=Q0@context.
4. In Context, enter the context data set, in this case CX1

5. Click to run the report. This produces a single report containing one sub-report for each possible value of the context.

Running the report to create multiple PDFs

1. In the Report Summary, click New Instruction to add a new Page Layout instruction. Alternatively, you can edit an existing Page Layout if there is one at the beginning of the Report.
2. Select Start New Page.
3. Select Restart Page numbers to ensure that each document starts on page 1.
4. Select Start New Document. This places the report in a new file, so each time it creates the report for the different context, it will start a new file.
5. Click Insert and select Variable field from the list.
6. Select the context variable, for example Q0, as the Variable and Context as the Aspect. This will use the label of the Location for the current context as the filename, so the report for Boston will be given a filename of Boston, MA.pdf.

7. Click OK to insert the variable.

8. Click OK to save the report instruction.
9. Click   to run the report then click OK on the Report Execution dialog. Depending on the PDF driver that you are using, and the way it has been set up, it will either automatically save or ask you to save the files.

The post Generating multiple reports using a context appeared first on SnapSurveys.

The Crocodile Rock Cafe survey is used as an example.

Setting the global context

1. Select File|Context Values to open the Context Values dialog.

2. Double click the global context value to open it. This allows you to set the context to a specific value. Note: The global context will always be present in Snap – it is not possible to delete it
3. In the Variable column, enter the variable that is used for the context. In the example, this is set to Q0 (the location).
4. In the Value column, enter the code value. In the example, this is set to 1, which sets the current context to Bristol.

5. Click to save the context.

Testing the report

1. Open the Reports window and double click on the report to open it.
2. To edit the data set that this report uses, apply a filter to the entire report. Adding a Filter to the report and leaving the Context blank, filters the data on the current global context. In this example, the filterQ0=Q0@Context is used to filter the data on Q0 (the location) set as the global context.

3. Click to run the report.
4. Click Preview to provide an on-screen preview of your report. It should show a single report for Bristol. Check through your report to confirm that it behaves as you expect.
5. Click Close to close the preview window.
6. Repeat for all the code values of the global context variable.

The post Testing and running a report using the global context appeared first on SnapSurveys.

Using the Crocodile Rock Survey, the instructions show how to set up a context variable for the Location.

1. Select File|Context Values to open the Context Values window. The global context value allows you to test your contexts.

2. Click to create a new context.
3. The Context Data Set dialog appears. By default it will have a name of CX1

4. Set the Type to Raw data. This uses data in the survey (the raw data file).
5. Set the Name and Label to something that you will understand later on.
6. Add the variable that holds the context information to the variable list. If you are using several variables to create your context enter them as a comma separated list.
7. Click to save the context.

You can now use this context value to automatically generate multiple reports.

The post Creating a context for reporting appeared first on SnapSurveys.

Using a filter

This allows you to select the cases that you are interested in. For example, you might filter your data so you are only looking at the data provided by respondents over 50.

This method is easy to set up, but means that you cannot see data that has been filtered out. For example, you would only be able to analyse the blue mouse data once a blue mouse filter has been applied.

Using a context

This allows you to look at a subset of data in a group of cases which have been tagged with a value in a context variable. You can also access data without that tag value, so you can compare the tagged subset with all data.

For example, if your context variable was “mouse colour”, you could set the context to “blue”.

You would be able to analyse the data for mice tagged as blue, but you could also compare the blue mice to the other mice.

The owner of the blue mice could get a personalised report that showed how their mice compared to the average mouse.

By setting the context to red, you can generate a report for the owner of the red mice with the appropriate data for their mice.

The context does not just work on data. You can associate images, chart labels or report text with the different contexts, so the report look and content will change when you change the context from blue to red.

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