Editor’s note: Peter A. Sharpe is vice president of Irwin P. Sharpe & Associates, a marketing consulting firm which specializes in new business development, marketing and strategic planning for high tech, industrial and business-to-business products and services. He has been with the firm for five years. Sharpe has held market research and product development positions for 15 years and has conducted seminars for marketing executives on the use of microcomputers in marketing research. He holds a B.S. degree from the University of Wisconsin and an M.B.A. from Rutgers University.

What! It's almost 1988 and you're still not using your desktop computer for crosstabbing your survey data? Software available today for desktop computers can help you turn out high quality, custom tables for your management reports quickly, easily and at ridiculously low cost!

Quality, flexibility and speed. It was to achieve these that our firm first explored using desktop computers (PCs) to do our crosstab analysis. That was in 1983. Prior to that, we relied on hand-tabs, time-sharing systems and tab?houses. Not only did crosstab software provide these improvements, but it has also saved our firm thousands of dollars a year.

We now use our PCs for virtually all of our crosstabbing needs - small surveys for which we could justify neither the cost of nor the preparation for a tab service; large, repetitive, or trend surveys; and surveys with structured, open-ended and multiple response questions, or with scaled responses.

Desktop crosstabbing

Here's how "desktop crosstabbing" has helped us:

1. It has given us complete control over our surveys - from design through reporting.

2. It has provided immediate turnaround. Topline results are available within minutes after the last interview has been completed. Final crosstabs, with complete banners, can be generated within a few minutes or a few hours - depending on the survey size. We can also print crosstabs for cumulative groups of interviews as results come in.

3. We have been able to eliminate all typing of tables. The crosstab software has allowed us to enter, change, or edit table labels directly on the PC, and then reprint the edited, report-ready tables within minutes.

4. It has given us the flexibility to modify the table format; run (and rerun) tables with different banner set ups; run filtered tables for alternative analyses; combine, rank, rearrange or group (i.e., into subgroups) the row stubs as appropriate for each table; or print out only those banner questions which are relevant or meaningful to particular questions. And it has allowed us to do all this immediately and without incurring delays or extra charges from a tab service.

5. It has allowed us to re-use the already-entered data to create presentation charts with professional quality charting software; to incorporate selected tables into the body of reports without additional typing by using word processing software; or to special analyses by transferring survey data to spreadsheet software.

Don't be afraid

Sounds great, you say. But you don't have keypunch operators available and you're not set up for data entry. You are not a tab house. You are willing to suffer delays and continue paying the high cost of outside tab services. You are afraid to get involved. Don't be!

If you have a desktop computer available and a typist who knows one end of a keyboard from the other, you have what you need to take advantage of survey crosstab software. With your own crosstab software, your typist can enter data as the questionnaires come in and probably do it as a spare time activity. In fact, you don't even need the typist. Some desktop crosstab software will accept data which has been keypunched, so you can send the questionnaires out for keypunching and then take advantage of all the other additional benefits of the software.

Let's take the mystery out of using crosstab software. Here's how you might work with it. Our illustration is based on the crosstab software called TABULYZER (by Business Research & Surveys) which we first used five years ago. We liked the software so much, we purchased the rights to it. It is only one of many crosstab software packages available.

Simple steps

Here are the simple steps you would follow, working from your edited and coded questionnaires. This is the point at which you would normally send the questionnaires out to your tab house. Keep in mind that you don't have to be concerned with punch cards and columns, complex table definitions or tab spec procedures.

1. Set up your survey: The software will automatically prompt you to provide a survey name, the number of questionnaires and the number of questions per questionnaire.

2. Enter the survey data from the computer keyboard: You will see a format for two vertical columns on the screen. As the question number appears in the left column, the typist enters the coded response number in the right column. The next question number will automatically appear. The typist can revise or skip questions as required. Responses to 100 questions can usually be entered in less than two minutes. (If you are using keypunched data, you can skip all of this step). After all data has been entered, you may, if you wish, clean or verify data; search for selected questionnaires or questions; edit entries; and display selected or all data.

3. Analyze the data: Marginal counts and top-line tables can be printed immediately, simply by pressing a few keys on the computer. If you wish to run complete crosstabs with banners, the software will ask you to answer questions concerning which questions are to be used as banners, and the number of columns you want, and it will automatically analyze the data and develop the crosstabs for your entire survey.

4. Label the tables: From the computer keyboard, in response to questions from the software, type in the table titles and row labels for each table - without worrying about table format. The software will insert the labels in the proper location for each table when the tables are printed. Columns may also be rearranged or suppressed; rows may be ranked, combined, suppressed or rearranged.

5. Print: Print the finished, labeled, report-ready tables to a printer; to the screen; or to disk for use by word processing or other software.

And that's it. You have achieved fast results and have kept control of your survey - and your first survey has already saved the cost of the software. If you wish to try a different banner arrangement; or use a filter; or change filter, go to step 3, and let the computer do the rest of the work. If you wish to expand the study, just go to step 2 and add the data. The computer will do the rest.

In addition to the many fine survey crosstab packages available, there are many comprehensive statistical programs, too. They are great for high-powered statistical analyses; but, we have found that they either lack crosstab capabilities, or, these capabilities are specialized or limited. Like the TABULYZER package we have described, many crosstab software packages will also print descriptive statistics and, if you wish, allow you to transfer data into many of the high-powered statistical packages.

Database software?

Can spreadsheet or database software be used for survey crosstabs? Yes, they can be forced into use for some simple crosstabs; but they are clumsy, tedious and time-consuming to use with large quantities of frequency count data. They are simply not designed for quick and convenient entry and analysis of this type of data as are the crosstab software packages.

So, if you wish to declare your independence by taking control of your survey analysis and reporting, while drastically reducing the budget for it, check out the fine survey crosstab software packages which are available - and really move into the computer era. Try it, you'll like it.