What is a crosstab?
A crosstab (cross-tabulation) compares two questions side by side, showing how responses to one question relate to responses to another. The result is a table (or chart) that shows how many
respondents — or individual responses — fall into each combination of answer choices.
Example: If your survey asked respondents their age group and their gender, a crosstab shows
you how many respondents in each age group identified as female, male, nonbinary, and so on for
every combination.
Which questions can be cross-tabulated?
Crosstabs work with:
- Single-choice ('Choose one') questions — e.g., "Which best describes your visit?"
- Multiple-choice questions — e.g., "Which activities do you do here?"
- Slider questions with 10 or fewer distinct values — e.g., a 1–5 rating scale
Pop-up questions can only be compared with pop-up questions
Note that if you have a map question with an attached pop-up containing follow-up questions, you can only compare the questions in the same pop-up with each other.
Similarly, you cannot compare a question that is not in a pop-up (e.g. "How old are you?") with responses to a pop-up question ("How often do you visit this place [that you have pinned on the map]?").
Setting up a crosstab
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Go to the Charts tab in the Analysis view. Select the charts that you want to look at.
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Open the chart that you want to use as the primary (row) question in the table. Select the question you want to compare it with from the "Compare with another question (Crosstab)" dropdown.
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The table or chart appears immediately in the preview.
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As usual, you can find further editing options from the left-hand panel. You can:
- Rename individual labels — override the option labels shown in rows or columns
- Change bar colors — assign a custom color to each column option
- Export options — export the chart to Word reports. Switch to **Chart** view before generating the report if you want the visual bar chart in the document.Copy table to clipboard — export the table as tab-separated text. You can paste directly into Excel or Google Sheets
Reading the crosstab table
The table is organized as follows:
- Rows — the answer options for the primary (first) question
- Columns — the answer options for the secondary (second) question
Each cell can show one or more of the following. Choose which to display in the chart settings:
- Count : Raw number of respondents (or responses) in that cell
- % of row : Count as a percentage of the row total
- % of column : Count as a percentage of the column total
- % of total : Count as a percentage of the grand total
Note on totals: Totals only include respondents who answered the question. If a question allowed selecting multiple options, one respondent may appear in more than one cell — but they still count only once in the row or column total.
Reading the crosstab chart
The chart view displays the same data as a bar chart. Each **colored bar segment** (or grouped bar) represents one column question answer option
Example 1: Questions that are not in a pop-up
As noted above, you can only compare questions in a pop-up with questions in the same pop-up, and other survey questions with non-pop-up questions. Examples of typical questions not included in a pop-up include age, gender, postal area, or how often the respondent visits a location.
What the total means: The grand total equals the number of respondents who answered both
questions.
Interpretation: 40 respondents answered both questions. Of those, 20 (50%) were female, and the largest age groups were 35-44 and 45-54. But there were no males under 18 in the data.
Example 2: Questions in a pop-up that comes up when respondent answers a mapping question
A map point question lets each respondent place one or more pins on the map and answer pop-up
questions for each pin. Each placed pin counts as a separate observation in the crosstab.
What the total means: The grand total equals the total number of pins placed across all
respondents — not the number of respondents. If 40 respondents each placed 2 pins, the grand
total is 80.
Interpretation: 80 pins were placed in total. Of those, 15 indicated selected issues prevent them from visiting the recreational facilities. Trail upgrades, accessibility, and maintenance are the most commonly requested improvements. Because "What improvements would you like to see?" allows multiple answers, row totals can exceed the grand total.
Multiple-choice note: If the row question allows selecting multiple answers, a single pin can appear in more than one row. The row totals will therefore exceed the pin count, but each pin is still counted only once in the column totals and the grand total.
Example 3: Pop-up map
A Pop-up map displays a pre-defined set of geographic features on the map — for example, parks,
bus stops, or proposed development areas. Respondents click on features to open a pop-up and answer
questions about each one. Like map points, each pop-up submission counts as a separate
observation.
What the total means: The grand total equals the total number of features that respondents
clicked and submitted a pop-up for — not the number of respondents.
Interpretation: 40 region responses were recorded across all clickable features. Across all regions, camping, day trips, and hiking are the most common activities. Swimming stands out among those who are unhappy with the quality of the facilities: 3 of 7 swimmers (43%) are dissatisfied or very dissatisfied.
Segment by selected region
You can also drill down into a selected region and look at a crosstab of responses only in that area.
- Go do the Map Responses, and toggle on the layer you want to inspect.
- Click on the area (feature) you are interested in.
- Open the chart settings dialog.
- Find the "Compare with another question (Crosstab)" dropdown and select the second question.
Interpretation: This region was selected 9 times. In this region, camping, day trips, and hiking are still the most common activities. However, this group skews little more negative: 33% are dissatisfied and 22% very dissatisfied with the facilities in this region.