Interactive analysis of Likert scale data using a multichart visualization tool

  • Authors:
  • Fabio Petrillo;André Suslik Spritzer;Carla Dal Sasso Freitas;Marcelo Pimenta

  • Affiliations:
  • Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, Brazil;Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, Brazil;Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, Brazil;Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, Brazil

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 10th Brazilian Symposium on on Human Factors in Computing Systems and the 5th Latin American Conference on Human-Computer Interaction
  • Year:
  • 2011

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Abstract

Likert scale data correspond to data collected from questionnaires, where there are several statements about a fact, situation, design or technique, and the respondents must specify their level of agreement with each statement by marking one of several ordered alternatives. Often, five choices are posed to respondents (strongly agree, agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree and strongly disagree) for each statement. Data obtained with such surveys are translated to numerical scores to undergo statistical analysis, and are presented graphically in a number of different ways. When evaluating information visualization techniques, for comparison purposes it is often necessary to apply the same Likert-scale based questionnaire to different views or techniques. Most of the existing tools, however, do not support the simultaneous analysis of multiple Likert scale datasets. This paper presents an interactive visualization technique to help the analysis of Likert scale data obtained from several, alternative sources. The technique is based on a hybrid table and bar chart view, and provides different interactive tools to support data exploration. We describe the use of our tool in a case study where we compare different graph layouts.