{"id":5332,"date":"2017-03-17T16:34:12","date_gmt":"2017-03-17T23:34:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nnlm.gov\/evaluation\/blog\/?p=5332"},"modified":"2019-09-24T10:13:28","modified_gmt":"2019-09-24T17:13:28","slug":"uninspired-by-bars-try-dot-plots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/nec\/2017\/03\/17\/uninspired-by-bars-try-dot-plots\/","title":{"rendered":"Uninspired by Bars? Try Dot Plots"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thanks to Jessi Van Der Volgen and Molly Knapp at the NNLM Training Office for allowing us to feature their assessment project and for providing the images in this post.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Are you\u00a0tired\u00a0<\/em>of bars?<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t mean the kind of bars where you celebrate and socialize. I mean the kind used in \"Sliding<\/a>data visualization. \u00a0My evidence-free theory is that people still succumb to using the justifiably maligned pie chart simply because we cannot face one more bar graph.<\/p>\n

Take heart, readers. Today, I\u2019m here to tell you a story about some magic data that fell on the NEO\u2019s doorstep and broke us free of our bar chart rut.<\/p>\n

It all began with a project by our NNLM Training Office (NTO) colleagues, the intrepid leaders of NNLM\u2019s instructional design and delivery. They do it all. They teach. They administratively support the regions\u2019 training efforts. They initiate opportunities and resources to up-level instructional effectiveness throughout the network. One of their recent initiatives was a national needs assessment of NNLM training participants. That was the source of the fabulous data I write about today.<\/p>\n

For context, I should mention that training is one of NNLM\u2019s key strategies for reaching the furthest corners of our country to raise awareness, accessibility and use of NLM health information resources. NNLM offers classes to all types of direct users, (e.g., health professionals; community-based organization staffs) but we value the efficiency of our \u201ctrain-the-trainer\u201d programs. In these classes, librarians and others learn how to use NLM resources so they, in turn, can teach\u00a0their<\/em>\u00a0users. The national needs assessment was geared primarily toward understanding how to best serve \u201ctrain-the-trainer\u201d participants, who often takes multiple classes to enhance their skills.<\/p>\n

For the NTO\u2019s needs assessment, one area of inquiry involved an inventory of learners\u2019 need for training in 30 topic areas. The NTO wanted to assess participants\u2019 desired level\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>their current level of proficiency in each topic.\u00a0 That meant 60 questions. That was one heck-of-a-long survey. We wished them luck.<\/p>\n

The NTO team was undaunted!\u00a0 They did some research and found a desirable format for presenting this set of questions (see upper left). The format had a nice minimalist design. The sliders were more fun for participants than radio buttons. Also, NTO designed the online questionnaire so that only a handful of question-pairs appeared on the screen at one time.\u00a0 The approach worked, because NTO received responses from 559 respondents,\u00a0and 472 completed the whole questionnaire.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Dot<\/a><\/p>\n

The NEO, in turn, consulted the writings of one of our favorite dataviz oracles, Stephanie Evergreen. And she did not disappoint.\u00a0 We found the ideal solution: dot plots! \u00a0Evergreen\u2019s easy-to-follow instructions from this\u00a0blog post<\/a>\u00a0allowed us to create dot plots in Excel, using a few creative hacks. This approach allowed us to thematically cluster results from numerous related questions into one chart. We were able to present data for 60 questions in a total of seven charts.<\/p>\n

I would like to point out a couple of design choices I made:<\/p>\n