This helps when moving the data to Tableau Desktop, and allows you to filter your data by question type. Then repeat the process for each Question Type branch. To do so, select one of your Question Type branches, click on Create calculated field and type in the field name (we recommend using the same name you used for the branch). Look at this example where you’ll find a branch for each type of question as well as a separate one for the demographic data:ģ Create a “Question Type” field for each branchĪfter you created all those branches, proceed to create a “Question Type” field for each of them. You can label each branch as “Free form text”, “Y/N”, “Numeric”, “1-5”, and “1-10”, for example. What you need to do in this case is to create one branch for each of your question types, just like you did with the demographic data. This is the most common problem people face when analyzing survey data in Tableau, but there’s a solution to that. Tableau will read it all as string, but then you cannot use this data to analyze or make any visuals with it.
Pivot in tableau prep free#
The problem is that most survey data does not contain just one type of question, in which case, pivoting all the question columns will end up with free form text, yes/no, and numeric values all put together in the same response field. You’ll get a question field and a response field which you can then use for analysis. Simply load in your data, shift-select all columns with questions and do a simple pivot with all of them. they are all yes/no questions), then you’re in luck! If all the questions in the survey are the same type, (e.g. yes/no, numeric characters, free text, etc.). 2 Create Branches for each Question Typeīefore we go ahead with this step, you need to know what type of questions you have in the survey, (i.e. Select all columns with respondent demographic info and “filtrable fields” and create one branch with them. For example, a question that says “ Would you ever purchase from us again?”, and you want to be able to filter on whether your respondents answered “ no” to investigate and find more details about these cases. You also want to add any filtrable fields you might have.įiltrable fields is the data that you might use to filter your respondents, and sometimes these are questions. The first thing to do after you load your data into Tableau Prep is to separate demographic data from the actual survey responses. Once your data is in good shape, you can proceed to load it into Tableau Prep and follow our 7-step process: 1 Create a Branch for you demographic and filtrable data This is a good example of the shape and order your survey data should have:Įxample survey data in the best format for Tableau. If in your Likert scale questions 5 sometimes means “Strongly agree”, but for other questions it means “Critical”, you need to have both numeric and text results for your Likert scale questions depending on the case. 5 means “Strongly agree” in every question). But this only works if the questions being asked all have the same answers (i.e. *Likert scale questions are usually considered numeric since the universe of possible values usually range 1-5, 1-10, etc.
![pivot in tableau prep pivot in tableau prep](https://help.tableau.com/current/prep/en-us/Img/prep_afterpivot.png)
These are a huge time saver once we upload the data into Tableau.
![pivot in tableau prep pivot in tableau prep](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JM2D10XO3Uw/XxY9bchhAmI/AAAAAAAAQ_8/jPVvPxkYMtEizH2opvu8x5rqACgW8Ty5QCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Heading.png)
Survey responses in text format: Yes / No questions, free text questions, etc.Demographic information: Gender, location, weight, etc.
![pivot in tableau prep pivot in tableau prep](https://help.tableau.com/current/prep/en-us/Img/prep_wildcard_pivot.png)
Pivot in tableau prep how to#
How to format your survey data for Tableau Prep But before you go ahead load your data to Tableau, you have to make sure it is in the right format. That’s why we at Empirical decided to make this step-by-step guide to help those struggling to have their survey data prepared in Tableau Prep. This makes it fairly complex to prep the data for analysis, since you have a mix of different types of data all thrown in together. The problem with survey data is that they come in spreadsheets where each question is its own column there are different types responses, and there’s usually extra columns with demographic data to deal with as well.
![pivot in tableau prep pivot in tableau prep](https://help.tableau.com/current/prep/de-de/Img/prep_pivot_example.png)
Still, different kinds of data have different preparation methods, and one of the most challenging ones is survey data. The introduction of the Tableau Prep product changed the way traditional data preparation was made in Tableau with a more visual and direct way to shape and clean data.