Results Page Help

The results page contains several sections, providing a table with the results of your query along with additional information about the query and options to modify the look of the results and export them to a file. Please see these topics for more information:

Results Table

The results table is initially shown in one of two formats. Value labels are typically displayed once for each unique value. But if this causes a single label to have to cover many rows, making the table hard to read, the table is drawn with every label written on every row. The initial display can be changed by using the Quick Options menu, or the Table Options form. You can also click on the arrows inside the column headings to change the sort order for rows and columns, and if you click the title of column heading, the column will hide.

Export Results

The data contained in the results table can be exported to a file by pressing the "Export Results" button at the top of the table. Columns are separated by tabs, a format that allows this file to be imported into a wide variety of programs, such as Excel and Epi-Info. More information on how to import this file into other applications can be found here.

Reset

Click this button to reset the results table to its original appearance.

Results Information

Each page that holds the results of a data query, this page plus the Map and Chart pages, contains a set of standard sections that contain information about the results and the query used to produce them. These sections are:
Notes
Citation
Query Criteria

Notes

This section provides information about the request and results, including a suggested citation, a link to the help file for the request, and the date and time the query was processed. There can also be an Caveats heading. If present, this provides information about the request that is needed in order to correctly interpret the results.

For example, suppose a mortality request covers a set of counties spanning several years, and is grouped by county. Counties go in and out of existence over time. If one of the counties in this request was not in existence for all the years of the request, the number of deaths reported would be relatively less compared to the other counties. In a case like this the Caveats heading would contain a note explaining that this was the case.

Citation

This section contains the citation that should be used in relation to the query.

Query Criteria

This section contains a list of all the variable values, and other parameters that went into the request.

Modify Table Appearance

The results table appearance can be modified to change sort order, and the presence and order of measures by using icons in the top header row of the table. Initially the table is sorted in the natural order of the by-variables or indexes selected, but this can be changed by clicking any of the up or down green arrows by each measure. Up sorts ascending, down descending. A down green arrow in the first by-variable's column will return to the original "by-variable" or index order. The arrow that indicates the current sort order is colored red. Measures can be moved one column to the right or left by clicking one of the blue left and right arrows. A measure can be completely hidden by clicking its name. Hidden measures can be restored using one of the next two options.

Quick Options

Quick Options are a menu of more options that can be invoked with a single mouse click. The options available let you modify:

Labels:    Switch between showing every label on every row, or showing a nested view that shows the minimum number of labels needed to identify the contents of each cell.
Totals:    Switch between showing or not showing rows with totals.
Zeros:    Switch between showing or not showing rows with zero counts.
Suppressions:    Switch between showing or not showing rows with suppressed counts.
Row numbers:    Switch between showing or not showing row numbers.
Hide measures:    Show all the original measures when measures are hidden.
Groups:    The groups option allows you to quickly divide the results into two to ten groups using the quantile method, when results are sorted by a numeric measure. There is more information below about groups.


Table Options

You can display this form by hitting the "More Options" button above the table, when JavaScript is enabled in your browser. If it's not enabled click the "Options" link to go to the form found at the bottom of the results page, which shows a subset of these options. You can change how your results are displayed by selecting the desired options and pressing the "Change Table" button. If an option is not available for a particular set of results it is disabled. The available options are:

Title:    Enter any desired title to be included with your results.
Show Totals:    If checked totals and sub-totals will appear in the results table.
Show Zeros:    If checked rows containing zero counts will appear in the results table. If unchecked, zero count rows are suppressed.
Show Row Numbers:    If checked a column appears showing the row number, or rank, of every row in the table.
Precision:    Determines the number of decimal places to show for measures that aren't whole numbers, such as rates. Measures that are whole numbers are unaffected. If a dataset contains only whole number measures this option is disabled.
Show All Labels:    This causes every label in the table to be written on every line. This can make some tables more readable, especially ones with several by-variables and many variable values involved. It can also make these tables easier to print, see Printing Tips for more information.
Sort By:    Pick one item in this list to change how the table is sorted. The table is originally sorted in By-variables order, but you can pick an option here to sort by any of the table measures, ascending or descending. You can also click the up/down arrows found in the table heading to change the table's sort order.
Measures Shown:    Use this list to determine which measures are shown and in what order. Measures can be hidden by clicking the left arrow next to the "Measures Shown" list. Hidden measures can be restored by clicking the right arrow next to the "Available Measures" list. The order in which measures are displayed can be changed by picking measure(s) in the "Measures Shown" list and moving them with the up and down arrows.


Groups

The groups options allow you to rank results by a numeric measure into categories. You access groups options by clicking the "+" button on the "Results Groups" section in the Table Options form. Then to enable groups check the box labeled "Check to divide results into groups". Please note that to break results into groups they need to be sorted by a numeric measure, like count or rate. Also, the numbers available to be grouped are affected by the options to show or not show zeros and totals. Groups are formed based on the values shown at the the groups are specified. When results are broken into groups, a column on the left identifies to which group a row belongs.

Methods
Break points, the numbers at which each group begins, can be determined using standard methods that calculate them, or by setting specific custom break points. Using the standard options, pick the number of groups, two to ten, and one of these methods:

Quantile:    With this method an equal number of results rows is put into each group, or as nearly equal as the number of rows allows. For example, 24 rows broken into 4 groups would have 6 rows in each group.
Equal Interval:    With this method the range of numbers spanned from lowest to highest is divided into an equal numeric range for each group. If the row values spanned the numbers 1 to 100, 4 equal interval groups would groups together rows with values 1-25, 26-50, 51-75 and 76-100.

If you choose the custom groups option, a new section opens up that allows you to specify the start point for up to 10 groups. The start and end values of the current sort by measure are shown, and the start value of the first group is preset to the measure's start value.

Missing Groups
When groups are specified using the Equal Interval method, or custom groups are specified, it's possible that no values fall into the range of a particular group. A message will be displayed when this happens. The Equal Interval method is prone to this condition when totals are show for a measure like count, which often results in a large gap between the final total and the next largest number. Not showing totals can help in this case.

Non-numeric cells
The final options are concerned with non-numeric cells. A non-numeric cell is any cell that doesn't contain a number, but instead shows a label such as "Suppressed" or "Not Applicable". Since such cells have no value they can't be part of a group. The default setting is not to show such cells when groups are shown -- when groups are turned off those cells will be displayed again. If you pick the "Group non-numeric cells separately" option, those cells are put in their own group with "n/a" as the group identifier.


Printing Tips for Results, Map and Chart pages

These pages contain internal formatting to control printing that eliminates unnecessary items from the printed results like headers and footers. Simply print the page from the browser by clicking the printer icon or choosing File / Print from the browser's menu bar. You can also check to see how the pages will look before printing by selecting the File / Print Preview menu pick.

The map and chart pages are formatted so that each map or chart starts on a new page. To change this simply uncheck the option called "New Page Each Map/Chart".

The table of data on the results page is also formatted so that the column headers are repeated at the start of each page.

A label on the results data table that spans too many rows can cause printing problems. To rectify this, pick "Show all labels" in the Quick Options menu above the table, or check the "Show All Labels" option found on the Table Options form. This will cause the table to be redrawn with labels repeated on every row.


This page last reviewed: Tuesday, November 19, 2019
This information is provided as technical reference material. Please contact us at cwus@cdc.gov.