Protobi automatically compares every result to a baseline distribution so you can immediately see important differences and quickly test hypotheses.

Clicking on any value in Protobi creates a filter that applies to every element so you can see how respondents who answered one question also answered other questions. Click anywhere to filter everywhere.

But wait... what's different? That's typically the first question. That's what "Baseline" is for.

Initial view

When you first open a dataset in Protobi it displays results for all respondents. Below are the first two questions from the Gender and Generations Survey from Pew Research.

Here 30.5% of all respondents say they are "Very happy" and 25.4% say they are in "Excellent" health...

Click to filter

Press on "Excellent" in q2 to show results for just those respondents, 100% of whom reported themselves in "Excellent" health and 49.6% also say they are "Very happy"...

Here you can observe there are thin black outlines and solid color bars .

The percentages and solid color bars reflect the current scenario, (i.e. those in "Excellent" health). The thin black outlines reflect the baseline scenario (which initially includes all respondents).

You can hover to see both the baseline frequencies. Here, of those in "Excellent" health, 49.6% are "Very happy" compared to 30.5% of those for all respondents...

Protobi shows triangles wherever the current scenario is significantly different from baseline. Here the triangle indicates that 49.6% is significantly higher than 30.5%.

Protobi is smart enough to recognize that "Very happy" respondents are a subset of all respondents, so in this case the triangle is really comparing "Very happy" to not "Very happy" respondents.

Set current filters as baseline

But let's say we want to make a strict comparison between non-overlapping groups, to compare those respondents who are NOT "Very happy" to those who ARE "Very happy".

Press the toolbar button "Set base" to make the baseline scenario equal to the current scenario:

Select other filters

Then shift+click on "Very happy" to select those respondents who are NOT "Very happy":

The above comparison shows results for those who are NOT "Very happy" (current scenario, solid bars) to those who are "Very happy" (baseline scenario, thin black outline)

Now you're running a strong comparison between distinct groups, those are are not versus those who are "Very happy".

Summary

  • Click to create filters defining one scenario
  • Press "Set base" to set the current scenario as the baseline
  • Click to create filters for another scenario
  • The solid bars now represent your new scenario
  • The thin black outlines represent your baseline scenario
  • Triangles indicate signficant differences between current and baseline

    • See also

    Baseline scenarios are great for comparing specific subsets. But if your goal is to systematically compare every value, another approach is to create a crosstab: