Nested rows is an exciting new feature in AskiaAnalyse that allows users to layer and cross questions in the side-break of tables. It works in a similar way to nested edges, which already allows you to do this in your column-break. This new functionality will be available in version 7.
The nested rows functionality is present in a few other cross-tabbing tools and after listening to the feedback of our users we thought it would be a useful addition to AskiaAnalyse’s ever-expanding catalogue of features.
The benefits are that users now have better ease and flexibility in customising table layouts i.e. it’s no longer required to fiddle around with transposed tables or derived variables to mimic the crossing of questions in the rows of your table definitions.
The option can be found in the settings part of a tab definition, under ‘Breaks’, next to the nest edges option:
When using this feature, it’s worth noting that the nesting is done depending on the order of the questions in the rows (the same as with nested edges). Given this, only one open numeric question can be listed, and it must be at the end, otherwise the table will likely be blank.
Users can have multiple rating scale questions listed, but the mean score, standard deviation etc. will only be available for the last rating scale question if it is placed at the end.
It’s also worth noting that this feature can produce a large number of rows. In tests on the first iteration of this functionality, the Analyse session locked up and I was eventually presented with an out of memory error message.
The 15 or so questions I had loaded were attempting to produce somewhere in the region of 1-2 billion rows. In order to prevent users facing similar issues, and potentially losing work, we have added a limit to the number of response rows the table can produce when nested rows is enabled.
This limit is variable and can be set by individual users. It can be found in the Tools menu, under Options > Tab definition > Maximum number of rows after nesting. The default value in Analyse is 3000 resultant rows.
Exceeding this limit will show this error message:
This feature will also be available in AskiaVista v7
AskiaVista has the web browser sitting between the calculation engine and the user, so this limits the heavy lifting that can be done. Given this, we have set the limit in Vista at 300 resultant rows for now. Currently, the limit is hard coded, and we may make this variable in future releases if there is call for it from the users.
Another difference with AskiaVista is that most of its options are configurable based on a user’s profile. When we add a new feature, normally it’s switched off by default. With nested rows it is no different.
To turn this feature on in Vista:
- Log in to Vista 5 > Administration mode
- Select ‘Authorisations’
- Display the properties of the authorisation you wish to update
- Select the AskiaVista Version 6 tab
- Scroll down to Rows and tick ‘Nest’
One final note is that in either AskiaAnalyse or AskiaVista 6, there may be one or two settings that interfere with the normal working of this new feature e.g. ‘Superpose responses’ would be one to be aware of:
The system does what it is supposed to by displaying the nested rows as a superposed summary table, but it may not look exactly as you are expecting unless you untick these options.
As always, we hope this new feature brings increased flexibility and efficiency to our users. We welcome any feedback you may have!
