Table of Percentages

For a table with variables stacked in rows and categories displayed in columns, the most meaningful (or at least easiest to understand) percentage to display is row percentages. (For a table with variables stacked in the columns and categories displayed in the rows, you would probably want column percentages.)

  1. Open the table builder again (Analyze menu, Tables, Custom Tables).
  2. Right-click any one of the confidence variables in the table preview on the canvas pane and choose Summary Statistics from the pop-up menu.
  3. Select Row N % in the Statistics list and click the arrow button to move it to the Display list.
  4. Click any cell in the Count row in the Display list and click the arrow button to move it back to the Statistics list, removing it from the Display list.
  5. Click Apply to All to apply the summary statistic change to all of the stacked variables in the table.

    Note: If your table preview doesn't look like this figure, you probably clicked Apply to Selection instead of Apply to All, which applies the new summary statistic only to the selected variable. In this example, that would result in two columns for each category: one with count placeholders displayed for all of the other variables and one with a row percentage placeholder displayed for the selected variable. This is exactly the table that would be produced but not the one that we want in this example.

  6. Click OK to create the table.
Figure 1. Table of row percentages for variables stacked in rows, categories displayed in columns
Table of row percentages for variables stacked in rows, categories displayed in columns

Note: You can include any number of summary statistics in a table of variables with shared categories. Our examples show only one at a time to keep them simple.