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Bar Chart Visualization

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About Bar Charts

The Bar Chart is a chart visualization that you can customize in the Reports section. Each choice in a question is represented as a bar, and the length of each bar is proportional to the value being measured. One axis of the visualization shows the specific answer options being compared, and the other axis represents a discrete value (e.g., counts or percentages of respondents with that option).

Bar chart on Leadership Evaluation

Qtip: Don’t like your table colors or fonts? Head over to the Global Settings to change them for the whole report!

 

Customization

For basic visualization instructions and customization, visit the Visualizations Overview support page. Continue reading for visualization-specific customization.

Sort

Qtip: This option only appears for questions with two dimensions. For example, Matrix Tables (which have statements and scales), Pick Group and Rank (which have items and groups), and visualizations with a breakout.

By default, your answer choices (or Legend Values) are displayed in order from top to bottom. By selecting Custom, you can drag and drop your legend values into a different order.

Reverse your sort order by clicking the arrow button.

Legend on a bar chart corresponding to edits made in the Legend Values section in the visualization editing pane

Axis Values

Sometimes, you may have a question with many choices, but you only want to display a few in your graph. The Axis Values section allows you to hide answers you don’t want to include in your chart by deselecting the checkmark to the left of the choice.

An bar chart only displays two bars because one has been deselected under Axis Values

You can also click and drag values to change the order they appear in the chart. First hover over the value, then click and drag the icon to the left.

The order of the bars in a chart shifts when one bar is dragged and dropped

To rename a visualization, click into a field and start typing. This does not affect the name of the choice in the survey or in other data.

The label on a bar changes along with edits made to the Axis Values section

Qtip: Want the Axis Value to revert back to its default name? Just erase what you’ve written, and it’ll automatically go back to what is was before.

Show X Axis

When deselected, the X axis will be removed.

Labels show beneath the bars on a chart because Show X Axis is selected

Qtip: This is the y-axis of a horizontal Bar Chart.

Show Y Axis

When deselected, the Y axis will be removed.

numbers along the left of the bar chart appear because Show Y Axis is selected

Qtip: This is the x-axis of a horizontal Bar Chart.

Show data values

When selected, the values will display with each choice’s bar. This can be helpful for charts with longer X axes, so that the value is displayed with each bar and the person viewing the report does not have to estimate the values based on the scale lines.

Bars have numbers over them because Show Data Values is selected

Transpose

Qtip: This option only appears for questions with two dimensions. For example, Matrix Tables (which have statements and scales), Pick Group and Rank (which have items and groups), and visualizations with a breakout.

When selected, the items listed on the X axis and the items listed on the Y axis will switch places.

A bar chart where ratings are along the bottom and features are legend values

The same bar chart transposed, so ratings are in the legend and features are along the bottom

Stack Chart

Qtip: This option only appears for questions with two dimensions. For example, Matrix Tables (which have statements and scales), Pick Group and Rank (which have items and groups), and visualizations with a breakout.

When selected, the bars within each category will be stacked on top of one another instead of being displayed separately.

Bars are colored stacked on top of each other because Stack Chart is selected

Qtip: Pair this setting with Show data values to clarify the data in your chart!
Stacked bar chart with numbers on the colored bars

Horizontal Bar

When selected, your bar graph will become horizontal.

Horizontal bar chart

Vertical Range

The Vertical Range refers to the scale points displayed on the visualization’s axis. The visualization tries to account for maximum and minimum values automatically, but if your visualization looks funny, or you want to adjust the appearance of your data, you can manually type new minimum and maximum values in the field.

Numbers along the Y Axis adjust based on values in the Vertical Range

Qtip: This feature does not change the actual question’s scale points. It merely changes the range of the data that fits onto the visualization.
Qtip: If you are using Percentage as your metric, then remove 2 decimal places when typing minimum and maximum values. For example, if you want your maximum to be 100%, just type 1.

Rolling Averages

Rolling averages help you sort through natural variations in results to identify real trends, as opposed to momentary changes in traffic. Rolling averages take a series of points, where those points can be the result of any sort of metric calculation, and average them over a window of specified size (time period). This means the resulting average is independent of sample size for any given period.

Example: Let’s say you have NPS data for the past 30 days. If you choose to get the rolling average of every 3 days, you can get the average of the NPS scores in a rolling window of 3 NPS scores broken out by days. Then, every 3 days of data collection, a new average of NPS scores would be generated for you.

Rolling averages are not available to all visualization types or date groupings, so be careful to follow the steps below.

adding a rolling average to a bar chart

  1. Create or edit a line chart, bar chart, or data table.
  2. Add any metric.
  3. Under Breakout, choose a date field.
  4. Under Group Date By, choose one of the following:
    • Day (not hour or day of week)
    • Week
    • Month
    • Quarter
    • Year
  5. Select Rolling Average.
  6. Choose the timeframe you want the rolling average for.
  7. If you want to consider the current value in the bucket for every data point, select Include current value.

Incompatible Fields

Bar Charts are compatible with almost every kind of variable in Qualtrics because they can display both discrete data (e.g., a finite, five point scale) and continuous data (e.g., a question where respondents type in their age). This includes most question types, survey metadata, embedded data, and custom variables, such as Formulas or Bucketed variables.

Below are the few variables Bar Charts are not compatible with:

In general, Bar Charts are incompatible with open text content that is not numeric.

Qtip: Be careful with numeric data collected from open-ended questions and with finite scales that have hundreds of choices. A Bar Chart cannot comfortably display hundreds of choices!

Types of Reports

This visualization can be used in a few different types of report: