How to Create a Bar Graph With the Axis in the Middle (With Negative Values or Attributes on the Left of the Axis)

Sometimes it's helpful to delineate groups of categories (such as bad vs good) on a visualization to help compare across items. You can do this by making a bar graph with the axis in the middle of the visualization and negative values/attributes on the left of the axis, also known as a diverging bar chart. Similarly, using the same method, you can also make a column chart with columns going below the 0 axis, also known as a diverging column chart. 

For example, the table below contains positive, neutral, and negative attributes:

Which can then be displayed as a bar chart visualization with the axis in the middle and positive and negative attributes shown on either side of the axis:

Requirements

• A Nominal Multi-Grid or Ordinal Multi-Grid variable set with at least one positive and one negative attribute, such as "like" and "dislike".

Method

1. Recode your rating categories so the negative ratings have negative values, and the positive ratings have positive values. Select the variable set in the Data Sources tree, and in the Object Inspector click the Data > Properties > Values button.

2. Update the Value column as in the following example, assigning negative values to the negative attributes and positive values to the positive attributes. This determines whether the category will go on the right (positive value) or left (negative value) of the middle axis - the actual magnitude doesn't do anything to the chart. Click OK:

   

3. Drag the variable onto the Page to create a summary table.
4. OPTIONAL: Combine categories on the table if you'd like to show them combined in the chart.
5. OPTIONAL: Drag and drop the categories on the table to order them in the order you want to show them in the chart worst to best (left to right or top to bottom depending on if the categories are in the columns or rows).
6. With the table selected, in the object inspector, click Visualization > Bar > Stacked Bar with Tests or Visualization >Bar > Stacked Column with Tests depending on what type of graph you need.
   1. NOTE:  If you do not see the options Stacked Bar with Tests or Stacked Column with Tests, then check the box labelled Show legacy visualizations - it's found at the bottom of the Visualization selection dialog after you've selected the primary visualization type.
7. OPTIONAL: You can further customize the look of the chart via the Chart tab in the object inspector.

Next

How to Create a Bar Chart from a Table

How to Create a Stacked Bar Chart