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How to Fix Metadata Issues in Displayr

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This article describes how to troubleshoot issues with your file's metadata to ensure your data is properly analyzed by Displayr. You can also try to identify certain issues proactively by running our automation to Check for Errors in Data File Construction. You should use this article to look into issues when:

Requirements

Method

Variable labels and groupings appear off

Displayr uses several methods to group variables and label them appropriately.

  1. Variable Names - If using a file with metadata, variables in the same set should have names with bits that are similar and sequential, such as Q1_1, Q1_2, Q1_3.
  2. Variable Labels - If using a csv or Excel file, these are the headers in your first row. Variable labels should contain both the question (which will become the variable set label) and the option label (which will become the individual variable label and be used in tables). Commonly, these are separated by special characters such as -, :, etc. For example: Q1. Flavor rating - Coke, Q1. Flavor rating - Pepsi, Q1. Flavor rating - RC Cola. The example extends to grid-style questions and also requires a consistent order: Glasses drank - Out - Coke, Glasses drank - Home - Coke, Glasses drank - Out - Pepsi, Glasses drank - Home - Pepsi. The part of the label that matches EXACTLY across all variables in the variable set will become the variable set name, and the remaining part that is unique will become the individual variable labels.
  3. Value Attributes - Possible codes/responses for all variables would ideally match and contain the complete code frame for a question, regardless of whether respondents selected a response. If using a csv or Excel file, you can add dummy respondents to fill in for responses that were shown but not selected in the survey, and then delete those dummy respondents after importing. 
  4. Structure - Applicable to files with metadata. All Multiple Response Sets created in SPSS are honored in Displayr, which may cause Extra Variables Not in the Raw Data if a variable is in more than one Multiple Response Set. If a variable is formatted as a numeric variable with a code frame, but others are string variables, they will not be grouped together. These types of things would need to be fixed either in the file before importing into Displayr or manually reformatted/combined within Displayr after import.

Any of the above may affect how variables are grouped after importing a data file. Even if things aren't grouped or labeled accordingly on import, and you can't fix the issue with the raw data file, you can always combine, rename, and change the Structure of variables in Displayr. There are some automations that can help with this as well, such as: How to Suggest Better Variable Names from Source Labels and How to Remove Truncated Text from Variable Labels.

Variables are missing codes/possible responses

This occurs most often when using a data file without metadata, as Displayr only knows the codes for the categories or choices respondents selected. If using a file with metadata, this should be fixed by your data provider or by using software that can edit the file before importing it into Displayr. For either file type, you can still manually add code to the value attributes in Displayr after import, but it does so by creating a new constructed variable, which can impact performance if done across 50+ variables. To fix this in Displayr, see How to Add Empty Categories to a Question or How to Add a Category for the Value Attributes Using the Displayr API.

Multiple response variable sets show incorrect percentages

Make sure your Value Attributes are set up appropriately. See How to Set Value Attributes for a Binary-Multi and Binary-Grid. If your NET is not 100%, some respondents didn't select any options, and you can Add a None of These Option to the variable set. Or if you'd like the percentages shown in the table to be based on those who selected an option in the question, you can Rebase Multiple Response Data in Variable(s) to NET. If those solutions don't resolve the incorrect percentages, see other things to look into When a Table Result Looks Wrong.

Other tables show percentages or averages that appear off

Confirm the missing data settings and underlying values that are used in the average in the Value Attributes. Proceed through other things to look into When a Table Result Looks Wrong.

Variable is given a Text structure on import

This will be because the metadata indicates it is in a String or Character format, or because you are using a data file without metadata, and Displayr doesn't recognize that the responses are categories or numbers rather than text. You just need to change the Structure of the variable to be able to analyze it as it should be. Keep in mind, if changing to a Numeric type, change the Structure directly from the text variable and NOT a Nominal version of the variable, which will assign values in sequential order.

Tables show percentages when they should show an average and vice versa

See How to Change a Variable Set From Displaying Percentages to Averages and How to Change Averages to Percentages. You can also Calculate an Average Value from Categorical Data in Displayr.

The merged data has inconsistencies

If working with metadata issues with merged data or data from a tracker, see the Fixing Errors section in Tracking Study Best Practices.

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