Presentation skills: Making gender statistics meaningful

1. Presentation skills: Making gender statistics meaningful Inter-Regional Workshop on the Production of Gender Statistics New Delhi, India 6-10 August 2007

2. Presentation of gender statistics • Goals: • Reach a wide audience • Highlight key gender issues • Facilitate comparisons between women and men • Encourage further analysis • Stimulate demand for more information

3. Ways to present data • Tables • Graphs • Charts • Maps

4. Common Statistical Tables Too complex

5. General rules for good presentation • Meaningful information • Unambiguous information • Convey message efficiently

6. General rules for good presentation • Meaningful information • Identify key message • Choose appropriate indicator (counts, percent, rates, ratios) • Highlight key gender issues • Facilitate comparisons between women and men

7. General rules for good presentation • Meaningful information • Unambiguous information • Include titles and headings • Include only relevant labels • Display scales • Include source

8. General rules for good presentation • Meaningful information • Unambiguous information • Convey message efficiently • Convey one key finding or concept • Use simple display • Sort on most meaningful variable

9. From ‘raw data’ to easily understood gender statistics • To select tables, graphs and maps • Identify gender issue or differences • Consider underlying causes • Identify analysis needed • Prepare raw/basic data • Determine appropriate presentation formats

10. Basic table for gender analysis

11. Example: Tanzania • Gender issue: Poverty • Cause: Differential access to means of economic support • Analysis: Economic situation of women and men • Economic activity status • Reasons for not being economically active • Data sources: labour force surveys or population census

12. Raw DataPopulation ages 10 and over by economic activity status and reasons for not economically active

13. Basic Table 1Population ages 10 and over by economic activity status One message: economic activity Exact numbers rounded to 1,000, percentages to integers

14. Simplified Table 1Population ages 10 and over by economic activity status Deleted column with numbers, added totals in 1,000’s

15. Basic Table 2Population not economically active ages 10 and over by reasons One message: Reasons for not being economically active Exact numbers rounded to 1,000, percentages to integers

16. Simplified Table 2Population not economically active ages 10 and over by reasons Deleted column with numbers, added totals in 1,000’s

17. Simplified Table 2: Highlights gender issuePopulation not economically active ages 10 and over by reasons Reasons sorted after percentage of women in group

18. Chart can help visualize

19. Selecting an appropriate format • Tables • Graphs • Charts • Maps

20. When to use tables • Lists –one variable • Incomplete data • Data that vary greatly in magnitude • Multiple statistics (annex tables)

21. User-friendly tables • Round-off numbers • Round-off percentages • Delete counts and total • Sort by most meaningful variable • Highlight key values • Title with clear message

22. User-friendly tables:Clear titles

23. Example 1: Good table?

24. Example 2: Good table? Too complex

25. Example 2: Good table?

26. Selecting an appropriate format • Tables • Graphs • Charts • Maps

27. When to use graphs • For continuous, interval variables • Show trends or changes

28. User-friendly graphs • Accurately show facts • Y axis should start at zero • Use same scale when comparing graphs side by side • Colours or patterns show differences • Title and minimal labels provide clear message

29. Example 1: show facts Source: Women and Men in Vietnam. Statistical Publishing House, Vietnam 1995.

30. Example 1: show facts Source: Women and Men in Vietnam. Statistical Publishing House, Vietnam 1995.

31. Example 2:Same Scale

32. Selecting an appropriate format • Tables • Graphs • Charts • Maps

33. When to use charts • For categorical variables • Ordinal • Nominal

34. User-friendly charts • Accurately show facts • Avoid unnecessary three dimensional charts that can distort the information • Colours or patterns to show differences • Title and minimal labels • Minimal lines, usually only horizontal grid • Minimal frames (only for scatter charts)

35. User-friendly charts Distorts message

36. User-friendly charts

37. Picking the right chart • Makes difference between strong message and confusion • Choice depends on: • Kind of data used in analysis • Key point to be emphasized

38. Example: Picking the right chart

39. Example: Picking the right chart No clear message

40. Example: Picking the right chart

41. Example: Picking the right chart

42. Picking the right chart:Vertical bar charts • Data that do not vary in magnitude too greatly • Few data points • Few categories • Often used for: • Rates, percentages, ratios • Regional variations

43. Example: Vertical bar chart

44. Example: Vertical bar chart

45. Example: Vertical bar chart Both charts have a clear message. The choice depends on the desired emphasis

46. Picking the right chart:Stacked bar charts • Most effective for categories adding to 100 percent • Women and men are shown either as: • X-axis with one stacked bar for each • Different colour segments of each bar with multiple values on the x-axis

47. Example: stacked bar charts

48. Example 2 No clear message

49. Picking the right chart:Horizontal bar charts • For one variable with many categories • When Y-axis labels are long • To plot two variables against each other

50. Example 1: Horizontal bar charts