Crafting a visualization is more than simply translating a table of information into a visual display. Data visualization ought to communicate information in the most effective way, with the prime purpose of truly revealing data in a quick, accurate, powerful and long-lasting manner. Representative visuals can easily summarize and communicate data to other people, making even the largest or most complicated sets of data understandable.
This article is trying to answer the most common questions that pop up in a researcher’s mind, when trying to establish what scale to use in a marketing, or business, research: “Are there any differences in calculations when different scales are used?”, “Which advantages best suit a particular need?”, “Which is the best option for an unipolar or bipolar variable?”.
Discussions on data visualization have rapidly increased over the last years as more executives, managers, analysts and basically everybody, wish for a better understanding of the raw data behind every day dashboards, scorecards or presidential poll results. The struggle is to bring the raw data to life in a simple and comprehensible manner.
In the words of the data visualization expert Edward Tufte, “Graphical excellence is that which gives to the viewer the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time, with the least ink, in the smallest space.”