Note: This article covers how to compare a measure that has its own data to data from one or more other measures. Many users also set up comparison-only measures: an aggregated (parent) measure that does not have its own data, and displays only its disaggregated (child) compared measures.
When viewing an indicator or performance measure, you can compare its data to data from one or more other measures.
Note: For paid subscriptions that include variables, a variable can also be used as a compared measure. This will be shown later in this article.
This example focuses on the measure “% of students who enroll in college.” This measure uses a custom frequency of Graduation years. Only current actual values are displayed.
The goal is to compare this college-enrollment measure to two other measures:
- A measure that tracks reading levels
- A measure that tracks on-time graduation rates
These comparison measures must already be created in the system, must contain data, and must have the same reporting frequency as the measure to which they are being compared.
In the Relationships section, click Add Existing Measure.
In the Add Measure(s) To window, set the relationship to Comparee. To find the measures, you can filter by type, tags, or title, then click Search to see the results. Only measures that have the same frequency as the target measure will be available for selection. Select the measure(s) to compare and click Add.
The added measures are now listed under Measures to Compare on Graph.
If the measures you selected are incorrect, or if you want to remove the compared measures, click Remove All and choose Measures to Compare on Graph.
Once the compared measures are established, return to the graph and choose Comparison / Trend Line Comparison.
This adds all compared measures to the graph. Each set of data is color-coded according to the key below the graph.
Note: Users with admin permission can change the default colors and line widths used in the trend line comparison graph.
Compared measures can be displayed in both Line and Bar formats.
You can Hide Labels or Show Labels, and turn off one or more data sets by toggling the visibility icons in the graph key.
To show compared measures according to date trends, choose Comparison / Grouped Comparison.
This opens a popup showing data grouped by measure , reflecting the time periods for which data was collected. This view provides a high-level snapshot of all collected data, in a non-timeline format.
You can toggle the time period display below the chart, and clicking the icon at the top right opens several viewing, printing, and download options.
To return to the graph without comparison measures, choose Comparison / Show Primary Chart.
For paid subscriptions, variables can also be added as comparated measures.
Starting over with the same college enrollment measure example, this time we’ll be comparing data to similar college data from another region.This data is contained in a variable.
In Relationships, click Add Existing Measure.
In the Add Measure(s) To window, choose Comparee, and leave the Type filter blank. You can still filter by tags or title.Click Search, and choose one or variables to add. (As before, only variables with the matching frequency will be available for selection.)
Return to the graph and choose Comparison / Show Trend Line Comparison. As with measures, the variable data is added to the graph.
