Transcript Creating Tables and Figures for Manuscripts

Creating tables and
figures for manuscripts
Chien-Ti Lee
Oct 7, 2016
Tables- APA Guidance
• Conciseness in Tables
• Limit the content of your tables to essential materials
• Tables should be integral to the text but should be designed so that
they can be understood in isolation
Tables-APA Guidance
• Table Titles
• Give every table a brief but clear and explanatory title. The basic
content of the table should be easily inferred from the table.
Tables-APA Guidance
• Table Headings
• Like a table title, a heading should be brief and should not be many
more characters in length than the widest entry
• Decked heads: If possible do not use more than two levels of decked
headings
• Wording: Should be singular unless they refer to groups. Capitalized on
only the first letter of the first word of all headings
Tables-APA Guidance
• Table Body
• Decimal values
• Empty cells: blank or dash?
• Conciseness: Do not include columns
of data that can be calculated easily
from other columns
• Confidence Intervals
• Table Notes
Tables- Samples
Tables- Samples
Tables- Samples
Table Checklist
Transforming Outputs into Tables
• From SPSS to Word or to Excel
• Right click on the selected table Copy Right click on Word doc
Paste options: Merged formatting
• Right click on the selected table Copy Right click on Excel sheet 
Paste options: Match destination formatting
• From Mplus to Excel to Word
• Open your output within Mplus Select the proportion you want Click
on “Paste” icon  Use Text import Wizard Original data type:
Delimited Next Delimiters: Space Next Column data format:
General  Finish
More to Know…
•
How to align decimals in Microsoft World Tables?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZNfqWG6ORU
•
•
•
How to calculate 95 % CI in Excel?
•
Excel: fx = M ± 1.96* SE
•
Excel: fx = Confidence. Norm (alpha, standard deviation, size) This gives you the
margin errors, then you will add or minus this number to the mean
How to calculate Odds Ratio in Excel?
•
Odds ratio = the exponentiation of the Beta coefficient
•
Excel: fx =EXP(NUMBER)
Ultraedit-good for editing/formatting in “column mode
http://www.ultraedit.com/downloads/ultraedit_download.html
Standards for Figures-APA Guidance
A good figure
• Expands rather than
duplicates the text
• Conveys only essential facts
• Omits visually distracting
detail
• Is easy to read-its elements
are large enough to be read
with ease
• The size of letter should be no
smaller than 8 points and no
larger than 14 points
Figure Legends and Captions
• Legends-explains the symbols used in the figure; it is placed
WITHIN the figure
• A caption is a concise explanation of the figure that is placed
directly BELOW the figure and serves as the TITLE of the
figure
Samples
Samples
Graphing Your Own Figures
• Statistical Programs that (Help) Generates
Figures
• SPSS
• STATA
• R
• Good for combining figures together using
par( ) or layout( ) function.
• http://www.statmethods.net/advgraphs/layout.html
• LISERAL, AMOS, MPLUS
• Newer version of Mplus 7 includes the “Diagram”
function for SEM
attach(PSID)
Using R to Combining Figures
par(mfrow=c(2,3))
with(PSID, Boxplot(socwell_13~female, ylab
="Mean", xlab="social well-being",
id.method="none"))
with(PSID, Boxplot(psywell_13~female, ylab
="Mean", xlab="psychological well-being",
id.method="none"))
with(PSID, Boxplot(emowell_13~female,
ylab="Mean", xlab="emotional well-being",
id.method="none"))
with(PSID, Barplot(binge_13, by=female,
style="divided", legend.pos="topright", xlab="Binge
Drinking", ylab="Cases", col=c("gray","white")))
with(PSID, Barplot(wthmu13, by=female,
style="divided", legend.pos="topright",
xlab="Cigarette Smoking", ylab="Cases",
col=c("gray","white")))
with(PSID, Barplot(wthsmk_13, by=female,
style="divided", legend.pos="topright",
xlab="Marijuana Use", ylab="Cases",
col=c("gray","white")))
Mplus SEM Figure
MODEL:
Strategies BY ST1 ST5 ST10 ST15;
Guidance BY G11-G13;
Training BY TR4 TR6-TR9 TR11;
Involvement BY IN4 IN6 IN7;
Note: Under the tab “View” in Mplus
Diagram, you can change to STDYX
estimates
Graphing Your Own Figures
Software (in addition to the Statistical Packages) that could make
prettier figures
• Excel
• Power Point
• Microsoft Visio
Trail Version:
https://products.office.com/en-us/Visio/visio-pro-for-office-365-online-diagramsoftware
How to Use Visio:
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/A-beginner-s-guide-to-Visio-bc1605ded9f3-4c3a-970c-19876386047c