Overview
When working with tables online, there are several different ways to customize tables to tailor the view of the data to your needs.  On the website, the words “table” and “reports” are interchangeable.  To simplify, these instructions use the term “tables.”

Locating Tables
The Reports/Tables list shown below contains more than 60 tables in 14 folders. 

There are two ways to locate a table on this site: either find the table in the topic folder (shown below) or search for it (see Search instructions).

For example, to locate the table on nursing home residents by payment source, open the Health Care Utilization folder.  The folder contents will appear in the Name box.

To see the tables in the Nursing Home sub-folder, click on the folder icon.  Tables will appear in the Name box with two options for viewing: downloading tables to your computer, or viewing tables online (see Opening Tables instructions).  The second table in the list gives data on source of payment.

Searching for Tables
Another way to locate tables is to perform a search. 

Enter one or more words in the search box in the upper right hand corner of the Reports/Tables screen and click the Search button.  The search words do not have to appear in the title of the table. 

You may perform a more specific search by using ‘AND’ between search words.  You can also enter two or more words separated by a space. Only those items that contain all the words will be found. 

The search results appear in a list under the Name column.  You may select one of the tables in the list, or click the Show all Reports button to return to the main listing of tables.  In some cases, the same table may be in multiple folders and will therefore appear more than once in the search results window. 

Opening Tables

There are two options for viewing tables in Beyond 20/20, either in the downloaded Browser where you can save the table for use at any time, or online.

To view a table online, click the corresponding purple icon .  (Clicking on the yellow icon opens the table in the downloaded browser).  In the example below, the table “Nursing Home Residents by Age, Sex, and Race: United States . . .” will be opened.

Working with Tables/Reports

Once you have opened a table, you are in the table view, and you can browse through the data items in the table. 

Browsing through dimensions

To browse through a dimension, for example “Age,” click on either the forward or backward arrow  in the dimension tile.  In the table below, the next category for “Age” after 65+(crude) -- 65+(age adjusted) -- is now shown after clicking the forward arrow.

Changing table views

You can also change the table view using the Actions drop down menu  on the upper left hand side of the table. 

For example, to change the view so that only black race is shown for males, click on the action menu and drag the mouse down so that Select Items to View is highlighted.  An adjacent box appears with all the available dimensions in the table.  First, chose Race.  A window with the available race categories will appear.

By default, All races, White and Black categories are shown in the table and all the boxes are checked.  To choose only Black race in the table display, uncheck the All races and White boxes.

Next, click on the sex dimension tile that is shown under “Rows.”  To choose only Male sex in the table display, uncheck Both sexes and Female.

To make additional selections, click on any remaining dimension.  When you are finished making selections for the table view, click on the table icon (located next to the Actions menu button) to display the table with your custom selections.   

To return to the original display, click on the Actions menu and choose Reset Default View.

You may also display your selections in a chart by clicking the chart icon  located next to the Actions menu button.   For more information about charts, see Making Charts.

Nesting

Beyond 20/20 allows users the option to change the display of the data in the table by rows or columns; this is called nesting. For example, the default table for Nursing Home Residents by Age, Sex, and Race has the dimension Sex nested with the dimension Race.

To nest rows, click on the grey shaded area of the desired dimension tile and slowly drag it to the top or bottom edge of the column labels until a heavy yellow line (or highlight) appears.  In this example, the Units dimension is selected by clicking it, then dragged to the Year dimension tile in the Column position:

When the mouse is released, Units is nested inside the Year dimension.

Columns can be nested in the same way as shown below, starting again with the default table view:

After the Units tile is dragged so that the yellow highlighted bar appears along the row tiles (along the right-hand side of the Sex dimension tile), release the mouse and Units will be nested with the columns Sex:

Summaries
Summaries provide textual explanatory information about the data.  Clicking the summary icons that appear on the dimension tiles and category tiles will display the textual information for any given dimension.   The Table summary contains a description of the data source and the nature of the data in the table.  

View summaries by double-clicking on the summary icon next to the Table title, or in the dimension or item tiles .  For example, clicking on the summary icon for the Nursing Home table shown above displays the following summary:

Sorting  
Individual columns in tables can be sorted in descending or ascending order.

Click on the appropriate arrow in the corresponding column to sort it.  For example, to sort the values in descending order for the year 1999, click on the down arrow.  The values are now arranged in descending order with female the highest value for all race categories, followed by both sexes, then male:

Making Charts
To create a chart, click the chart icon next to the Actions menu button.  Charts will appear for all row categories.  The example below shows the Nursing Home Residents data based on the default opening view of the table:

You can nest dimensions in the chart view just as in the table view by moving the dimension tiles as shown above.

You can view any chart in more detail by clicking on it.  Below is shown the result for clicking on the “All races” chart:

The data shown in the chart can be customized in the following ways.

Click on the underlined categories shown in the chart title on chart view as shown above (e.g., Age, Units, or Race) OR

Click on the Actions menu and choose Select Items to View as shown below.  Then select the dimension you wish to change

Either option will display the following view in which you can choose categories to view.  In the example below, only the male category is chosen.  In the same way, you can choose to show only black race by clicking on the Race dimension tile and checking the box next to black race and unchecking the boxes next to all other categories. 

To view the chart resulting from these selections, click on the chart icon next to the Actions menu button:

The Actions menu also provides other options.  You may customize the chart type, size, and choose to show data labels. 

The available chart types include pie, 3D pie, line, area, stacked bar, horizontal stacked bar, 3D bar, grouped bar, and horizontal grouped bar. The default chart is grouped bar.

The available chart sizes are small, medium and large.  The default chart size is medium.

Users may also choose to view or not view the data labels.

Printing
To print, click Printable Version in the Actions menu. The customized table or chart can now be printed without other page elements.  Use your browser's Print command to print.  

Copying
Tables can be copied into other applications, such as a word processor or spread sheet.

Click on the Actions menu from table view and choose Download report data.  Choose the format to download the table.

Help and Technical Assistance

Each table contains a Help feature that will assist you in manipulating and analyzing the data. Please Contact Aging Activities if you experience any problems.

This page last reviewed January 11, 2007