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Technical Directions

The Data Disaggregation Tool - Technical Directions

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The Data Disaggregation Tool (DDT) is designed to allow teachers to easily and quickly analyze their student data. With just a few clicks, the DDT will automatically the data from a spreadsheet, disaggregate it by your selected student variable, calculate six descriptive statistics, and create a boxplot to allow you to quickly and easily compare performance between groups of students. When used regularly, this tool will help save time and promote the use of data to improve instruction. This article will provide detailed technical directions for using the tool.

 

About the Tool

The DDT is a Shiny Web Application developed by Matthew Courtney in 2023. It uses the R statistical programming language to read data off of a spreadsheet and create a summary of any column. The DDT is hosted on the shinyapps.io server.

 

Preparing your Data

  1. Save the data in the spreadsheet as a file type accepted by the tool. This includes Excel files (.xlsx, .xls), OpenDocument Spreadsheet files (.ods), and comma-separated values files (.csv).

  2. Make sure that the first row of the spreadsheet contains the variable names. This will allow the application to automatically detect the variables in the data when you upload the file.

  3. Check that each column in the spreadsheet contains only one type of data. For example, if a column contains both numbers and text, the application will not be able to calculate summary statistics for that column.

  4. Ensure that the data in the spreadsheet does not contain any missing values. If a cell in the spreadsheet is empty or contains a non-numeric value (e.g. "#N/A"), the application will not be able to calculate summary statistics or perform a linear regression for that variable.

  5. Remove any unnecessary columns from the spreadsheet before uploading it to the application. The application will only display variables that contain numeric data in the dropdown menus, so any non-numeric columns will not be useful for analysis.

  6. Check that the data in the spreadsheet is formatted correctly. For example, if a column contains dates, make sure they are formatted correctly in the spreadsheet.

 

Using the DDT

  1. Upload your spreadsheet by clicking the "Browse" button in the sidebar of the application. Select the file you want to analyze from your local drive and click "Open" to upload it.

  2. Once you have uploaded your spreadsheet, select the demographic variable you want to analyze from the first dropdown menu. This should be a categorical variable that groups your data into different demographic groups (e.g. age, gender, income level).

  3. Next, select the outcome variable you want to analyze from the second dropdown menu. This should be a numeric variable that you want to summarize and/or analyze in relation to the demographic variable you selected in step 2 (e.g. salary, number of children, height).

  4. After selecting both the demographic and outcome variables, the application will display a summary table of the selected outcome variable for each group in the selected demographic variable. This table will include the mean, median, mode, minimum, maximum, range, and standard deviation for the selected outcome variable for each group in the selected demographic variable. Use this table to compare the summary statistics of the selected outcome variable between different groups in the selected demographic variable.

  5. Additionally, a boxplot will be displayed in the same tab as the summary table. The boxplot shows the distribution of the selected outcome variable for each group in the selected demographic variable. The boxplot can help you visualize the differences in the distribution of the selected outcome variable between different groups in the selected demographic variable.

  6. Repeat steps 2-5 as necessary to analyze additional demographic and outcome variables.

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References

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