Crosstab

In statistics, a crosstab is another name for a contingency table, which is a type of table created by crosstabulation. In survey research (e.g., polling, market research), a "crosstab" is any table showing summary statistics. Commonly, crosstabs in survey research are concatenations of multiple different tables. For example, the crosstab below combines multiple contingency tables and tables of averages.

Example

Standard contents of a crosstab

• Multiple columns (historically, they were designed to use up all the white space of a printed page). Where each column refers to a specific sub-group in the population (e.g., men), the columns are sometimes referred to as banner points or cuts (and the rows are sometimes referred to as stubs).
• Significance tests. Typically, either column comparisons, which test for differences between columns and display these results using letters, or, cell comparisons, which use color or arrows to identify a cell in a table that stands out in some way (as in the example above).
• Nets or netts which are sub-totals.
• One or more of: percentages, row percentages, column percentages, indexes or averages.
• Unweighted sample sizes (i.e., counts).

Software

Most general-purpose statistical software programs are able to produce simple crosstabs, such as contingency tables.