Creating a radar diagram: choosing vectors or axes
First, articulate the values you wish to explore;
Second, determine whether those values are unipolar or bipolar:
- unipolar – lack an opposite; expressed as a vector (from origin out in one direction);
- bipolar – imply an opposite end; expressed as an axis or spectrum (values extending out on either side of the origin).
Notes:
It could be a matter of some debate whether or not ”microprocessor saturation” (the extent to which microprocessors are dispersed through the everyday environment) and ”literacy” have opposites. For the most part, I chose these two variables as examples of vectors because generally they would be measured from 0 to n.
Some concepts expressing characteristics or values within reality, however, can logically be paired with complementary concepts which express an opposite, but measurable, characteristic or value. The example used here is the ”secular to religious” axis or spectrum.
Also note, for those of you who prefer greater structure to your comparative tools, that it is entirely possible/permissible to label either the vectors or the axes, in whatever range you like. Radar diagrams are, after all, the visual equivalent of self-anchoring scales, such as those made famous by Hadley Cantril in The Pattern of Human Concerns.
One example might be to pattern an axis after Likert scales, in survey research:
”SECULAR – strongly – moderately – weakly – ORIGIN – weakly – moderately – strongly – RELIGIOUS”
with markers on the axis to indicate placement of these relative strengths of the given value.