Data Analysis

Question

Hello,
I am trying to analyze data from a recent survey. I have entered all of my data using numeric values (i.e. 1-for answer 1, 2-for answer 2, etc). I have each column as the question number and each row as the participant number and their response to the specific question.
I used the COUNTIFS function to go through each column and tally the number of responses. For example, in Question 1, I entered: =COUNTIFS((C2:C14)),"=2") to get the number of persons that responded with the second answer for that question. Note: the () for C2:C14 was added by numbers after I hit enter. Here's my problem: For two columns, the data is valid and I can do stats such as =SUM(C16/B16) and it gives me the percentage of responses in cell 16 by the number of males (B16). I have 29 questions, so I have 29 columns. Once I entered the formula in the first column, I then dragged the formula across to all the columns. I have checked them all to make sure they are correct. BUT ... if I try to do a stat using cells from Q2 on ... it gives an error. Following the example above, if I try to do =SUM(F16/B16), it gives me an error as it does not put the value in F16, rather it gives the formula I entered for COUNTIFS & then when I move off the cell & return to it, the formula for F16 is gone & it has invalid data "Q 12, '6', '2=' ...
I don't understand why the COUNTIFS formula works in two columns but gives errors for the remaining columns. PLEASE HELP!

Answer 1

clem,
You don't need the COUNTIFS function conditionally count the content of only one column.. COUNTIF would work just as well.
You don't need to use the equal sign or the quotes in the condition parameter since "=" is the default.
If you don't have any extraneous data in column C, you don't need to specify the rows.
The following expression would count the frequency of answer 2: =COUNTIF(C, 2)
This assumes that the expression is in the same table as the data. If the stats are in another table, and the data is in Table 1, a valid, simplified, COUNTIF expression would be: =COUNTIF(Table 1 :: C, 2)
SUM(C16/B16) is an improper use of the SUM function and probably isn't giving you anything like what you should expect if you really need a sum. It will work, in the sense of not creating an error message, but it doesn't Sum anything in column C with anything in column B. It will create a fraction that can be displayed as a percentage, but there is no reason to use the SUM function for that. You could simply use C16/B16.
If you would post a screen shot of your data and calculations, we'd be happy to try to suggest a solution.
Jerry