cross tabulation

Variable relationships are very important in quantitative research. They tell researchers what effect different variables have upon one another. One of the easiest ways to display relationships between variables is through a cross-tabulation (cross-tab). A cross-tab is simply a chart that shows frequency or distribution of one or more variables for every category of another variable. Stated another way, a cross-tab is a joint frequency distribution of observations on two or more sets of variables. These statistical observations can be presented by numeric frequency, percentages, or both, depending on which is most useful given the specific data context.