Some time ago I designed a frequency chart for displaying how common various combinations of aged care star ratings are. However, while broad patterns were easy to make out from the static graph, some more specific information was hard to see. For example, seeing what the most common combination was required an unreasonable amount of zooming. In this post I share an interactive version of the chart which helps magnify more granular information for the user.
An explanation is needed to fully appreciate the information contained within the graph. The dataset contains all Australian aged care services with an available rating in all sub-categories, as at the February 2024 quarterly star rating data extract (Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care 2023). This corresponds to the quality measures from Q1 FY23-24. Each horizontal slice in the chart is composed of rectangles coloured corresponding to the rating for residents’ experience, compliance, staffing, and quality measures, respectively. Additionally, there is a bar to the right which visualises the frequency that the combination of sub-category ratings was observed among all aged care services. If you hover over (or tap on touch screen) the slice it will expand and show the unrounded overall star rating on the left, followed by the sub-category star ratings, and to the right of the frequency bar, the count of the sub-rating combination. Horizontal slices are ordered from the highest to lowest unrounded overall star rating, with a background shade highlighting the corresponding rounded overall rating. The width of sub-category star ratings are in proportion to their contribution to the overall star rating calculation.
Experience
Measures
Thanks to fellow Monash University PhD student Janith Wanniarachchi for developing a prototype and helping me troubleshoot javascript, with which I am not very familiar, whenever I got stuck.