Groupsort.com - File details
The file details page lists the columns (called 'fields') in your file together with any groups that you have previously defined within Groupsort. In the field listing, it shows the number of different values contained within each field (e.g. how many different age bands or job grades there are in the file). This information can be extremely helpful when you are deciding which attributes to use to define your groups. When there are many different values, relative to the size of the file, it implies that most people have different values for that attribute which makes it impossible to use for creating balanced groups. If this is the case, you should consider either:
Not including that field when defining your groups as the groups will naturally be diverse on this attribute
Using clustering or banding to group similar values together
For example, a file that contains date of birth as a field could well have as many distinct values as there are people in the file. The current version of Groupsort cannot determine 'similarity' or 'closeness' in values, and will hence treat 1 January 1990 as being as different from 2 January 1990 as from 5 July 1912, for example. However, if you group the dates into bands, you can create a new field that can be used by Groupsort. At present you will need to do this manually outside Groupsort, but in future the site itself will provide this functionality. If the file contains as many different values in a particular field as there are people (e.g. a name field), Groupsort is unable to use this information for defining groups at all and this is indicated on this page by displaying the field name in grey. These fields will not appear as grouping options on the sorting page.
As a rule of thumb, you should consider banding if the number of values is much greater than the number of people in a group and you are wishing to balance the groups on that attribute. If you are clustering, you should consider banding where the number of values is much greater than the number of groups you wish to create.
On the right hand side of the page are displayed all of the group fields created by groupsort (if any). Beneath these you will see the entry [Create new]. Click on this the create a new group and move to the sorting page. Next to each existing group name is an icon representing a page of paper
. If you click on this, you will be taken directly to the report for that group.