Organ Pipe Plots for clustered datasets – visualize disparities in cluster level coverage

Leo Tolstoy is famous for his novels and less well known for his ideas on survey data analysis. Concerning estimated proportions, he is said to have written: ͞Covered strata are all alike; every poorly covered stratum is poorly covered in its own way.͟ This talk describes a new command to make what we call organ pipe plots to visualize heterogeneity in binary outcomes in clustered data. The plots were conceived for vaccination coverage surveys but they are helpful in a wide variety of contexts. Imagine a survey where only 50% of sampled children are found to be vaccinated. Different programmatic responses would be appropriate if the vaccinated include All of the children in HALF the clusters versus HALF the children in ALL the clusters. These plots have been used to identify neighborhoods that were surreptitiously and intentionally skipped over during vaccination campaigns.The talk will demonstrate the command and discuss similarities with Pareto plots from quality control and a visual connection to the intracluster correlation coefficient (ICC). (Note that the ICC shares a connection to anarcho-pacifistic ideas in Tolstoy’s later novels: many students mention them…but few can describe them clearly.)