Views Field View - No results behavior
The answer was - the node fields are not available and you have to reload the node, like so:

$nodef = node_load($data-&gt;nid);
$el = $nodef-&gt;field_electronics_description[und][0][value];

if ($row-&gt;view != NULL ||  $el != NULL) {
   return FALSE;
}
else return TRUE;