- July 22, 2014
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What You Can Learn from Open-Ended Surveys
Data. It’s everywhere. But how do you capture it so you can interpret it correctly and apply it to your organization in a meaningful way?
The research junkies at SurveyMonkey promote using open-end surveys to find out what survey-takers really think. In “How to Make Sense of Open-Ended Responses” the SurveyMonkey research team sums up the opportunity and challenge of this data-gathering method: “People aren’t limited to a predetermined set of possible answer choices so you end up collecting a rich pool of genuine opinions from folks on your survey topic. However, they also present an analytical challenge — just how do you make sense of all these unique answers?”
Fortunately, many organizations have figured out ways to use this data to their advantage so you don’t have to take a course or two on research methodology and statistics. Instead, marketers can learn the best practices from others, such as the Planning Council for Health and Human Services.
The Council, a community research organization, follows these steps to analyze data gathered from open-ended survey questions:
Read through all the responses
As you review them, you will begin to get a sense of the emerging themes. It also is helpful to have another person review the responses independently and check their sense of the data against your own. This will help minimize the influence of your own biases on the data.
Develop categories
Next, you will need to develop categories that include the themes that emerged in your initial review.
Assign each response to a category (or categories)
Once you have established your categories, you will need to assign each comment to one or several categories. This is known as “coding.”
Check your categories
Now is a good time to check and see if your categories are appropriate. You might find that most of your responses fall into one category, and that the category could be broken into subcategories. You also might learn you have some comments that fall into a new category altogether or that one of your categories only has one or two responses.
Review for major themes
After you’ve coded your responses and refined your categories, evaluate the data to see which of the categories have the most responses. Those are your major themes.
Identify patterns and trends
Now dig deeper into the data. Which categories are related? Could you identify patterns and trends? Are themes associated — or are there a series of unrelated points?
Write up your analysis
For your analysis to be useful, you will need to summarize it to be able to communicate the data and make business decisions based on your findings. If you also have quantitative data, your summary of themes may complement or clarify what you saw in the numbers.
For ideas on how to apply the data you gathered, follow the tips in “The Data Dilemma: Four Ways to Email Smarter.”