How do you report open-ended responses?

One approach is to select responses.
A few well-chosen quotations from open-ended responses can provide anecdotal evidence in support of data. This is fast and effective but highly subjective.

Another approach is to aggregate responses.
A summary table of open-ended responses can place results into a meaningful context with the possibility of identifying trends.

Coding is a means to aggregate open-ended responses. You devise categories by which to classify and group responses and then assign a category to individual responses.

Consider the many purposes to which coding can be utilized:

1. Most commonly, to summarize and accurately reflect the range of answers actually provided by respondents.
   

   "I have no idea what people will come up with and I want to capture faithfully their range of answers."

2. To capture the range of answers according to predetermined categories of interest.
   

   "I am interested to know how their answers deal with issues of importance that we identified."

3. To capture the range of answers against set criteria.
   

   "These are standard measures that we track."

The E-valuate-IT coding tool enables you to create category names by which to classify and group open-ended responses and then assists you to assign a category of best fit to the responses. E-valuate-IT can provide a summary table report as well as a complete list of coded responses grouped by category. Coded data is also available as raw data for further analysis.