Survey Coding

Research America’s surveys include open-ended questions. Each open-ended question can result in thousands of varying responses. While our experts can evaluate each answer individually, marketing researchers generally prefer to use coding expertise to make sense of the huge amount of data collected through open-ended responses within each survey.

Research America’s market research coding team’s first responsibility is to group recorded, verbatim responses to open-ended questions into lists, sorting similar responses into groups that correspond to survey objectives. When all the responses are coded, the analysis team uses cross-tabulation to compare and contrast the relationship between the coded groupings and other survey question responses.

When interviewers may have missed a question during a paper-based interview and survey, or coded two answers where only one answer was required, these responses need to be corrected. It’s the coder’s secondary task to read through the questionnaire and carefully evaluate this data to determine the most likely real answer that will be included in results. When responses are unclear and coders can’t make an educated guess about a response, researchers may re-contact the respondent and ask the question again to clarify the answer.

Open-ended question responses are the most free-form and unaffected parts of survey analysis. Research America’s interviewers present survey questions without bias, and respondents can answer with anything that comes to mind. Our consultants design open-ended questions to elicit answers that genuinely reflect how respondents feel about your marketing research question. Applying reliable survey coding techniques to deeper questions that can’t be answered through multiple choice, scale numbers or yes/no helps us to work together to uncover the truth in your marketing research project.

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