Analyzing surveys

You can visually explore datasets in the Detail View. You can:

  • Hide columns to limit the amount of data you are looking at—for example, if you want to see the first column in your dataset next to the fifth column, you can hide the intervening columns.
  • Manually code survey responses at codes representing the themes in your data.

You can also run queries to find and code to themes in your data:

Gather responses to each question

Do you want to see how all respondents replied to a question? Gathering responses to each survey question at a code allows you to group the data into broad themes.

You could create a code Question 1 and code the entire column at that code. You could create another code to contain all responses to Question 2.

Q1 Name Q2 Age Q3 Gender Q4 How can we improve road safety? Q5 Other suggestions for improvement?
Anna 29 Female I think there should be more car-free zones Electric buses and taxis would help reduce pollution in the inner city
Jack 31 Other Pedestrians need to feel safe. There should be better lighting and more police We should create more green spaces
Maria 52 Female Safety barriers at busy intersections I don't think they should tax car parks
Peter 47 Male Better education in schools about road safety More street trees

You can code the column manually or automatically:

  • You can select the entire column and manually code it at a new code called Question 1
  • You can use the Autocode Assistant —select Code to codes for selected columns. This is useful when you have many columns containing responses to different survey questions.

NOTE  When each respondent is represented by multiple rows (a row per survey question), you can still use the Autocode Assistant to gather the responses to a single question at a code.

Whichever method you use, you will create and code to the following codes:

  • Question 1
  • Question 2

Once you have grouped all responses to a question at a single code, you can use some of NVivo's powerful analysis tools, including:

  • Open the code and visually explore content coded to the code. From here you could 'code on' to more granular thematic groupings. For example, you could gather all answers which mentioned car-free zones.
  • Run a Word Frequency query (using the code in the scope of the query) to find common words or concepts in responses to Question 1.
  • Run a Text Search query looking for particular words or concepts, using the code in the scope of the query. For example, you could search for education and code all the results at a new code.

Gather responses of each survey respondent

If your data contains classifying fields that describe your survey participants—for example, the name, age and sex of the participant—you can use these fields to create and classify cases that represent your survey participants. You can code everything a participant said in response to survey questions to the case that represents them and also assign the attribute values to the case.

For each respondent you would create one case, of the classification 'person', with attributes for Age and Sex. Responses to both Question 1 and Question 2 would be coded to this case.

Q1 Name Q2 Age Q3 Gender Q4 How can we improve road safety? Q5 Other suggestions for improvement?
Anna 29 Female I think there should be more car-free zones Electric buses and taxis would help reduce pollution in the inner city
Jack 31 Other Pedestrians need to feel safe. There should be better lighting and more police We should create more green spaces
Maria 52 Female Safety barriers at busy intersections I don't think they should tax car parks
Peter 47 Male Better education in schools about road safety More street trees

Use the Autocode Assistant, to code content at cases and also classify the cases:

  1. Select Code to cases for each value in a column, to code the Question 1 and Question 2 responses at codes representing the values from the 'Respondent' column. This creates the following cases:
    • Anna
    • Jack
    • Maria
    • Peter
  2. On the final step of the Assistant, choose Classify cases from classifying columns. The cases are classified with the attribute values from the classifying columns. Using the example data above, the case Anna would be classified with the attribute values Age=29 and Sex=Female.

Once you have created and coded responses at cases for each respondent, you can use analysis tools which compare their attribute values. You can:

  • Run a Word Frequency query (using the case in the scope of the query) to find common words or concepts in responses to Question 1. You could code the results at new codes to further refine your analysis.
  • Run a Text Search query looking for particular words or concepts, using the case in the scope of the query. For example, you could search for education and code all the results at a new code.

When you have gathered responses both at question codes (Question 1, Question 2 ) and at respondent cases (Anna, Jack, Maria, Peter), you can analyze what respondents in different demographic groups are saying in response to particular questions:

  • Use a Coding query to view all the responses of males to Question 1.
  • If you save the results of your coding query (above) as a code, you can use a Word Frequency query to find the most commonly occurring words or ideas that males mention when responding to Question 1

NOTE  If each respondent is represented by multiple rows (a row per survey question), you can still use the Autocode Assistant to gather each person's responses at a code.