Anecdotally, I have noticed a large increase in open-ended responses to all surveys at ISU over the last six years or so. For me, “Anecdotally” always leads to “hmmm….I should look into that further.”
So I looked the percent of students who have answered an open-ended question on the ISU NSSE survey since 2007. It’s increased significantly. In our 2023 administration, nearly 800 students provided open-ended responses.
I have no idea what’s behind the trend. I speculate it’s has to do with the increasing adoption of application and hardware technologies. For now, it doesn’t matter.
My first reaction is: What an opportunity! Particularly those of us who were trained in quantitative methods and survey analysis (but have a qualitative mindset), here’s why:
- Capturing emerging voices. In quantitative analyses, the researcher constructs a story. That’s definitely okay. No one knows your data better than you. And as long as the researcher is clear about their biases. Still, the voice is missing. More open-ended responses provides perspectives we could miss. I did this in a Sense of Belonging report for ISU.
- Qualitative visualizations will be cool. In the past, qualitative data was presented as themes in text form. This is changing quickly.
- Survey researchers can learn qualitative analysis. I learned the basics several years ago. I am not expert, by love reading open-ended responses. AI sentiment analysis provides an opportunity to include qualitative data into quantitative findings. More about this in a few weeks….
- Qualitative and quantitative analysts can interact more. Surveys were traditionally the domain of quantitative analysts. No more.
This does not mean we should add more open-ended questions. I would still use them sparingly. And be thoughtful and deliberate about what questions to ask.
Qualitative visualization examples
- Exploring essential qualitative data visualizations, Policy Viz
- What to do with all those open-ended responses?, Survey Practice
- Qualitative Vizes, Stephanie Evergreen
