How to code a data set with open ends.

How to access the tool

Step 1: From the project page, select “Add > Data Operation”

Step 2: Give the tool a name  (the description and Tags are optional)

Step 3: In the data operations canvas, add a new tool to the workflow.

Step 4: In the “General” tab:

1. Select “coding” from the drop down menu
2. Give the tool a name (in the example: “My coding”)

Step 5: Switch to the “Input” tab, and specify the data set that you want to code

(project / data set name)

Step 6: Switch to the “Output” tab, and specify a name and a destination project for the coded data set

Click the “Create” button. You now have a coding canvas!

Viewing the open answers to code

Step 1: From the “Select question” drop-down, you will see a list of the questions that have open ends or verbatims. Select the question you want to code, and the list of open ends / verbatims will appear.

In this example, we’ve selected question 5:

At the top of the screen, just below the selected question’s text, you will find the following information:

1. Q5 – the selected question for coding
2. 242/3033 = I have coded 242 of the 3033 occurrences, i.e. also 8.0% and in the parentheses/brackets (2791) are the number of occurrences left to code

Directly below this information, you will see the following icons:

From left to right, these do the following actions:

1. Split the verbatim, e.g. if the verbatim is long and / or have multiple meanings

2. Delete the answer (it does not delete the actual data, just removes it from the data to be coded).

3. Sort the list (ascending/descending) by answer text / answer count

4. Select all

5. Unselect all

Below these options, you have the ability to search for specific text in the search bar.

Finally, the number after the blue open-end/verbatim comment indicates how many occurrences this verbatim has. For example, there are 20 cases where respondents wrote “Awareness”:

Creating a code frame

Step 1: On the right-hand side of the canvas, you can now create your code frame

The icons offer the following options:

1. +   Add a new code
2. Sort the codes
3. Select all
4. Unselect all

Step 2: Click the “+ sign” and create the first code: 

1. Give it the code a unique value 
2. Enter the text for the code (the text can be anything you want (whether it is present in the dataset or not))
3. Save

Step 3: When you click “save” you will see the first code appear in the right-hand column in a green box:

Step 4: For the next code, change the “code” number and the “name”, then continue with this process until you have created your list.

Step 5: When you are finished click: “Save and close” 

Coding the open-ends into your code frame:

Step 1: It may be easiest to sort the open ends by answer count. This will help you quickly see the most commonly entered responses. You can do this by selecting the á↓ symbol “Sort by: Answer count” then “Order: Descending”

Step 2: Select the open end(s) you want to code. To select one OE, click on it and make sure it is surrounded by a blue box. 

Side note: To select multiple OEs, hold down the “shift” key and click each OE that you want to include so that each has a blue box around it:

Step: 3: On your keyboard, press the number of the code in your code frame where you want to “send” the response(s) you’ve selected. For example, I want to send the “Equality 46” responses (blue box on the left) to code “2 Equality” (green box on the right):

I want to send the blue “Equality” to the green “Equality”

I press the number 2 on my keyboard and this box appears:

Then click “Save (Enter)”. The open-end now immediately swaps into the code list, and disappears from the open-ended list.

Small glitch for v1: You may need to re-sort the order of the blue codes as it sometimes reverts to the original, unsorted list after allocating a set of responses from the blue list to the coded responses (the green list). To fix this, just click on the áâ and click on “Descending” (which will be ticked already). The codes will then sort themselves back into the order with the highest value first.

Splitting a response across multiple codes:

If an open-ended answer has e.g. a double meaning, you can specify multiple code destinations separated by a comma (will end up in both code 1 and 3)

Excluding responses from your coding:

If you want to exclude any of the open-ends:

1. Select the open answer (currently only one at a time)
2. Click the delete-icon

NB: It does not delete the data permanently, it simply excludes it from the coding.

Undo or change the coding

There are a couple of ways to make changes during coding: 

1. To undo and re-code an open-ended answer:
   1. In the green code list to the right, open and select the answer you want to code differently
   2. Two icons will appear and you can click “re-open” this will move the answer back into the uncoded list

To rename the code, click the “pencil” icon. This will open the editor.

To delete the code, click on the trash can icon.

Running the code tool and create a new data set

Step 1: When you’re finished coding, at the top right of the screen click:

1. Save 
2. Run workflow

Step 2: You can return to the project and the data set appears in the list

Step 3: Open the data set in the analysis, and the question is now coded

Additional Tips and Tricks:

If you add to your code frame afterwards, it will automatically put the new code at the bottom of the list. If you want the codes in numeric order, you can turn this:

Into this:

You do this by clicking on the up/down arrows icon and selecting “Sort by: Category codes” and “Order: Ascending”

Importing code frames

When importing code frames if there are overlapping codes the system will prompt for a few options like in the screenshot below

1. Reassign the existing codes - imported codes will be imported exactly the same, the existing codes will have the codes shifted
2. Reassign the imported codes - imported codes will be imported with new codes assigned,  the existing codes will remain exactly the same 
3. Overwrite duplicated codes (Overwrite definitions) - The code frame labels will be overwritten and also the answer definitions will be overwritten.
   
4. Overwrite duplicated codes (Append definitions) - The code frame labels will be overwritten but the answer definitions will be appended to the existing answer definitions. 
5. Ignore duplicated codes - the duplicated codes will be ignored