Analyzing Open-ended Questions by Means of Text Analysis Procedures

Assume one has open-ended questions in a survey and seriously wants to analyze the answers to these questions. This text discusses a number of choices when a thematic text analysis is to be applied. It starts with requirements to be posed of the open-ended questions themselves and sketches choices in the development of a code system. Coding can be performed from an instrumental or a representational perspective. First, the coding is performed from the investigator’s point of view, and can be performed by a computer program. Secondly, the point of view of the respondent is acknowledged. Here, the computer can be used as a management tool, but the coding must be performed by a human coder. The choice of one of these methods depends on what the investigator is looking for and has consequences for how to proceed. When the representational coding is applied, there are questions of intercoder reliability. The codes to be used should be decided upon before or during the coding process.