Hello all,
In SPSS I am going to code 2 open-ended questions. I have already read all the answers and I made a list of the most important categories to which I can code the answers. This question has been asked before, and the answer was given that you have to code using Transform Variables. But, my open-ended questions state that 2 or more answers may be given (For example: What are your hobby's? You can name 2 to 3 things.) Some people are short in their answers, other have written down multiple sentences. How do I code these answers, which include multiple answers per participant (which fall into different categories)? If anybody would have some tips, that would help a lot!
Normally, Open-Ended questions are for qualitative reasons not quantitative.
But you may adapt the coding systems by summarizing the responses for easy coding either in ordinal or nominal
Hello Elisa,
If the answers given comprise a very modest number of discrete options, you could create a set of variables: Option_A, Option_B, etc., and code each as 1 if given, and 0 if not named/given.
If that's not the case, then I agree with Busari Yusuf 's reply that you might fare better by using qualitative analysis software (such as one of these listed in this compendium: https://www.predictiveanalyticstoday.com/top-qualitative-data-analysis-software/)
Good luck with your work.
Dear Elisa de Lange,
Basically, though you have open-ended questions, it is possible to categorize as stated by David Morse above, like:
1. Hobby-1
2. Hobby-2
3. Hobby-3
4. Hobby-4
5. Hobby-5 and so on. Make sure that you don't have more than 9 hobbies.
If a respondent has marked/considered two hobbies, say for example - Hobby-2 and Hobby-4, you can enter 24 in the database, where 2 indicates Hobby-2 and 4 indicates Hobby-4.
If a respondent considers 3 hobbies, it can be 135 for example denoting that the respondent has 3 hobbies of Hobby-1, Hobby-3 and Hobby-5.
If you consider like this it would be easy for you to analyze with the numbers and each number can have 1 or more of the hobbies.
Hope this can help you. Good luck in your studies.
Regards,
S. Senthilnathan.
Samithamby Senthilnathan, when you say enter in database, do you also mean make a variable for each category? I’m still searching for ways to specifically do this in spss.
Thanks for all answers, helps me move forward!
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