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Content Coding
In organizational surveys, also often referred to as employee attitude surveys, data are gathered in two general forms, quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative approaches typically involve a statement (e.g., “Processes and procedures allow me to effectively meet my customers' needs”) followed by a scale of response options (e.g., “strongly agree…strongly disagree”). This can be called a quantitative approach to measuring attitudes because the resulting data will be in the form of numbers.
By contrast, a qualitative approach allows freeform text to be entered by the person taking the survey. These are often referred to as open-ended questions or write-in questions, a term born in the days when surveys were typically conducted using paper and pencil and employees were given an opportunity to provide comments in their own handwriting. Today, many, if not most, surveys are administered using a computer, and comments are actually typed in.
The following are some typical examples of write-in questions:
- Please provide any comments you have on what it feels like to work here at Company X.
- Please provide any suggestions you have about how Company X could better enable you to balance your work and personal/family life.
- Do you have any additional comments or suggestions?
Uses
The clarification of issues that are on the minds of employees, in their own words, is a powerful benefit of gathering comments in a survey. Although quantitative data can provide precision, trending, and easy comparisons to benchmarks, write-in comments add richness by bringing abstract issues to life through specific examples, new ideas, and suggestions for improvement.
Gathering comments also allows the researcher to gain insight into a new issue, one in which the important elements are only partially known. For example, a survey may contain a question about the most important characteristics of an employee benefits program. One might have some good hunches about benefits such as flexibility, health coverage, and dependent care. However, an open-ended question asking employees to describe what they would like to see in “the perfect benefits package” would provide a much more complete list of issues. Follow-up questions in later surveys—with a more tested list of issues—could then be used in a quantitative approach to monitor the effectiveness of the benefits programs.
Techniques
Content coding of open-ended data is a process of reading through a set of comments or a subset of comments and describing themes that tie together many individual comments. These themes are analogous to the principal components of a factor analysis. Common themes in open-ended data depend on the questions being asked, but they will often include elements that are common to a workplace climate survey: compensation, management, jobs, workload, worklife balance, and business performance.
Some researchers ask the employees who are taking the survey to help code their comments while they are taking the survey. For example, a write-in question could be preceded by a list of topics that employees choose from to describe the theme of their comments. It is also possible to ask specifically whether the comment is generally positive or negative. This can help provide an initial structure to work with in developing themes.
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