Analysing responses

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Policy makers will not read everything produced in a consultation. They needs summaries and analyses of responses.

Quantitative analysis

Tools for analysing quantitative data (e.g. from surveys) are well-known.

  • Simple analyses are often built in to survey tools, like PHP Surveyor
  • Full statistical analyses can be done in statistics packages like SPSS

Qualitative analysis

But there is also software that can be used to analyse qualitative data.

  • Computer aided qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS)
    • Used to mark up transcripts with keywords, then use the software to bring together all the comments on each topic.
    • well-known to academic researchers
    • less so among consultation practitioners, biasing them towards quantitative data collection, and the simple explicit knowledge that acquires.
    • With more use of CAQDAS on discussion forum transcripts or collected stories, it is possible to generate useful reports.
    • CAQDAS software sites