SPSS for newbies: coding open ended questions Video Lecture | SPSS: For Beginners - Data & Analytics

everyone by now I've made a few videos
which capture pretty much everything you
need to know for entering data in SPSS
but here's a question I get asked quite
often by you guys on YouTube how do you
code data when you've got open response
questions well everything you need to
know are already in my cell videos it's
just knowing where to look
let's look at an example so suppose
we've got this question what is the most
important quality you look for in a
partner and I've left a blank so this is
where the respondent can just write
anything down well why would I want to
have an open response question I'd have
an open response question if I have
pretty much no idea of what people out
there are likely to write or I might
have an idea but I don't know the
breadth of kind of responses they might
have okay so that's why I might then
have an open response question if I knew
the types of responses are be getting
most of the time I could have check
boxes instead because that way is much
easier well they're pretty much two ways
to go about this one since we don't know
kind of the breadth of responses well we
can gauge it by running a pilot study to
help us to construct a list of responses
with a check boxes so say for the
question has given you up I don't really
know what people are due but I've got no
kind of variety of questions answers I'm
going to get so say I kind of run a
small pilot study so I might interview
like 2030 people based on those 20 or 30
responses I get an idea of the kind of
common responses and then I can do check
boxes imagine these are check boxes so
good looks kind has a sense of humor
intelligent richer and then I get a few
crazy ones which are very few
so I just gather everything in other
okay now if you're not sure about in the
real thing whether you've missed
anything in other eye there could be
something missed out by your people in
the pilot study you might write if if
other write it down okay
so if other so what what is it write it
down just in case that there are a lot
of responses that are repeated and then
you want to kind of code that in a
separate category for example supposing
my pilot's that I didn't pick up brave
and brave turned out to be another kind
of thing that people looked for quite a
lot of them then I wouldn't want brave
in other category I'd wanted in its own
category if you see what I mean
okay the other thing I can do is just
run the full survey so interview just
run just run might just run you know
just hand out all my questionnaires and
gather all the data and then I will just
code up all the main ones and then all
the unusual answers I can group them up
into other so that's just another way of
going about just another way about
getting getting this kind of list all
right so that's it really it's not
really an SPSS question it's a any
software you use right but so since I'm
talking to you as an SPSS person this is
kind of what you'd want to do and then
the coding I've shown you already on the
previous videos like what's the first
one I made data entry for questionnaires
and look at that one the other one you
might you want Mike to look at is this
one if I change this question to what's
the most if I change it to you might
want to do this if I change it to
instead of what's the most list the
three most or X amount of most then what
do you do now
well this is an example of multiple
response question and I've made a video
on that so you want to look at that
multiple response question others of you
keep asking me the question what about a
fact you have questions within questions
that is also in my video multiple
response question okay alright so I know
it's a busy time for you it's a Easter
time and a lot of you are doing projects
so well good luck with that