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Simple open-end recoding

The "Recode..." dialog

Updated at 2019-10-18 17:42:01 UTC
Screenshot showing a Protobi interface for recoding open-ended text responses into categories, with a list of responses on the right and category codes on the left.

Open-end responses in surveys are great as respondents can answer in their own words.  But many ideas may represent the same basic concept.  For analysis it can be useful to group them into broader countable categories.  

Protobi has a few features to simplify the process of coding text verbatims:

Simple recode dialog

Consider a question below with text responses:

Bar chart showing uncoded text responses in a Protobi data table, with multiple individual text responses listed as separate bars with low frequency counts.

From the element context menu select "Recode..." to bring up the recoding dialog:

Context menu showing the 'Recode...' option along with other element operations like Properties, Add child, Clone, Copy, and Delete.

From here you can filter, select and drag responses to existing or new categories. 

Recoding dialog with two panels: left panel shows category codes, right panel shows individual responses with checkboxes, filter bar at top, and 'New code' and 'Apply' buttons at bottom.

Filter responses

Enter a text fragment to filter responses, e.g. containing the word "reusable" and press to select one or more values:

Recoding dialog showing filtered results for 'reusable' with 5 matching responses selected and highlighted, including 'Reusable bags', 'Reusable water bottles', etc.

Create a new code

Press the "New code" button to name a new code. You can also drag the selected responses onto the button and enter a name.  The new code appears on the left:

Recoding dialog showing a newly created code 'Reusable items' on the left panel containing 3 grouped responses, with the filtered list still visible on the right.

Note: In the "Recode..." dialog the count next to a code (e.g. 3) is the count of unique responses that comprise the code, not the count of respondents.

Put one response into multiple codes

To put one response in more than one code, hold the shift key when dropping. This will copy rather than move the value into the code. See the how to GIF. 

Recoding dialog showing multiple codes on the left (Reusable items, Reduce plastic, Recycle more) with responses assigned, and remaining uncategorized responses on the right.

Dragging a response to another code without pressing shift will move that into the new category and remove it from its prior location.

Apply and save

Continue until the results are categorized as you wish.  Press "Apply" to accept the changes (and press the Save button  in the project to make them permanent).

Completed recoding dialog showing all responses organized into category codes on the left, with an empty responses list on the right and the 'Apply' button ready to be pressed.

The updated distribution will be shown:

Bar chart showing the recoded distribution with consolidated categories like 'Reusable items', 'Reduce plastic use', and 'Recycle more', each with higher frequency counts than the original uncoded responses.

Tips

  • Clone an element before coding so you have both the original and raw values.
  • To apply one code frame to multiple elements, put the elements into a group and do recoding on the parent group.  
    • First for the group, set Transform to "Condense (squish)" so the values from child elements will bubble up to the parent.

Video tutorial

Watch this video to learn how to group text verbatims into categories.

Recode text for analysis