Open End Coding Services

Open end coding or Verbatim Coding is a planned and systematic process of transferring raw data to intelligent data. Data collected may be available and stored in Excel format. Information/data stored in its raw form is meaningless unless it facilitates retrieval and provides insights. To be able to do so, the data needs to be coded, abiding by some specific conventions or codes to derive meaningful interpretations. 

Why Open-End Coding?

Open-ended survey questions are often used during surveys to provide respondents with an opportunity to freely express their opinion about the subject matter. Open-ended questions can sometimes provide a greater depth of insight that a closed-ended question may not have. But open-ended questions have some drawbacks:

• Respondents don't always prefer answering them much (it takes work on their part), often resulting in brief, unsatisfactory answers.
• They lengthen the time to complete a survey which may result in lowering the response rate, and
• If there are many open-ended answers, it becomes a tedious task to read through all of the verbatim comments to identify any insights.

Problems One and Two can be overcome by putting up in good interesting questions and survey formatting. One solution to problem Three is to code the responses into categories to aid in the analysis. However, coding those responses is one of the most tedious and monotonous tasks marketing researchers face.

While there is software that can be used to help you code open-ended responses, there is no substitute for human intelligence and judgment to make sure the codes are appropriate. At LC, we have an experienced team of coders who process verbatim response translations across 100 languages each year. We have an efficient team of trained linguists and coders who have experience in sectors such as healthcare, sociology, financial services, consumer marketing etc. In doing so, our motive is not just to deliver on time, but also maintain the highest level of quality possible.

Our Process:

» We build the code frame and send it back to the client for review/approval (confirm the nets/buckets etc.)
» Once we have client's confirmation on the code frames, we start coding all the open-ended responses manually in MS Excel Sheet.
» All answers (responses) are carefully coded by a person trained in coding (no automated or computer coding). The results are nearly error-free codes that fully reflect the true meaning of the open-end verbatim.
» Quality checks are run on all files by our Quality Team internally and post that the data gets delivered in the requested format.
» Rolling back of incomplete surveys.

We can do the open-ended coding in multiple languages in–house to increase the effectiveness of the project.