How to use Analyse Responses

In Citizen Space it is possible to review full responses, 'clean-up' qualitative data and to code (or tag) responses for easier analysis and querying.

These processes can be done via the 'Analyse Responses' link on the dashboard.

Analyse and Tag Responses on dashboard

Once selected, you'll be taken to the first response to be analysed:

Analyse responses screen with first submitted response shown. Includes the question with each answer component (respondent's answers in grey), as well as analyst fields for notes and adding tags.

This page allows you to read the response in full, but also to copy relevant sections and to tag responses to allow you to draw out themes from the information.

This article will cover:

Copying relevant sections of answers

Answers may have some sections that are particularly important for your overall analysis that you wish to draw out separately. You may also wish to add a comment yourself as part of your analysis. Citizen Space allows you to do both of these using the text box provided on each question in this Analyse Responses section.

You can copy entire sections of a qualitative answer and can make your own notes in these text boxes. These are then exported to a separate column on the 'Download all responses including analyst fields' .xlsx export. This article on exports from Citizen Space explains how to access this .xlsx file.

Responses can also be filtered using a keyword search in your Analyst Notes, in the 'Responses by Question' section of the dashboard.

Analysing first question on Police Priorities consultation - analyst notes question highlighted.

Tagging answers

Tagging answers allows you to draw out themes from responses; to highlight overall sentiment in a response; and to capture other information to aid your analysis. For other examples of how some organisations choose to use tags, you might wish to set up tags to capture who analysed the response, or whether the respondent is part of your citizen's panel. This article on tagging responses explains how to manage, add and remove tags

Analysing first question on Police Priorities consultation - tags question highlighted.

Analyst-only questions

These are questions which are set up when the online survey is built, to be answered by analysts when looking at responses. The Analyse Responses section is where any analyst-only questions will appear so that you can answer them while you are completing your analysis. They will appear with a light blue background, whereas public questions have a grey background. You can learn more about analyst-only questions in this article

Analyst-only radio button question on Analyse Response page.

Publishable replies

If response publishing is enabled, an additional analyst-only answer component can be added for publishable replies. Publishable Replies allow analysts to add comments to individual responses within Published Responses. These function similarly to the other analyst-only components with the crucial difference that, while analyst-only components enable analysts to annotate responses and communicate with each other without ever being visible to respondents, 'Publishable Replies' allow analysts to publicly comment on responses when they appear as published responses.

These are distinguished from the other analyst-only fields by a dark blue border around the pale blue panel in which they appear. The Publishable Reply components are also labelled ‘Publishable Reply: This part of the question may be published’. Learn more about response publishing and publishable replies. 

A Publishable Reply on a published response. The survey question: What features would you like to have at the park?. The respondent's answer: I'd love to see a playground at the park that works for all children. Have you thought about making the surface of the playground suitable for wheelchairs? Or adding sensory activities? Or creating quieter, calmer spaces? This is an opportunity to make the playground a place that every child can enjoy. The published reply by Arlen Hill Council: We absolutely agree! We want to make the park a great place for all of our community, and inclusivity and accessibility will be important factors in the design of the new playground.

The big, yellow workflow bar

Citizen Space also has functions included to allow you to manage the analysis workflow. These all appear on the big, yellow bar at the top of the page.

Yellow analysis bar on Analyse Response page.

The bar allows you to:

  • Skip to the next or previous response to be analysed
  • Jump to a specific response by using the "Jump to response" button and entering a response ID
  • Save the analysis work you've done on the response
  • Use the "Is analysis of this response complete?" checkbox to mark that you've completed the analysis for that response
  • If you have been marking your analysis as complete, you can also skip to the next or previous unanalysed response, meaning work isn't duplicated
  • Jump to a specific question page within a response
  • See how many responses there are left to analyse

Simultaneous response analysis

Sometimes when you have several analysts working on the same dataset at the same time, it can occasionally result in two or more people trying to analyse the same response simultaneously. To minimise the risk of overlap, we recommend dividing up the responses and assigning analysts to specific Response IDs.

Citizen Space also has a warning system designed to minimise the risk of analysts overwriting one another's work. If you're analysing a response and another user saves analysis information for that same response in the meantime, when you select 'Save response' you'll receive a warning message. Citizen Space will show you the analysis information already provided by your colleague and will ask you to confirm if you want to proceed with overwriting the other analyst's information.

The red error message to prevent overwriting between analysts.