7 Guidelines for Handling Open-Ended Comments
- Maintain respondent confidentiality. Survey results, especially comments, are confidential for a reason.
- Focus more on the numeric results from the engagement survey. Comments help add context to those results.
- Interpret them as generalities, rather than only their specifics.
- Look for groups of related themes.
- Avoid assigning too much weight to a few extreme responses.
- Respond to their ideas. Don’t spend energy on “who said what”.
- Don’t allow comments to replace conversations.Continue to have post-survey conversations with your team. Discuss the results and where to focus on improving with your team.