Identifying Student and Faculty Needs through LibQUAL+™: An Analysis of Qualitative Survey Comments

The LibQUAL+™ survey allows libraries to collect quantitative as well as qualitative data concerning their users. Comments that survey-takers provide contain a wealth of information that shed light on the quantitative responses they give to questions. This article reports on a study conducted by the authors to analyze the written comments provided by faculty and students participating in the 2006 LibQUAL+™ survey at the University of Notre Dame to determine, in a systematic way, what issues are most important to users and to see if there are differences among the three primary user groups. The authors were interested in whether the analysis of the comments would reveal the same issues that the quantitative data had.