What to Do With All Those Open-Ended Responses? Data Visualization Techniques for Survey Researchers

Open-ended survey responses, where respondents provide responses in an unstructured, open-text format instead of defined response categories, are often a successful way to solicit authentic and unexpected feedback, highlight the diversity of responses or nuances in opinions, and capture the “why” that complements quantitative survey data. However, there are many challenges to analyzing and reporting open-ended data. This article draws on visual design best practices, such as Gestalt principles and the authors’ combined experience to demonstrate several visualization strategies that are relatively simple to implement with open-ended data. The application of visualization best practices to open-ended data can increase recall and effective decision-making and can transform findings into a dynamic data story.