How to use a word cloud to find patterns in open-ended comments from surveys

We’ve added lots of new features to Word Cloud Plus recently, including selecting multiple phrases at the same time. This makes Word Cloud Plus even more effective for kick-stating your analysis of text.

In our latest video, I show how these new features can be used to find patterns in the open-ended comments we collected as part of a study into what makes a good presentation and presenter.

The key steps in processing open-ended comments are:

1. Clean your data, for example by using a spell-checker. Ensure all the text is in one language, fix common spelling mistakes, ensure there are not strange characters that have been added by the data collection platform.
2. Make an initial word cloud.
3. Decide if you want to add specific stop words. For example, if you ask a question about holidays in Spain, you might want to exclude the word ‘holidays’ and ‘Spain’ from the cloud.
4. Group (for example put into the same colour or move to adjacent positions) words that are similar.
5. Read the underlying text, using the groups (codes) you have constructed as your entry point.

To watch the video, click here, or click the image below.

Why not try it yourself?
The standard version of Word Cloud Plus is free. Simply go to Word Cloud Plus, set up a free account and build your first word cloud.