SPSS Text Analysis for Surveys | Categorization Techniques

Choose the Technique that Suits Your Survey

SPSS Text Analysis for Surveys is an ideal tool for categorizing text responses so that the information obtained from them can be integrated with the rest of your quantitative survey data.

SPSS Text Analysis for Surveys extracts key concepts from text, using powerful natural language processing (NLP) text analysis technologies. These technologies analyze text not as a “bag of words” but as phrases and sentences whose grammatical structure provides a context for the meaning of the responses. SPSS Text Analysis for Surveys is particularly good at helping you differentiate positive from negative concepts in text responses.

With SPSS Text Analysis for Surveys, you get the benefits of automated processes and the ability to fine-tune results manually. The product efficiently extracts concepts from text, while enabling you to customize its linguistic resources to suit your data and improve results.

Extracted concepts form the foundation of categories. When creating and populating categories in SPSS Text Analysis for Surveys, you can use a statistics-based method or linguistics-based methods or a combination of both. The solution’s statistics-based technique focuses on how frequently terms occur in text. But the real strength of SPSS Text Analysis for Surveys is in the linguistics-based methods it offers. These include:

Term derivation, which creates categories by grouping multiple-word terms whose components have related word endings and synonymous meanings
Lexical series, a technique based on term inclusion, which creates categories by taking terms and finding other terms that include them
A semantic network based on WordNet®, which creates categories based on an extensive index of word relationships

You can use these linguistics-based methods separately or in combination. The nature of your survey responses may suggest which approach is most appropriate. Whatever method you choose, you’ll find that SPSS Text Analysis for Surveys can create categories faster and categorize responses more reliably than manual methods.

You can also create and combine categories and categorize responses by using drag-and-drop and context menus. It’s simple to refine and override automated results.

SPSS Text Analysis for Surveys’ ability to distinguish between positive and negative open-end responses is the ‘Holy Grail’ of survey text analysis. Its linguistic capabilities are unbelievable. I have used four other products that attempted to automate text categorization, and none came close to SPSS Text Analysis for Surveys with regard to differentiating people who expressed appreciation for the topic from those who expressed disdain.
— Bob Muenchen
Manager
Statistical Consulting Center
The University of Tennessee Office of Information Technology

Different native language versions of SPSS Text Analysis for Surveys are available for analyzing English, Dutch, French, German, and Spanish survey text. Contact your local office to find out more about this product.

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SPSS Text Analysis for Surveys™

Choose the Technique that Suits Your Survey