Tonight I watched a session on mixed methods for survey data analysis from the MAXDAYS 2025 recordings. Amelie Damarcher was the presenter. They discussed how surveys can have open ended and closed questions. Closed questions have limited options. Open ended questions are those that don’t have simple yes/no responses. The combination of both types of questions provides rich opportunities for analysis. MAXQDA allows analysis of both open and closed ended questions. Closed questions provide variable data in MAXQDA. Open-ended questions can be analyzed by coding. Damarcher shared a table with survey data to learn about the structure. Cases are in rows and questions are in columns. MAXQDA does need a document group and document name to create one per participant. When importing, MAXQDA does provide a preview and asks you to confirm the document group and names. You can then verify what should be considered a variable. MAXQDA creates a document for every participant. The questions appear as codes and the answers are separated in the document as excerpts. There is a tool for survey analysis in MAXQDA called Categorize Survey Data that facilitates the coding of one question at a time with codes appearing on the bottom left of the screen for easy reference. Once you code and use variables, the Mixed Methods and Variables tabs have useful tools, noted Damarcher. You can select variables and obtain tables and charts. Charts and data can be easily exported. The documents can be activated based on specific variables, if wanted. A Segment Matrix allows you to compare responses from different groups. Crosstabs provide a comparison of frequencies of codes. From the table, you can click to view the coded segments and go back to the Segment Matrix, if wanted. Damarcher shared that there are webinars that are more in-depth and a course they offer. I have seen their course mentioned and will look into the resources for survey analysis mentioned.
