Introduction

In years gone by it was not uncommon to see on survey forms a dedicated column on each page for coding the responses. As noted elsewhere in this book, this should never be present on a self-administered survey, and it should often be avoided, if possible, on interviewer-administered surveys. In computer-assisted surveys of any type, whether by telephone, self-administered, or internet, it is completely unnecessary, because these surveys will record the computer-coded responses directly to an appropriate computer storage medium.

Coding is a step in which responses provided by the survey sample are converted into codes that permit computer-based analysis to be undertaken. Data entry is then the process of transferring these computer codes from the survey form or other intermediate medium to the computer. Coding is necessary for any responses on the survey form that are provided in a form that is not amenable to analysis. This will include questions that require the respondent to write in a response in words to a particular question, or to a question that offers multiple choices of response, with the possible responses being descriptors of some sort. For example, the set of unordered responses shown in Figure 18.1 (which is the same as Figure 9.10) requires some type of numeric coding to be useful for the analyst.