# Survey Responses ### Overview — Coding the Comments **Survey Responses** is where you work through what respondents wrote and turn it into something analysable. Ratings from the survey are already counted for you; comments are not. Open it from **Survey → Responses**. It needs survey read access to view and write access to change anything.

**HEADS UP **This step is what makes the Themes Report work. Comments that are never rated and themed contribute nothing to theme analysis. Coding them is not optional housekeeping; it is the analysis.

**HEADS UP **This page does **not** autosave. It is the longest sustained task in NSCAT and the one where an expired session costs the most. Save per page.

[![image.png](http://knowledge.services.conexusnuclear.org/uploads/images/gallery/2026-08/scaled-1680-/6uPeuwyO3aNwsi5R-WrVimage.png)](http://knowledge.services.conexusnuclear.org/uploads/images/gallery/2026-08/6uPeuwyO3aNwsi5R-WrVimage.png) ### The Two Kinds of Comment

Section	Contains
Question comments	Comments a respondent left against a specific question, shown with its question text above.
Survey Comments	General remarks about the survey as a whole.

**GOOD TO KNOW **Question comments carry more weight in analysis because they arrive with context.

### Rating a Comment

Rating	Use it when the comment…
Positive	Describes something working well, or praises a practice.
Neutral	Is factual or descriptive without a clear direction.
Negative	Describes a problem, a concern, or something falling short.

**GOOD TO KNOW **These three are always the options here, regardless of whether the activity uses a 3-point or 7-point rating scale. The activity's scale applies to respondents' own answers and to interview, focus group, and observation ratings; this rating is *your* judgement of a written comment.

**HEADS UP **Rate what the comment says, not the question it sits under. Reading the rating off the question rather than the text is the commonest coding error and it quietly inverts your findings.

**PRO TIP **Use Neutral sparingly and deliberately. A data set that is mostly Neutral tells you nothing.

### Adding Themes **Add themes related to this comment** lets you tag each comment with one or more themes, chosen from the utility's theme list.

**GOOD TO KNOW **Themes come from the shared list an administrator maintains. If the theme you need does not exist, ask an administrator to add it rather than forcing the comment under something that nearly fits.

**PRO TIP **Tag a comment with every theme it genuinely touches, not just the closest one. Multi-tagging is what lets the same evidence support findings in more than one part of the report — and what makes it findable later when you search for evidence to attach to a recommendation.

**HEADS UP **Resist tagging everything with a broad catch-all theme.

### Working Through the Comments Comments are paged rather than shown all at once. **Save** commits your coding.

**HEADS UP **Save as you finish each page. There is no autosave and no draft recovery here — a session that expires mid-page takes that page's judgement calls with it.

**GOOD TO KNOW **Without write access the ratings and theme pickers are visible but read-only, and there is no Save button.

### A Practical Approach · **Read a batch before coding any of it.** A first pass tells you what themes are actually present. · **Code question comments first.** They have context, so they are quicker and they calibrate your judgement. · **Do it in sittings, not one marathon.** Consistency drops sharply when you are tired. · **Agree the approach if more than one person is coding.**

**PRO TIP **Keep a note of borderline decisions as you go. When someone challenges a finding later, that note is what lets you explain the call instead of re-reading two hundred comments.

**HEADS UP **Finish coding before the activity is locked. An assessment locked with half its comments uncoded has permanently lost that analysis.

### Hard Copy Responses Uploaded paper responses appear here alongside online ones, and are coded identically.

**PRO TIP **Check your first few uploaded responses on this page. If handwriting was misread during scanning, this is where you will spot it.

### Common Problems

What you see	What it means
No Save button	You have survey read access without write.
Ratings and themes visible but locked	Same cause — or the activity is locked.
The theme you need is not in the list	It does not exist yet. Ask an administrator.
Themes Report looks empty or thin	Comments have not been themed. Code them here first.
A response is missing	For paper, confirm the master copy was uploaded before the response.
Comment text looks garbled	A scanning problem on a hard copy. Correct it here.
Coding lost after a while away	The session expired and this page does not autosave. Save per page.
No autosave chip on this page	Correct — this page does not autosave.
Everything read-only including navigation	The activity is locked.