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. 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.