Working With Survey Data
What Is a Survey Document?
A survey document in ATLAS.ti is a spreadsheet-like grid that displays all survey responses in one place—just as you’d organize it in Excel. Each row represents a respondent, and each column represents a question.
Instead of having separate documents for each survey response (the old way), you now get a single, unified view of all your data. This makes it much easier to:
- See patterns across respondents at a glance
- Find and code related responses across questions
- Compare how different respondents answered the same question
What You’ll See
When you open a survey document, you’ll see:
- Rows = respondents (participants in your survey)
- Columns = questions
- White cells = open-ended answers (text you can select and code)
- Grey cells = respondent identifiers and closed-choice answers (checkmarks, yes/no, multiple selections)—these are for reference only and cannot be coded
Respondent names appear in the row header on the left (e.g., “1 : Alice”).
Example (Windows):
| Name | How satisfied are you? | What could be improved? |
|---|---|---|
| Alice | Very satisfied | Better documentation |
| Bob | Somewhat | More features |
Creating a Survey Document
Import from Excel: Most surveys are conducted online (SurveyMonkey, Qualtrics, etc.) and exported as Excel files. You’ll use ATLAS.ti’s Survey Import feature to bring that data in. The import wizard will ask you:
- Which column is the respondent’s name or ID?
- Which columns contain closed answers (like yes/no or dropdown selections)?
- Which columns contain open-ended responses?
The result is one survey document containing all responses, ready for coding and analysis.
Working with Your Data
Once imported, you can:
- Code open-ended responses right in the cells (click and code, just like other ATLAS.ti documents)
- Transpose the view (rotate the grid so questions become rows and respondents become columns)
- Filter to focus on specific respondents or questions
- Create quotations in the margin for important passages
- Reuse codes across multiple cells
See Importing Survey Data and Analyzing Survey Data for step-by-step guidance.
Click here to learn how to Import Survey Data.