SurveyMonkey

Thematic Analysis

Beta: Thematic Analysis is only available to some customers at this time. This feature is available in English only.

Thematic Analysis, powered by OpenAI, automatically groups text responses by key themes. Thematic Analysis allows you to:

  • Reduce time spent organizing data into meaningful categories
  • Understand the most common themes across your open-ended responses

Choose from a list of suggested themes or create your own. AI identifies keywords related to the theme name and response text so we can apply themes to your responses.

Thematic Analysis is available when your survey has 25 or more responses. It works for Comment Box and Single Textbox question types.

  • Certain survey use cases are not permitted—for details, please see SurveyMonkey's Acceptable Uses Policy, as well as additional third party provider usage policies.
  • Thematic Analysis isn’t available to HIPAA-enabled accounts, or those with an Enhanced Sensitive Data Protection account.
  • Thematic Analysis works for responses collected in English only.

Thematic Analysis uses both our proprietary machine learning models and OpenAI to identify common themes in your text responses. When you turn on Thematic Analysis for a question, our machine learning models identify keywords in your responses. We send these keywords and your encrypted user ID to OpenAI, which suggests relevant themes. Our machine learning algorithm then applies these themes to relevant responses. 

The actual content of your survey responses isn’t shared with OpenAI when using Thematic Analysis.

To turn on Thematic Analysis:

  1. Go to the Analyze Results section of your survey.
  2. Find a question with open text responses.
  3. Select the Thematic Analysis tab. 
  4. Select Generate themes
  5. If this is your first time using Thematic Analysis on the question, you’ll see a confirmation message. Select Enable

We’ll start generating themes based on your open-ended responses. Review the themes we applied to your responses. You can also toggle on Sentiments to better understand your respondents’ feelings while responding to your survey.

Once you enable this feature, it will be enabled for the duration of the Beta program.

When you turn on Thematic Analysis, we automatically create themes. However, you can add more themes later.

To create additional themes:

  1. From the Thematic Analysis tab, select Edit themes
  2. On the new screen, select New theme.
  3. Enter a Theme name, then press Enter. You may also see suggested themes.
  4. When you’re done adding themes, select Add themes.
  5. Select Next: Extract keywords. We’ll start identifying keywords for each of your themes. This may take a few minutes.
  6. Review the suggested keywords for each theme. You can type new keywords and remove suggested ones to make sure they’re relevant to your themes.
  7. When you’re ready to tag responses, select Start auto-tagging. Thematic Analysis tags any responses that match the keywords for your themes. This may take a few minutes.

To add more themes later, select New theme on the Thematic Analysis page. Then, you’ll be prompted to Update auto-tagging.

You can edit theme names, manually apply and remove themes, or delete themes at any time.

To change a theme’s name:

  1. In the Analyze Results section of your survey, find a question with text responses that you applied themes to.
  2. Go to the Thematic Analysis tab. Then select Edit themes.
  3. In the left panel, hover over the theme you want to edit, then select the three dots icon.
  4. Select Edit.
  5. Update your theme’s name, then select Save.

You can manually tag responses with a theme at any time. To manually tag responses:

  1. Go to the Analyze Results section of your survey.
  2. Find a question with text responses that you applied themes to.
  3. Go to the Thematic Analysis tab. Then select Edit themes.
  4. Find the response you want to tag.
  5. Select Add theme.
  6. Check the boxes for the themes you want to add. You can also search for themes.
  7. When you’re done choosing themes, scroll to the bottom of the panel and select Add theme.

Themes that were automatically applied to your responses have a lightning bolt icon. Manually applied themes don’t have a lightning bolt icon.

To remove a theme from a response:

  1. Find the response to remove themes from.
  2. Select the X on the theme name to remove it.

You can manually apply the theme to your response again later.

You can delete any themes you’ve created. When you delete a theme, we remove it from any responses that have been tagged with that theme. 

To delete a theme:

  1. Go to the Analyze Results section of your survey.
  2. Find a question with text responses that you applied themes to.
  3. Go to the Thematic Analysis tab. Then select Edit themes.
  4. Hover over the theme you want to delete, then select the three dots icon next to the theme.
  5. Select Delete. At the confirmation message, select Delete again.

The theme is removed from any responses it was applied to.

If you collect more responses, generate themes again to apply them to your new responses.

When you regenerate themes, any manual changes you’ve made to your themes will be lost. To keep any edits you’ve made, manually apply themes instead.

To regenerate themes, select Regenerate themes in the Thematic Analysis tab. You’ll see this option after collecting new open-ended responses.

You can view your open-ended responses with their themes. To view the responses, go to the Thematic Analysis tab in your open-ended question, then select Edit themes. This opens the Thematic Analysis page. 

Use the dropdowns at the top of the Thematic Analysis page to filter and sort your responses. There are a few options:

  • Show all responses, tagged responses only, or untagged responses only
  • Sort from A to Z or by most recent responses
  • Search for a specific keyword

After we tag your responses, you can filter them by theme in the Thematic Analysis page. To filter by theme within a question:

  1. In the Analyze Results section of your survey, find a question with text responses that you applied themes to.
  2. Go to the Thematic Analysis tab, then select Edit themes.
  3. Check the boxes for the themes you want to display.

To export responses for your question:

  1. In the Analyze Results section of your survey, find a question with text responses that you applied themes to.
  2. Go to the Thematic Analysis tab, then select Edit themes
  3. Select Export. We’ll save the export to your device as a .zip file.  

The export includes the following data:

  • Response sentiment (if you’ve enabled Sentiment Analysis)
  • Respondent ID
  • Response date
  • Response text
  • Tags applied
  • Themes applied