Open-ended questions help you understand why consumers respond the way they do, in their own words. Ideally captures and organises these responses so you can quickly see what’s resonating, what’s confusing, and what needs work.
Responses to open-ended questions
Open-ended questions are included as standard in Ideally’s Innovation and Communication tests.
Respondents are asked questions such as:
“What do you like most about this idea?”
“What is the main message you took from this idea?”
These questions are asked for each idea or message included in your test, allowing consumers to explain their thinking in their own words.
Theming
All open-ended responses are automatically analysed using Ideally’s theming functionality.
You can access this analysis in the Themes tab on the reporting pages.
Theming:
Identifies common topics and patterns across responses
Groups similar comments into clear, meaningful themes
Assigns a positive, negative, or neutral sentiment to each theme
A single response can contribute to multiple themes, reflecting the full range of feedback provided.
Verbatim table
You can view individual responses in full via the Verbatims table. From here, you can:
Read each open-ended response
See which themes have been assigned to that response
This allows you to explore both the high-level patterns and the raw consumer language behind them.
Head to head
When comparing Audiences or Stimuli using our Head to head charts, themed open-ended responses are displayed alongside each option.
Themes are colour-coded to show sentiment at a glance:
Positive
Neutral
Negative
This makes it easy to quickly compare how different audiences or ideas are being talked about, not just how they score.
FAQs
Why can’t I see sentiment on my older tests?
Theming with sentiment is only available for tests run from this point forward and isn’t applied retroactively to historic tests.
If you’d like sentiment added to an older test, reach out to your Customer Success Manager to request this.
Can I apply theming with sentiment to any open-ended question?
Not at this time. Sentiment analysis is currently available only for the open-ended questions included in our standard frameworks eg. Concept Test, Territory Test, Creative Comms Test.