Splitting text responses

Updated at December 18th, 2020

Survey data sometimes has multiple answers combined into single strings with a delimiter. For instance, the Data Visualization Survey by Elijah Meeks asks respondents who they consider to be a thought leader.

Example

This was elicited as a multiple response section. But, the data shows the multiple responses catenated with a semicolon:


We might wish to see how often each person is mentioned overall, regardless of who else they might be mentioned with.

Split at delimiter

Press the blue edit icon for the element and select "More properties...". Then add a comma next to the "split" field.


The data is now separated by the delimiter and becomes a multiple-response element. Now we can see how often each person is mentioned individually:


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