Survey Coder Pro codes verbatims with AI and hands back a tab-ready file: your own codeframe or one built from the data, multi-mention handling, nets by category, and the same frame wave on wave. Delivered as .sav with value labels.
A typical study leaves 3,000 to 20,000 verbatims per wave. Coding them by hand needs a team of coders, a lead adjudicating disagreements, and days of calendar time after fieldwork closes — and the codeframe still drifts between coders and between waves, while multi-mention counting varies with whoever handled the batch.
Days of coding per wave, all of it after fieldwork closes
Codeframe drift between coders and between waves
Multi-mention counts and category nets nobody can audit
Survey Coder Pro is verbatim coding software built for market research teams: it applies your codeframe to every verbatim, flags what it can't call with confidence for an analyst, and returns a file your DP team can tab.
Thousands of verbatims coded in minutes, not calendar days
Bring your codeframe (Excel/SPSS) or build one from the data — either way it's versioned
Multi-mention and category nets handled by an explicit, auditable rule
The same codeframe carries into the next wave, so tracking stays comparable
From raw verbatim to tab-ready file, with an audit trail at every step
Pulls verbatims from .sav, Excel or CSV, detects the text columns, and drops what isn't codeable (don't know, n/a, blanks) before a single credit is spent.
Import your codeframe with categories, subcategories, definitions and examples, or generate one from the data. Every code keeps its definition — that's what makes the coding reproducible.
The codeframe is versioned and inherited by the next wave. New codes are proposed separately, so your tracking series stays comparable.
Codes Spanish, English, Portuguese, German and French without pre-translation. A multi-country study runs on a single codeframe.
Export to SPSS with value labels, multi-mention variables and category nets, or to Excel. The file drops straight into the tab run.
The AI flags what it can't resolve confidently — typically 5-10% — and the analyst only rules on those. Everything else arrives coded, with its confidence level on show.
A verbatim is a respondent's answer exactly as it was captured — in the field, on CATI, or in an online panel. Verbatim coding is assigning each one a code, or several, from a controlled list, so the text enters the tab run as a variable and can be banner-crossed against age, region, brand, or segment.
It's a craft with its own rules, and that's what separates it from "summarise the responses with an LLM": a coder doesn't interpret, a coder applies a frame. Fixing that frame is the work that has to happen before the first verbatim is touched.
The structure: which categories exist, which codes sit under each one, what number each code carries, and which codes are residual ("Other", "Don't know / refused" — conventionally 97/98/99). It's what gets signed off with the client and what drives the layout of the deliverable.
The codeframe plus the rules for applying it: each code's definition, examples of verbatims that fall inside and outside it, and the edge cases already adjudicated. A codeframe without definitions gets applied differently by each coder; a codebook with definitions and examples is reproducible — and it's what Survey Coder Pro keeps versioned.
One sentence usually touches two or three themes: "price is fine but the app keeps crashing and the branch staff were rude" is three mentions, not one. Coding multi-mention means assigning all three codes and keeping mention order, so the tables can later be read on a mentions base or a respondent base. The rule has to be explicit, because the two bases don't add up to the same percentages and the client will ask which one they're looking at.
A net is the category column: the share of respondents who mentioned at least one of the codes under it. It is not the sum of those codes — a respondent who mentioned two codes in the same category counts once in the net. Survey Coder Pro computes nets on unique respondents per category subtree, supports a three-level hierarchy (Category › Subcategory › Code), and lets you switch the net column off per question when the client's layout doesn't carry it.
In a tracker, wave 4's coding isn't worth anything on its own — it's worth something if it's comparable to waves 1 through 3. The real risk isn't coding badly, it's coding differently: a code whose definition quietly shifts mid-year manufactures a trend that isn't there. So the codebook is inherited across waves with its code numbers intact, and emergent themes the new wave brings in are surfaced separately for an analyst to rule on — open a new code, or send it to a residual. That loop is what holds the time series together.
A research supplier doesn't hand over a spreadsheet of text labels — it hands over a .sav with value labels, where every mention variable carries its numeric codes and its label, ready for the tab run. Survey Coder Pro appends the coded variables to the original file, honours the residual-code convention, writes multi-mention columns in whichever layout the study uses (dichotomous or categorical), and validates the file before releasing it: if anything in the contract fails, the export is blocked with the failing checks listed rather than shipping a silently corrupt .sav. Excel output is there when the client asks for it instead.
Start coding open-ended responses with AI today. Free trial with 250 responses.