Rule-Based Dictionary for Participant Testimonials

Deliverables

Humanizing data through quotes

I designed a dictionary, rule-based system that allows me to quickly and accurately illustrate themes from our research through illustrative quotes. The system works through clustering quotes with keywords belonging to a selected theme. The user can then browse through the various quotes within that set and extract desired ones to include in reports.

Clusters as Themes

Retrieving quotes builds on the dictionary previously built for research purposes. While the dictionary served an analysis function, the quotes retrieval serves a data presentation purpose.

An Inductive Approach

There were several options when it came to devising this quotes retrieval tool. One would have consisted of creating a list of themes we are interested by, and then classify terms found in the survey responses to match these. This would have been a deductive approach. I chose an inductive approach, however, letting groupings emerge from the data. This bottom-up approach ensures we carry through the view of participants without imposing our own lens on it.

GitHub Project (Public)

Repository (Private)

My Role

• Researcher

• Analyst

• Programmer (R)

• Project Manager