Automatic Coding of Text Answers to Open-Ended Questions: Should You Double Code the Training Data?

Abstract

Open-ended questions in surveys are often manually coded into one of several classes (or categories). When the data are too large to manually code all texts, a statistical (or machine) learning model must be trained on a manually coded subset of texts. Uncoded texts are then coded automatically using the trained model. The quality of automatic coding depends on the trained statistical model, and the model relies on manually coded data on which it is trained. While survey scientists are acutely aware that the manual coding is not always accurate, it is not clear how double coding affects the classification errors of the statistical learning model. We investigate several budget allocation strategies when there is a limited budget for manual classification: single coding versus various options for double coding where the number of training texts is reduced to maintain the fixed budget. Under fixed budget, double coding improved prediction of the learning algorithm when the coding error is greater than about 20–35%, depending on the data. Among double-coding strategies, paying for an expert to resolve differences performed best. When no expert is available, removing differences from the training data outperformed other double-coding strategies. When there is no budget constraint and the texts have already been double coded, all double-coding strategies generally outperformed single coding. As under fixed budget, having an expert to solve disagreement in training texts improves accuracy most, followed by removing differences.