A Comment on Employee Surveys Negativity Bias in Open-Ended Responses

• Published in: Organizational research methods Vol. 11; no. 3; pp. 614 - 630
• Main Authors: Poncheri, Reanna M., Lindberg, Jennifer T., Thompson, Lori Foster, Surface, Eric A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.07.2008; SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
• Subjects: Barriers; Bias; Climate; Coding; Demographics; Empirical analysis; Employees; Job satisfaction; Personnel; Polls & surveys; Qualitative analysis; Ratings; Responses; Studies; Surveys; comments; online personnel surveys; open-ended survey responses; organizational surveys; negativity bias
• ISSN: 1094-4281; 1552-7425
• DOI: 10.1177/1094428106295504

Recent technologies have reduced some of the major barriers to capturing, coding, and analyzing qualitative data from survey respondents. This has prompted a renewed interest in including open-ended questions on employee surveys and a corresponding need to better understand the potential biases of personnel who choose to provide comments. The present study used data from a climate survey (N = 661) to empirically examine qualitative comments and their relationship with quantitative survey ratings. Results revealed that relatively dissatisfied employees were more likely to provide comments than their more satisfied counterparts. Moreover, open-ended responses were disproportionately negative in tone and tended to echo commenters' closed-ended satisfaction ratings. For most survey dimensions studied, the length of comments increased as they became more negative in tone. Finally, the data revealed very few demographic differences between respondents who provided comments and those who did not.