Listening Deeply in Uncertain Times: 5 Practices for Meaningful Insight from Open-Ended Feedback
Discover five research practices for listening deeply in uncertain times. Learn how to analyze open-ended survey responses and use text analytics to uncover lived experiences, emotional drivers, and evolving narratives — turning uncertainty into meaningful customer insight.
Uncertainty Is Everywhere.
Listening Deeply Matters More Than Ever for Market Research, Consumer Insight and Public Opinion.
From rising costs and political tension to AI breakthroughs and shifting social values — it’s a lot.
And in times like these, it’s easy to rely on quick polls or dashboards that skim the surface. But surface-level metrics alone won’t tell you what’s really going on.
To uncover the why behind shifting beliefs and behaviors, we need to listen deeper — to what people are living, feeling, and trying to make sense of.
Here are five practices that help you move beyond top-line trends and listen for meaning, informed by both research best practices and real-world insights.
1. Start by asking respondents about lived experience in market research
People speak clearest from what they know, namely their daily lives. Begin there to ground your understanding in real experience. Starting with the most open ended open-ends also reduces the risk of unintentionally anchoring the respondent on your own hypothesis from previous rounds of research.
Key principles to apply:
Surface the unexpected early in design. This helps reveal assumptions you might not even know you have.
Test previously held beliefs only after exploring real experiences.
Ask openly about experiences to map the why, avoiding questions that bias responses.
Example questions:
“In what specific ways does [issue] affect your day-to-day life?”
“Does [issue] impact your life positively or negatively?”
Follow-up: “What are the specific positive or negative impacts?”
These types of open-ended questions bring texture to your data when you analyze using text analytics to identify themes across thousands of stories.
2. Lean into emotional drivers to understand belief and behaviours
Opinions tend to shift slowly, and then all at once. But emotions are the undercurrent and can give early insight into those subtle shifts that are taking place, but not yet showing up in quantitative metrics. Exploring the emotional core of feedback helps you understand why people act, not just what they think.
Best practices:
Emotions move people — logic often follows. Understanding emotional drivers helps account for confirmation bias and motivated reasoning.
Map values and feelings issue by issue; emotions differ depending on context, so specificity matters.
Ask directly what emotion people feel in relate to an issue, product or concept. We’re always trying to be so fancy, and most respondents will tell us with a really high degree of accuracy.
Example questions:
“What emotion best describes how you feel about [issue]?”
“Which part of [issue] makes you feel afraid?”
“What gives you hope when it comes to [issue]?”
Analyzed with thematic coding, emotional data exposes patterns that traditional survey metrics often miss.
3. Map the narrative in open ended questions
Stories are how people make sense of the world. Understanding the narratives they tell themselves — who they trust, blame, or look to for action — is key to interpreting complex sentiment.
How to approach it:
Recognize archetypal story components: all stories share common elements that reveal motivation and perception.
Map the narrative to see which pathways resonate most and identify emerging themes.
Understanding these stories as they take shape helps predict future behaviors and responses in relation to your product, policy or issue.
Example questions:
“What do you see as the greatest challenges your family faces?”
“Who do you blame most for [issue]?”
“Who do you trust most to solve [issue]?”
“If you could wave a magic wand, what would you have [actor] do about [issue]?”
Tracking these narratives over time provides a strong foundation for driver analysis, segmentation, and insight into evolving sentiment.
4. Track insights from open ended questions over time
People’s beliefs aren’t static. They shift with headlines, policies, products, cultural moments and personal experiences. Regularly tracking open-ended survey responses alongside quantitative metrics gives you a longitudinal view of change.
Considerations for effective tracking:
Spot shifts in known themes and catch emerging signals early.
Ask both what and why to map drivers over time.
Remember: narratives often evolve slowly, then suddenly. Tracking consistently helps you detect these tipping points.
This approach lets researchers stay attuned to evolving attitudes and detect emerging issues before they surface in topline scores.
5. Blend Tracking and Iteration
Start broad to explore the landscape of experience, then iterate based on what your analysis reveals.
Best practices:
Keep 30–60% of questions stable across waves to track change reliably.
Use the remaining questions to test hypotheses, explore unexpected findings, and dig into emerging themes.
Iteration transforms open-ended research into a living feedback loop — one that continuously reflects reality.
Example questions:
“What are the greatest challenges your family faces daily?”
“What are the greatest economic challenges?”
“What are the greatest caretaking challenges?
Turning Open-Ended Feedback into Action: Why Thematic Coding Matters
Listening deeply is only half the equation. To make sense of thousands of open-ended responses, you need powerful thematic coding. That’s where Fathom comes in.
Fathom combines AI with human oversight to deliver the highest-quality text analytics in the industry. Our platform helps researchers and insight teams:
Uncover nuanced themes and sentiment across thousands of responses in any language
Detect emerging signals before they appear in topline metrics
Map emotional drivers and evolving narratives with precision based on open ended responses
Analyze open ended data with statistical significance within personas, across attributes, or longituinally across waves
Report on insight from open ended data as quickly as the world is changing.
When uncertainty is high, Fathom helps you see clearly: revealing what people truly think, feel, and value so you can act with confidence.