FreeTxt: supporting bilingual free-text survey and questionnaire data analysis

在消费者主导的现代文化中，获取和回应定性反馈（即通常是自由文本评论/书面反馈）已成为各行各业的专业做法，例如，在工作人员发展、专业培训、产品设计和测试以及公共和私营部门提供各种形式的服务时都使用调查。调查和问卷往往产生定量和定性形式的数据。定量形式，如评级量表（如李克特量表的反应），多项选择题和排名顺序问题可以很容易地计算（即量化），其分析可以以系统和自动化的方式进行。相比之下，更多的定性问题，提示开放式，自由文本评论回复，或者在旅游和遗产部门的背景下，社交媒体渠道或网站（包括Trip Advisor和Trust Pilot）上的展览，活动和/或历史遗址的书面反馈，对分析师来说是一个更困难的挑战。处理书面的、基于文本的反馈往往需要采用劳动密集型的手工分析方法。使这一挑战更加复杂的是，反馈是用英语和威尔士语提出的，威尔士是英国最大的双语社区。双语数据的成功分析依赖于具有适当语言专业知识的劳动力来处理它。虽然有一系列复杂的数字化工具可用于分析基于文本的数据，特别是对于在学术界、营销和公共关系背景下工作的研究人员，所使用的许多数字资源不一定是负担得起的、快速和易于使用的和/或非专业用户可以访问的。具体来说，这些工具目前不完全支持的任务，系统地处理自由文本的反应在Welsh.This项目旨在弥合这一差距，通过建立新颖的'FreeTxt'工具包，旨在支持分析和可视化的多种形式的开放式，自由文本数据在英语和威尔士语。FreeTxt将利用现有的基于开源双语语料库的实用程序和方法，重新包装这些实用程序和方法，并将它们带到一个新的方向，以便它们与新的受众/用户群体相关。我们将与项目合作伙伴Cadw和National Trust Wales密切合作，共同设计，共同构建和测试FreeTxt，以确保资源适合目的，公平和一致地满足威尔士语和英语响应的需求。我们将利用的现有工具包括作为CorCenCC项目（Corpws Cenedlaethol Cymraeg Cyfoes -当代威尔士语国家语料库）的一部分开发的工具。这包括CorCenCC的语义（即单个单词和短语的基于含义的分类）和词性（POS -即单个单词和短语的基于语法的分类-例如名词，动词）标签和威尔士语的标签集，以及用于查询语言的语料库功能等。这些工具将被纳入一个方便用户的在线界面，用户可以将文本粘贴/上传到该界面，以搜索调查答复和反馈中出现的含义模式;查看与特定主题、地点、议题相关的最常用词汇;为了了解游客特别喜欢某项服务或景点的哪些方面，以及他们认为可以改进的地方。该工具的最终版本将免费提供，并且可以根据谁可以使用它以及何时使用它进行调整。它将包含通用分析功能，使其能够被任何处理不同定性调查数据集的公共和/或专业公司和机构使用，并将与分析和可视化调查数据的学术研究人员相关。这一工具的可获得性和可用性将有助于提供一条实现潜在影响的直接途径。

In a modern consumer-led culture, obtaining and responding to qualitative feedback (i.e. often free-text comments/written feedback) is embedded in the professional practice of many walks of life.Surveys are used, for example, in staff development, professional training, product design and testing, and in various forms of service provision across the public and private sector. Surveys and questionnaires often produce a combination of quantitative and qualitative forms of data. Quantitative forms, such as rating scales (e.g. likert scale responses), multiple choice questions and rank order questions can be numerated (i.e. quantified) with ease, the analysis of which can be conducted in a systematic and often automated way. By contrast, more qualitative questions, which prompt open ended, free-text comment responses, or, in the context of the tourism and heritage sector, written feedback from exhibitions, events and/or historical sites on social media channels or websites including Trip Advisor and Trust Pilot, pose a more difficult challenge for the analyst. Tackling written, text-based feedback often requires a more labour-intensive and manual approach to analysis. Compounding this challenge is where feedback is presented in both English and Welsh, as is often the case in Wales, with Wales representing the largest bilingual community in the UK. The successful analysis of bilingual data relies on the workforce having the appropriate linguistic expertise to process it.While a range of sophisticated digital tools for the analysis of text-based data are available, particularly for researchers working in academia, in marketing and public relations contexts etc., many of the digital resources used are not necessarily affordable, quick and easy to use, and/or accessible to non-expert users. Specifically, these tools currently do not fully support the task of systematically processing free-text responses in Welsh.This project aims to bridge this gap by building the novel 'FreeTxt' toolkit which is designed to support the analysis and visualisation of multiple forms of open-ended, free-text data in both English and Welsh. FreeTxt will draw on existing open-source bilingual corpus-based utilities and methodologies, repackaging these and taking them in a new direction so that they are relevant to new audiences/user-groups. We will work closely with project partners Cadw and National Trust Wales to co-design, co-construct and test FreeTxt to ensure that the resource is fit-for-purpose and fairly and consistently meets the needs of Welsh and English-language responses.Existing tools that we will draw on include those developed as part of the CorCenCC project (Corpws Cenedlaethol Cymraeg Cyfoes - The National Corpus of Contemporary Welsh). This includes CorCenCC's semantic (i.e. meaning based categorisations of individual words and phrases) and part of speech (POS - i.e. grammar-based categorisations of individual words and phrases - e.g. nouns, verbs) taggers and tagsets for Welsh language, and corpus functionalities for the querying of language, amongst others. These tools will be integrated into a user-friendly, online interface that users can paste/upload their texts into, to search for patterns of meaning that emerge in survey responses and feedback; to see which words are most often used in relation to a given theme, place, topic; to understand what visitors particularly enjoyed about a service or attraction, and what they think could be improved.The final version of the tool will be made freely-available and will be adaptable in terms of who can use it and when. It will contain generic analysis features that enable it to be used by any public and/or professional company and institution dealing with varying datasets of qualitative survey data and will be of relevance to academic researchers analysing and visualising survey data. The accessibility and usability of this tool will help provide a direct route to potential impact.