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Organizational Research Methods
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Article

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

Reanna M. Poncheri1*, Jennifer T. Lindberg2, Lori Foster Thompson2, and Eric A. Surface3

1 North Carolina State University and Surface, Ward, and Associates
2 North Carolina State University
3 Surface, Ward, and Associates

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: rmponche{at}ncsu.edu or rponcheri@swa-consulting.com.


  Abstract
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.

First published on August 8, 2007, doi:10.1177/1094428106295504

Organizational Research Methods 2008;11:614.

A more recent version of this article appeared on July 1, 2008
 This version was published on November 28, 2007
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