When you collect survey responses (paper-based or online), you will do so often text answer (“Strongly Agree”, “Men”, “Bachelor”) that are not yet ready for analysis. Coding turns it into standard numbers or categories which can be processed by Excel (or SPSS, R, Python, etc.).

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Step 1: Prepare Your Spreadsheet

1. Open Excel.
2. Put question as a column header (Q1, Q2, Q3, or short labels).
3. Put each respondent sequentially.

Example:

INTRODUCTION	Gender	Q1_Satisfaction	Q2_Frequency	Q3_Comments
1	Man	Agree	Weekly	Good service
2	Woman	Strongly agree	Daily	Too crowded

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Step 2: Define Coding Rules

For each type of question, assign a number to the answer.

1. Nominal (category, no order)
   • Example: Gender
     • Male = 1, Female = 2, Others = 3
2. Ordinal (ranking, Likert scale)
   • Example: Satisfaction (Strongly Disagree → Strongly Agree)
     • Strongly Disagree = 1
     • Disagree = 2
     • Neutral = 3
     • Agree = 4
     • Strongly Agree = 5
3. Interval/Ratio (numerical answer)
   • Example: Age, Income → save as number.
4. Multiple responses (check all that apply)
   • Code each option in a separate column with 1 = selected, 0 = not selected.
   • Example: “What apps do you use?” RespondentFacebookInstagramTikTok11012011

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Step 3: Apply Coding in Excel

You can:

• Replace text answers with numbers manually.
• Or use Excel Find & Replace (Ctrl+H) to swap quickly.
• Or use a formula like:

=IF(B2="Male",1,IF(B2="Female",2,3))

(This would code Male = 1, Female = 2, Other = 3.)

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Step 4: Save the Code Book

Always create a separate sheet in your Excel file as a code book:

Variable	Question	Coding Rules
Gender	What is your gender?	1 = Male, 2 = Female, 3 = Other
Q1	I am satisfied with the service (Likert)	1 = Strongly Disagree … 5 = Strongly Agree
Application	What application do you use?	1 = Selected, 0 = Not selected

This ensures transparency and reproducibility.

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Step 5: Test and Clean Your Data

• Check for missing values ​​(leave blank or code as 99/NA depending on your analysis tool).
• Ensure consistency (for example, no mixture of “Boys” and “boys”).
• Verify by running a quick calculation using =COUNTIF() for each code.

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Final Thoughts

Coding a questionnaire in Excel is about:

1. Arrange your sheet correctly (respondents in rows, questions in columns).
2. Convert text to numbers using clear rules.
3. Maintaining a code book for reference.
4. Use formulas or find/replace to speed things up.

Once coded, your data set is ready to use analysis (descriptive statistics, graphs, regression, factor analysis—you name it).