Sentiment analysis
Sentiment analysis measures the emotional tone of your text responses, classifying each response into sentiment categories. Use it to track overall customer mood, compare sentiment across groups, or monitor how feeling shifts over time.
Adding a Sentiment analysis
Section titled “Adding a Sentiment analysis”- In the Workbench toolbar, click Sentiment.
- The Sentiment configuration panel opens. Work through the Options and Advanced tabs.
- Click Save to add the chart to your output library.
Options tab
Section titled “Options tab”Sentiment classes
Section titled “Sentiment classes”Choose which sentiment categories to include in your chart. You can include any combination of:
| Class | Description |
|---|---|
| Positive | Responses expressing favourable or approving sentiment |
| Negative | Responses expressing unfavourable or critical sentiment |
| Neutral | Responses with no strong positive or negative tone |
| Mixed | Responses containing both positive and negative elements |
Toggle each class on or off to focus on what matters for your analysis.
Chart types
Section titled “Chart types”Select how you want the sentiment results displayed:
| Chart type | Best for |
|---|---|
| Donut | Showing the proportional breakdown of sentiment classes |
| Stacked Bar | Comparing sentiment proportions across split groups in a single stacked view |
| Bar | Comparing sentiment classes or groups side by side |
| Bubble | Visualising sentiment volume and intensity together |
| Line | Tracking sentiment over time using a date variable |
Bar and Bubble chart options
Section titled “Bar and Bubble chart options”When Bar or Bubble is selected, two additional settings appear:
- Label options — Choose Grouped by Topics to colour each sub-topic by its parent topic, or Label Only to use a single colour for all sub-topics.
- Number of terms displayed — Set how many sub-topics appear in the chart. The default is 25.
Comparison options
Section titled “Comparison options”Control how results are displayed when Data Splits are applied:
- Combined — Shows all data together in a single chart
- Split — Creates separate chart series for each split category, so you can compare sentiment across groups directly
Line chart options
Section titled “Line chart options”If you select the Line chart type, additional settings appear:
- Trend variable — Choose the date or time variable to use as the x-axis
- Date aggregation type — Group data by Calendar Year, Financial Year, Quarter, Month, Week, Day, or Hour
- Date format — Choose how dates are displayed on the axis
Advanced tab
Section titled “Advanced tab”Merge sentiment classes
Section titled “Merge sentiment classes”Combine two or more sentiment classes into a single category for simplified reporting. For example, you might merge Positive and Neutral into a single “Not negative” category.
- In the Advanced tab, select the classes you want to merge.
- Give the merged category a label.
- Click Apply.
Frequently asked questions
Section titled “Frequently asked questions”How is sentiment calculated?
Sentiment scores are calculated by the Text Explorer preprocessing engine, which uses a combination of lexicon-based scoring and contextual analysis trained on general language patterns. Scores reflect the overall tone of each response rather than the sentiment of individual words.
Can I change the sentiment threshold — what counts as Positive vs. Neutral?
Sentiment thresholds are set by the system and cannot be adjusted per project. If you need to review how individual responses are classified, contact your Account Manager.
Why are some responses classified as Mixed?
A response is classified as Mixed when it contains a significant balance of both positive and negative language — for example, “The product is great but the delivery was terrible.” Mixed responses are useful to track as they often reflect nuanced or conditional satisfaction.