Firstly, let’s agree that the English language has some quirks and can be challenging at the best of times with words like their, there. Words with different spelling and meanings that sound exactly the same when spoken.
I recently discovered another quirk of the English language when analysing community responses from an online survey about planning and development in a city context.
I discovered a four letter word with the same spelling and completely different meanings.
Analysing qualitative data can be complicated at the best of times but throw in the word ‘park’ and it can be really complicated.
Most words in the English language, in the context of planning and development, have a single meaning and are relatively easy to analyse for frequency. For example, traffic, transport, greenspace, housing, sustainability.
Then I came across the word park and realised what a minefield it was. A simple frequency search on this word would not suffice for qualitative data analysis.
Here’s why (in case you haven’t already figured it out).
The word park can be used in two completely different contexts.
One is a green space with trees and grass that is a popular destination for people to hang out in and enjoy the outdoors.
The other is a small area (2.6m x 5.5m) usually covered in asphalt or concrete and delineated by a white line marking for the purpose of hosting a car.
Both of these uses of the word park are nouns. The latter also lends itself to using the word park as a verb (parking) relative to cars and not greenspaces.
While it would certainly be more convenient to be able to analyse data for carpark and park, the reality is the community use the word park to describe a greenspace, a place to leave a car and the action of leaving your car somewhere.
Because of the complexities of this four-letter word, data analysis software couldn’t be relied upon to accurately categorise the word park. Instead each instance of the word had to be analysed by a human in context to determine whether it was related to transport or greenspace.
We’ve recently analysed thousands of community responses and although many people find this kind of work tedious, we rise to the challenge. Contact us about your community engagement and data analysis needs.
