Smart Insights: Qualitative and quantitative analysis

Smart Insights uses AI to analyze your results and provide a high level overview of your data through user friendly dashboards, charts, and summaries. In this article we'll look at the following features available in Smarts Insights:

Qualitative analysis for open-ended questions - provides text analysis with an AI-powered summary box, topic detection, and sentiment analysis.

Quantitative analysis for closed-ended questions - responses will be interpreted into charts with key points for quick analysis.

Want to see what other features are available in Smart Insights? Check out this article.

Smart Insights is available on Enterprise, Talent and Growth plans. Check out all our plans here

Requirements for qualitative analysis with open-ended question types

Smart Insights' qualitative analysis works with forms that are set to English in your form settings. If your form is set to English but you've collected open-ended answers in another language, we can't guarantee the quality of qualitative analysis.

Qualitative analysis is most effective with higher volumes of data, and a minimum of 10 responses is required for this feature to work.

Before you start using the qualitative analysis features in Smart Insights, check the following based on your plan:

  • Enterprise and Growth Custom plans: You'll see an AI-Powered Insights toggle in your Admin settings, and it is turned off by default. Turn it on to access Smart Insights. This setting will apply to all forms and workspaces within your organization. 
  • Growth Flow and Talent plans: You will not see the AI-Powered Insights toggle in your Admin settings. No action is required. Smart Insights is available by default, and you can access it directly in the Smart Insights tab.

You must be an Admin or Owner in your organization to turn the AI-Powered Insights option on or off.

If you change your Typeform plan and have not previously altered the default settings for AI-Powered Insights, your account will automatically adopt the default settings of the new plan. However, if you have previously modified these settings, your new plan will retain the settings you selected.

Your data won't be sent to the AI model unless you actively use the feature (even if the toggle is enabled). Specifically, the data transmission and analysis are initiated when you click on the Smart Insights tab.

The following open-ended question types are supported for Qualitative Analysis:

View qualitative analysis

To view qualitative analysis for open-ended questions, head over to the Results panel of your form and click Smart Insights. When you open the report for the first time, you'll see a loading screen that looks like this.

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Once loaded, you'll be taken to your report.

Understanding your qualitative analysis: AI-powered summary box, Topic, and Sentiment analysis

If you have an open-ended question type in your form with at least 10 responses, and have the AI-Powered Insights option turned on in your Admin settings if required based on your plan, the first thing you’ll see is the Qualitative Analysis results for open-ended responses.

AI-powered summary box

At the top of the results, you’ll see a purple AI-powered summary box. This gives you a high-level overview of the main themes from your open-ended responses, without needing to open each sentiment tab.

The summary box is designed to save you time by surfacing the most important patterns and themes at a glance. It gives you a bird’s-eye view of your qualitative data, while the sentiment tabs below let you dive deeper into detailed topics and see how feedback clusters by tone (positive, negative, neutral, or mixed).

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Topic and Sentiment Analysis

Below the AI-summary box, topics are categorized by response sentiment:

  • Positive
  • Negative
  • Neutral
  • Mixed

This helps you quickly understand not just what people are saying, but also how they feel about it—supporting faster decision-making and deeper insights into your responses.

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For example, if your form asks, “In what ways do you think we can improve our webinar?”, with Qualitative Analysis you’ll be able to get an overview of key themes in the purple AI summary box and a breakdown of topics and sentiments below—helping you see at a glance what your main areas of focus should be, without having to delve into each individual response.

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Note! Topics are analyzed based on the most recent 1,000 responses.   

Sentiment analysis uses AI to reduce the time spent manually analyzing data by categorizing responses based on people's sentiments about a topic. Click on the Positive, Negative, Neutral, or Mixed tabs to view topics for each response sentiment. 

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Open-ended responses will be categorized in one of the following ways:

  • Positive - When the sentiment is strongly positive, at least 60% positive, and at least 15% higher than the next closest sentiment.
    • Example: Positive 70%, Neutral 20%, Negative 10% → Positive sentiment
  • Negative - When the sentiment is strongly negative, at least 60% negative, and at least 15% higher than the next closest sentiment.
    • Example: Negative 65%, Neutral 25%, Positive 10% → Negative sentiment
  • Neutral - When the sentiment is mainly neutral, at least 60% neutral, and at least 15% higher than the next closest sentiment.
    • Example: Neutral 62%, Positive 22%, Negative 16% → Neutral sentiment
  • Mixed - When no single sentiment is strong enough to dominate, or when positive and negative are close together.
    • Example: Positive 45%, Negative 44%, Neutral 11% → Mixed sentiment

You'll also see a colored icon assigned to each sentiment:

  • Green = Positive
  • Red = Negative
  • Blue = Neutral
  • Grey = Mixed

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If a question can't be analyzed for topic analysis (e.g. what is your name?), you'll see a note stating Analysis not available.

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Under each Response sentiment, you'll find topics from your open-ended responses that support the selected Response sentiment. In the image below, we've clicked the Neutral Response sentiment and it has three topics - Specific Topic Requests, Learning Resources, and Market Coverage.

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Click on the Response highlights dropdown to view up to three direct quotes from respondents that support and add context to the topic. A single quote can be used multiple times if it addresses multiple topics.

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Requirements for quantitative analysis with closed-ended question types

For Smart Insights to interpret responses to your closed-ended questions, the following criteria must be met:

  • The form is written in English.
  • You've received a minimum of 10 responses.
  • Responses have been collected since receiving the first submission.
  • The form contains at least 2 closed-ended question types (question types with pre-determined answers. For example, Multiple Choice and Rating.)

The following question types are supported for Smart Insights: Quantitative Analysis:

  • Yes/No
  • NPSⓇ
  • Opinion Scale
  • Rating
  • Dropdown
  • Multiple Choice (single or multiple selection)
  • Picture Choice

View quantitative analysis

To view quantitative analysis for close-ended questions, head over to the Results panel of your form and click Smart Insights. When you open the report for the first time, you'll see a loading screen that looks like this.

Once loaded, you'll see your report under Response trends.

Understanding your quantitative analysis charts

If your form contains open-ended questions and you've enabled the AI-Powered Insights options in your Admin settings, you'll see the Qualitative Analysis at the top of the page (see section above for more details about qualitative analysis).

Below this, you'll see the quantitative analysis charts that correlate to your closed-ended questions.

Responses to a question will be displayed in a chart, turning your responses into a visual representation. Above the chart, you’ll find a summary with some key points generated by AI that’ll give you a quick analysis of your results.

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Hover over the (?) icon to view which question in your form the results came from.

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Note! AI decides which questions in your form to use in the Smart Insights Quantitative Analysis; therefore, some questions might not be included.

The Smart Insights report will be disabled if your form hasn’t received any new responses within 3 months.

Refreshing your qualitative & quantitative analysis

To refresh your qualitative analysis (open-ended responses), click the Refresh response analysis button towards the top of your Smart Insights to update your report. Please note that it can take a few minutes for the update to complete.

To refresh your quantitative analysis (close-ended responses), scroll down to the Response trends section and click the Refresh response trends button. When the report refreshes, it'll also include the data you've collected on the current day.

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