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Applications of Analytics

Opinion Sampling

Category: Diagnostic Analytics

Analytics can be used to sample a population’s opinions. Drew (2016) describes “improving insight into citizens’ views, needs and experiences by analysing unstructured data, such as letters, phone calls or social media.” For example, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) “is exploring how to use Twitter data to understand the movements of particular populations (so people can plan local services) and the Ministry of Justice is analysing social media comments to see what people think about, and how they use, the courts.” (Ibid.)

Educators are interested in opinion sampling in order to assess campus environments, courses, programs, and individual professors. Beard (2020) reports, “In the UK, AI is being used today for things like monitoring student wellbeing, automating assessment and even in inspecting schools.” These applications are becoming more all-encompassing and specialized. For example, Kiciman, et.al. (2018) describe the use of social media analytics “to study the effect of early alcohol usage on topics linked to college success.” In another example, researchers used social media reports to accumulate data on sexual assaults on college campuses (Duong, et.al., 2020).

Examples and Articles

Example user scenarios for the Text Analytics API
Microsoft Text Analytics API can "group opinions related to specific aspects of a product or service in surveys, customer feedback, or wherever text holds an opinion about an aspect." Direct Link

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