How to Conduct Analysis - Closed

Analysis of a closed card sort is a bit different that that for an open one.  With a closed card sort you will be looking for:

• Whether articles have made it in to the categories you expected them to based on the open card sort
• How many articles have been miscategorized into those categories as well.

Analyzing the Data

1. The first step in analyzing the data is to plug all of the information into a spreadsheet, or if you have done an online sort, to download the Excel-compatible file.

1.  Next, you will want to start to determine which categories did the best in capturing all of their related items, and which categories recieved items errantly placed into them.  While there is of course no right or wrong answers, you will have made certain assumptions based on your open card sort.  Now you are testing that these assumptions are true - for example if everyone in your open sort placed an item such as career opportunities into an "About the Library" category, and therefore you determined that an "About the Library" category was necessary, you now will want to make sure than everyone in this closed sort, also placed career opportunities into the "About the Library" category.