This article will give you tips on how to analyze responses from an ex-cult member survey about stigma experiences using AI and the best tools available.
Choosing the right tools for analysis
The best approach for analyzing ex-cult member stigma survey responses depends on the structure and type of your data. Here’s how I think about it:
Quantitative data: If you’re counting how many people mentioned certain types of stigma, or aggregating ratings (like NPS scores), classic spreadsheet tools—Excel or Google Sheets—work perfectly. Totals, averages, and quick charts are all you need for this take.
Qualitative data: Open-ended responses—people’s personal stories or answers to follow-up questions—demand a more advanced approach. Sifting through hundreds of detailed stories is impossible to do by hand. You’ll need specialized AI tools to summarize, group, and highlight recurring themes effectively.
There are two approaches for tooling when dealing with qualitative responses:
ChatGPT or similar GPT tool for AI analysis
You can paste your exported qualitative data into ChatGPT and ask it questions about the responses. It can quickly find patterns or top themes, but honestly, handling lots of survey data in ChatGPT is not exactly smooth. You’re juggling big chunks of text, struggling with context limits, and there’s no native survey management—it gets messy fast.
Other AI tools like NVivo, MAXQDA, or Delve are popular for academic or pro research use. Tools such as NVivo and MAXQDA offer AI-powered coding, sentiment analysis, and theme identification, while Delve is known for its accessible coding features and pattern identification.[1]
Atlas.ti is another major player, providing robust mixed-methods analysis and rapid AI processing of varied survey data.[2]
All-in-one tool like Specific
Specific is built specifically for collecting and analyzing conversational survey data with AI. You get both the survey and the analysis in one place. When collecting responses, it asks smart, dynamic follow-up questions (learn more about automatic AI followup questions)—which makes for richer, clearer insights. No need to wrangle exports or context windows.
With AI-powered analysis in Specific, you instantly get summaries of responses, key themes, and structured insights—no exporting, spreadsheets, or copying text required. You can chat with the AI about your data, just as you would in ChatGPT, but with added features:
Manage what you send to AI: Filter or crop questions, focus on certain respondent groups, and stay organized even with large data sets.
Purpose-built context management: The platform is designed for survey data, so chat history and AI understanding remain tight and relevant.
If you want to see how a survey like this works, check out this ex-cult member stigma experiences survey example.
Choosing the right tool is about workflow: do you want to tinker and export data or have everything organized and interactive out of the box?
Useful prompts that you can use for AI survey analysis about ex-cult member stigma experiences
AI can make finding patterns, themes, and key quotes in ex-cult member stigma survey responses so much easier. But what you ask it matters a lot. Here are my top prompts for making sense of your survey data:
Prompt for core ideas: This prompt is tailor-made for finding key themes in large sets of responses. It’s the exact approach Specific uses by default:
Your task is to extract core ideas in bold (4-5 words per core idea) + up to 2 sentence long explainer.
Output requirements:
- Avoid unnecessary details
- Specify how many people mentioned specific core idea (use numbers, not words), most mentioned on top
- no suggestions
- no indications
Example output:
1. **Core idea text:** explainer text
2. **Core idea text:** explainer text
3. **Core idea text:** explainer text
Pro tip: AI always performs better if you give it context about the survey, audience, and your main goals. For example, you could start with:
You’re analyzing survey responses from ex-cult members about stigma they’ve faced after leaving cults. I want to understand the main themes and challenges people describe—focus on recurring patterns in their own words.
Once you’ve found themes, drill deeper. Use:
Tell me more about XYZ (core idea): When you see a main theme, ask the AI to elaborate, show supporting quotes, or break down nuances. For example: ‘Tell me more about Discrimination by family.’
Validating specific experiences? Try:
Prompt for specific topic: “Did anyone talk about losing contact with loved ones? Include quotes.” Simple and direct—it’ll surface just the evidence you’re looking for.
Prompt for personas: Useful if you want to profile different ex-cult member experiences. Ask:
Based on the survey responses, identify and describe a list of distinct personas—similar to how "personas" are used in product management. For each persona, summarize their key characteristics, motivations, goals, and any relevant quotes or patterns observed in the conversations.
Prompt for pain points and challenges: “Analyze the survey responses and list the most common pain points, frustrations, or challenges mentioned. Summarize each, and note any patterns or frequency of occurrence.”
Prompt for motivations & drivers: “From the survey conversations, extract the primary motivations, desires, or reasons participants express for their behaviors or choices. Group similar motivations together and provide supporting evidence.”
Prompt for sentiment analysis: “Assess the overall sentiment expressed in the survey responses (e.g., positive, negative, neutral). Highlight key phrases or feedback that contribute to each sentiment category.”
These prompts make it a lot easier to cut through emotional stories or complex narratives in ex-cult member stigma surveys, helping you surface trends and actionable insights. Want more ideas? Here’s another article on the best questions to ask in an ex-cult member stigma survey.
How Specific handles different question types in qualitative analysis
Specific breaks down responses by the structure of your survey so you always get the right type of insight:
Open-ended questions (with or without followups): You get a summary of all responses—plus follow-ups related to each question. This means the AI groups and summarizes long, multi-step conversations efficiently.
Choice questions with followups: Each response option gets its own summary for associated follow-up answers. For example, if someone selects “felt isolated” and then elaborates, their story feeds into that topic’s cluster for easy theme extraction.
NPS questions: Each group (detractors, passives, promoters) gets a targeted AI summary of responses to their group’s follow-ups—super handy if you want to know what’s really bugging the detractors!
You can recreate this workflow in ChatGPT or other general AI tools, but it’s manual and messier—there’s a reason dedicated survey platforms like Specific make a difference. Learn more about the workflow in our guide to ex-cult member survey creation.
Handling context size limits with large survey datasets
One thing to watch for if you’re using AI tools: context window size. Every AI has a practical upper limit for how much it can "see" or analyze in a single conversation—usually up to a few hundred responses at once. So what if you get tons of feedback?
Specific solves this for you with two simple controls:
Filtering: Focus the analysis on just those conversations or responses that matter—filter by who answered a certain way or chose a certain option, then send just that slice to the AI.
Cropping: Limit the questions sent into the AI analysis, so you only summarize or chat about one or two questions at a time. More targeted, more effective, and well within the AI context limit.
If you want to explore these features in depth, check our AI survey response analysis page.
Collaborative features for analyzing ex-cult member survey responses
Analyzing ex-cult member stigma surveys with colleagues often turns into a slog—too many threads, lost notes, or crossed wires on “who found what.” Here’s how collaboration shines in Specific:
Chat-based analysis workflow: You and your team can analyze survey data by chatting directly with AI, staying in the same tool where the data lives. No copying, no exporting, no wrangling files. It’s effortless to have multiple conversations focused on different research angles at the same time.
Multiple, filterable chats: Start as many analysis chats as you want. Each can have its own filters (like focusing only on people reporting family stigma or certain time frames), and you can see at a glance which team member started which chat. Instantly trace insights back to the author for easy collaboration.
Real human identity in discussions: In shared chats, everyone’s avatar and name are visible, so it’s easy to keep track of who contributed what. Insights and summaries don’t get lost in the shuffle—everything is organized.
The result? Your whole research or advocacy team operates in sync, debating and building on each other's findings, and surfacing the most important stories and data-driven arguments for reducing ex-cult member stigma. Learn more about this workflow in our in-depth feature overview.
Create your ex-cult member survey about stigma experiences now
Start meaningful conversations and turn deep stories into actionable insights with AI-powered surveys—get accurate themes, instant summaries, and effortless collaboration all in one place. Create your own survey and uncover the real experiences that matter most.