Excel for Qualitative Analysis & Reusable Systems: A Hands-On Workshop for Evaluators and Visitor Studies Professional
Monday, March 16, 2026 at 12pm ET / 11am CT / 10am MT / 9am PT
Most of us don’t struggle with Excel because the math is hard — we struggle because the data is complex. Text responses, mixed data types, evolving categories, and the need to work across teams and stakeholders all push Excel beyond “rows and columns.”
What You’ll Learn
How to:
- “Templat-ize” your work. Turn repeated tasks into efficient, reusable tools for yourself and your team.
- Combine formulas for multi-step transformations. Clean, reshape, and prepare messy text and mixed data so it becomes analyzable.
- Build extendable systems. Create setups that automatically adapt as new data is added.
- Handle qualitative data well in Excel. Explore what’s possible with text data, coding categories, and structured meaning-making.
- Do flexible, grouped analysis. Compare patterns across variables (e.g., role, site, program, demographic, or theme) and create new analytic categories on the fly.
- Level up your Pivot Tables. Make them more dynamic, interactive, and useful for exploration and reporting.
- Pull data across sources. Use VLOOKUP and XLOOKUP to connect datasets and enrich your analysis.
- Prepare data for visualization. Structure and summarize data to feed cleanly into charts, tables, and dashboards.
- Add interactivity. Use data validation, dropdowns, and simple forms to support collaborative analysis and coding.
Who This Is For
This is not a beginner Excel session. You don’t need to be an expert, but you should be comfortable working in Excel and have some awareness of/familiarity with:
- Excel foundations: sheets, cells, ranges, and formulas
- Basic formulas (SUM, AVERAGE, MAX)
- Counting formulas (COUNTIF, COUNTA)
- Tables and Pivot Tables
- Sorting, filtering, and splitting text into columns
- Conditional formatting
- Basic charts, tables, and cell formatting
If you’re interested in the workshop but are brand new to Excel, you could consider starting with these tutorials to familiarize yourself with Excel basics.
Each of these resources are organized into pages (written) or chapters (video) that you can use to review specific topics.
Presenters
Brian Slattery, Manager of Audience Research & Evaluation at Lincoln Park Zoo,
with Sarah Brenkert, Principal Evaluator for Conservation Engagement and Learning at Seattle Aquarium