© International Review on Public and Non Profit Marketing, vol. 2, nº 1 (June 2005), pp. 9-22. 9 IN YOUR OPINION, WHAT MAKES A GOOD JUDGE? THE STUDY OF PUBLIC OPINION THROUGH FREE ANSWERS IN A SURVEY Ramón Alvarez * Mercedes Ayuso ** Mónica Bécue *** Olga Valencia **** RESUMEN: In the area of public administration and/or non-profit organizations, it is complicated to evaluate, and above all to quantify, activities. As classic closed questions are not always pertinent when we want to gather opinions and attitudes, the introduction of some open questions aids in gathering such information. Therefore, the combined use of both types of questions allows one to deal with complex problems and to discover their multiple facets. In this paper we present a methodology that allows a typology of subjects to be constructed from their answers to closed questions, in order to then describe this typology using the information that is gathered, in particular the answers to the open questions. Our presentation is based on the results obtained in a survey of Spanish judges carried out in the year 2002. This survey contained the open question “in your opinion, what makes a good judge?” Key Words: Typology; abstract concepts; perception; open-ended questions; textual data. * Departamento de Dirección y Economía de la Empresa – Universidad de León. Facultad de CC. Económicas y Empresariales, Campus de Vegazana s/n, 24071-León (Spain). E-mail: dderae@unileon.es ** Departamento de Econometría, Estadística y Economía Española – Universidad de Barcelona. Facultad de CC. EE. y Empresariales, Diagonal Nord, Avda. Diagonal 690, 08034-Barcelona (Spain). E-mail: mayuso@ub.es *** Departamento de Estadística e Investigación Operativa – Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña. Campus Sur – Edificio U, C/ Pau Gargallo 5, 08028-Barcelona (Spain). E-mail: monica@eio.es **** Departamento de Economía Aplicada – Universidad de Burgos. Facultad de CC. Económicas y Empresariales, Pza. Infanta Elena s/n, 09001-Burgos (Spain). E-mail: oval@ubu.es Authors acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology (ref. SEC2001- 2581-C02-01/02) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), in order to develop this research work. Received: October 2004. Accepted: January 2005.