The survey was conducted on-line during three months in the first half of 2018. By providing a list of terms frequently used, we allowed respondents to prioritize concepts, stimulate their reflection and thus enable them to provide their own list of central concepts. To facilitate the reading, terms were grouped in four sections: a) norms linked to humanitarian action; b) what humanitarian actors do; c) conditions under which humanitarian actors operate; and d) the actors encountered in humanitarian action. 138 terms were initially proposed. Respondents were free to choose as many terms as they wanted and could add up to 10 terms per section.
Terms chosen as central to humanitarian practice by more than 30% of respondents
| Accountability | 67.43 % | Humanitarian Action | 36.26 % |
| Advocacy | 55.22 % | Neutrality | 36.26 % |
| Capacity-building | 52.93 % | Assessment | 34.73 % |
| Resilience | 52.42 % | Access | 34.48 % |
| Crisis | 50.13 % | Coordination | 34.35 % |
| Sustainability | 49.75 % | Protection | 34.35 % |
| Vulnerability | 46.82 % | Emergency | 33.33 % |
| Do-no-harm | 46.69 % | Ethics | 33.21 % |
| Empowerment | 46.18 % | Early Recovery | 32.95 % |
| Integrated Approach | 45.42 % | Abuse | 32.70 % |
| Coping Capacity | 45.17 % | Disaster Risk Reduction | 32.70 % |
| Civil Society | 41.22 % | Good Practice | 32.44 % |
| Effectiveness | 40.84 % | Armed Group | 32.19 % |
| Humanitarian Space | 40.33 % | Civil-military Coordination | 32.19 % |
| Humanity | 39.95 % | Participation | 32.06 % |
| Impartiality | 38.42 % | Community | 31.93 % |
| Dignity | 37.79 % | Gender-based Violence | 31.93 % |
Respondents mainly selected terms with challenging, contested and unclear meanings. Beyond these reasons, terms were also predominantly selected because of their centrality.
The survey allowed to identify 280 concepts, many of them being spontaneously added by respondents.