Qualitative data analysis software?

[Alexandre Enkerli]

Michele,
There are several mailing-lists devoted to questions related to QDA
software and this is just a few ideas from such discussions. Sorry if it's
a bit long.

QDA software may be extremely helpful and several users would tell you
things like "I don't know what I would do without them." Also, for basic
functions, they're not hard to learn at all. Coding and retrieving data is
rather easy to do and more complex procedures can be learned along the
way. However, use of QDA software can be rather time-consuming, especially
if you don't have your texts in digital format and have to do both the
transcribing and coding. On team/lab/group projects, this might not be too
hard to arrange as some of these procedures can be done by people with
limited knowledge or specific skills. On an individual project, you have
to calculate if it's worth your own time on the basis of the time you
save. In a large part, this depends on the amount of data you have (a
few short interviews may be easier to work with "manually" than with QDA)
and on the type of analysis you want to do. QDA software packages are
usually better at helping you get a broad picture of a large amount of
data or at retrieving specific information about your data than at
helping you generate new information out of raw data.
So far, the same can be said with almost any use of computing tools in
academic research. For instance, intense use of citation programs and
bibliography managers may be overkill for a class paper but may save you a
lot of time during qualifying exams and dissertation writing.
However, there are other things to keep when deciding to use a QDA
program. A practical one is simply their price. Nud*ist, NVivo, and
Ethnograph (the most popular packages) as well as Atlas.ti,
HyperResearch, Code-A-Text and winMax (other common packages) go for about
$300-$400 a piece for an educational license (according to
<www.scolari.com>). While this might be inexpensive for a research lab, it
may be somewhat expensive for individual use. There are free and
inexpensive programs that fit in the category of QDA, but they don't
necessarily seem to offer as much flexibility as the mainstream solutions.
On the other hand, there is at least one free program that offers
interesting functionalities somewhat similar to that of QDA software
and it's actually meant for field linguistics. It's name is Shoebox and
it's available on <http://www.sil.org/computing/shoebox/>. Unfortunately,
there's a possibility that it won't be updated after version 5 is out
(which should happen soon, apparently) but it is free and available on
both Mac and PC platforms. Its "philosophy" may be somewhat idiosyncratic
but it's certainly would looking into.
Other solutions include building your own database (using mainstream
database packages such as 4D, FileMaker, FoxPro, or Oracle) or even
programming your own tools "from scratch." While this solution
necessitates programming knowledge, it's clearly the most flexible one and
possibly the least expensive one. BTW, 4D is now available at an
educational pricing of $40, which is really hard to beat and it's also
available on both Mac and PC.

Again, sorry for such a long message. Let's hope that you'll be able to
find the proper solution for your own research.