COMPUTERIZED QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS TOOLS

Several tools are available for purchase to help you analyze qualitative data (e.g., interviews, focus groups, field study notes). They look for patterns or trends in your data. Some allow you to create categories and then search for data that matches those categories. A few can even search multimedia files (e.g., graphics, video, audio). However, since these programs require practice and for the data to be typed up, they are best used only when you have complex data (i.e., unstructured interviews) and lots of it. If you have a small number of data points and/or the results are from a very structured interview, these tools would be overkill and unnecessary. A simple spreadsheet or affinity diagram (refer to Appendix F, page 714) would better serve your purposes. (Refer to Chapter 8, Surveys, “Data Analysis and Interpretation” section, page 348 for a discussion of tools to analyze closed-ended questions.)

Prior to purchasing any tool, you should investigate each one and be familiar with its limitations. For example, many of the products make statements like “no practical limit on the number of documents you can analyze” or “virtually unlimited number of documents.” By “documents,” they mean the number of transcripts or notes the tool is able to analyze. The limits may be well outside the range of your study, but do the investigation to be sure. The last thing you want to is to enter in reams of data only to hit the limit and be prevented from doing a meaningful analysis. In addition, a program may analyze text but not content. This means that it may group identical words but is not intelligent enough to categorize similar or related concepts. That job will be up to you.

Below is a list of a few of the more popular tools on the market today. For more information, please go to the individual product’s URL.