For Daniela and Brian and all others interested:
there is no "best" QDA software on the market. What to buy depends what
your research goals are. If you want to analyse not only texts but audio
and/or video, the selection of appropriate software is much smaller.
Most authors follow a theoretical parth (more or less clear), e.g.
grounded theory. The first thing before buying QDA-software is to define
what the goals for your research are. The Weitzman/Miles book gives you
valuable advice which criteria to use.
Of course I can give you some hints of good software, I am a software
developer myself, but not on the QDA sector (not yet... ;)
If you just need a simple to use code and retrieve program: WinMax
If you want to use quantitative and qualitative analyses: Code-A-Text
If you want to analyse networks, need links of codes, texts and have
that with a superb user interface: Atlas/ti
If you want to test hypotheses: HyperResearch or Aquad
If you want the most popular: QSR's NUDIST and NVivo
If you want to oldest on the market: The Ethnograph
Confused? That was on purpose! If you are unsure, download and test the
demo/test versions and code a small piece of text with the programs, and
then you see what fits YOU and YOUR needs. Remember: there is no "best"
QDA-software. And there are about 40 different programs on the market.
Or you are a MacOS-user, the number is much smaller.
Just go to http://www.intext.de/TEXTANAE.HTM and find all information
and links to demo/test software downloads there.
> Thank you very much for your information. I a looking for a software that
> would help me analysing qualitative data related to media and mass
> communications and just read your mail for Brian.
Daniela: What do you want to analyse? What is the rationale of your
project?
Harald
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Dr. Harald Klein
Social Science Consulting
Königseer Str. 9
98708 Gehren
Germany
Tel/Fax: +49 36783 80284
www.intext.de
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