Thank you so much for your long thoughtful answer.
I think the answer that identified a different major program for each stage
of my project was, unfortunately, on target.

I want sensitive, small-scale close-up handcoding for the interviews, which
is the concept development stage;
 I have just gotten a cable modem and have downloaded several hundred items
from the congressional record and another several hundred news articles.
Most of these are under 100 kb, actually most are a page or less.  The
congressional record on-line splits many items up by speech, which is a
great unit--a single speaker on a single subject.  So I don't even have to
do much of the splitting up manually.  This is where the concepts get
tested, in the content analysis--and I do want to be able to do coding of
collections of document en-masse at the doc level (i.e., by debate, date,
speaker, issue, stance etc) as well as coding within these documents.

And I do want to hypertext--do you agree with the comment that I need to use
Atlas for that?

What, if any is your SW's capacity for such a presentation?

.
----- Original Message -----
From: Lyn Richards <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, January 30, 2000 4:37 PM
Subject: RE: ATLAS, nudist, NVIVO - which to buy?


> Kala and Brian,
>
> You may by now have gathered that if you want thoughtful methodological
> comparisons of software this list, sadly, is not often the place to get
> them. I agree with Udo's recommendation of the careful comparisons in the
> ZUMA paper, but it also demonstrates a problem with printed surveys - they
> are out of date before they appear. So the latest software, NVivo, was not
> covered in that book. For the differences between NUD*IST4 and NVivo,
> there's a detailed comparison on the QSR website
> http://www.qsr.com.au/CompareNUD-NVivo.htm.
>
> Websites are of course the best current information source and the links
to
> all developer websites are on the home page for the project that runs this

> list. <http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/caqdas/>
>
> I'll write my thoughts on your project, Kala, and how NUD*IST4 and NVivo
> would differently handle it, off list, to avoid the risk of another round
of
> snitching.
> cheers
> Lyn
>
>
> Lyn Richards,
> Research Professor of Qualitative Methodology,  University of Western
> Sydney,
> Director, Research Services, Qualitative Solutions and Research.
> (email) [log in to unmask]
> (Ph) +61 3 9459 1699  (Fax) +61 3 9459 0435
> (snail) Box 171, La Trobe University PO, Vic 3083, Australia.
> http://www.qsr.com.au
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Udo Kuckartz [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> > Sent: Sunday, January 30, 2000 10:39 PM
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> > Subject: Re: ATLAS, nudist, NVIVO - which to buy?
> >
> > Much better than Harald Klein's fairly bad characterizations is a
software
> > review
> > done by ZUMA (Mannheim):
> > Melina Alexa & Cornelia Zuell: Commonalities, differences and
limitations
> > of
> > text analysis Software: The results of a review ZUMA-Arbeitsbericht Nr.
> > 99/06
> > You can download this review as pdf-file from ZUMA's website:
> >
http://www.zuma-mannheim.de/publications/series/working-papers/99_06abs.ht
> > m
> >
> > Here is the abstract:
> > This paper discusses on the one hand the tendencies in functionality and
> > technology of software for text analysis and reflects, on the other
hand,
> > on the
> > areas where more development is needed. The basis for this discussion
> > forms a
> > comprehensive review of fifteen currently available software for text
> > analysis. In
> > the review each software package, i.e. AQUAD, ATLAS.ti, CoAN,
Code-A-Text,
> > DICTION, DIMAP-MCCA, HyperRESEARCH, KEDS, NUD*IST, QED, TATOE, TEXTPACK,
> > TextSmart, WinMAXpro, and WordStat, was presented in a detailed and
> > extensive
> > manner. In this paper we shall only delineate our methodology and
criteria
> > for
> > selecting which programs to review and concentrate on
> > discussing the types of support the selected programs offer, the
> > commonalities and
> > differences
> > of their functionality, point to some of their shortcomings and put
> > forward
> > suggestions for future development.
> >
> > -Udo
> >
> > Thomas Muhr - Scientific Software Development wrote:
> >
> > > At 11:04 27.01.00 -0500, you wrote:
> > > >As I have said in these discussions before, being the "most popular"
> > > >qualitative research program is not a trivial distinction.  Market
> > share in a
> > > >very small and often marginalized research area is important.  I
think
> > it is
> > > >clear that despite the advantages of other programs, at present,
NUDIST
> > > >clearly has more users in more academic fields than the other
programs.
> > > >
> > > >tim lavalli
> > >
> > > There is surely sometimes some truth in this but you would not say
"many
> > > sales <=> much good"? For instance: 90% of all computers run with
> > Windows,
> > > 10% are Macs, so .... ?
> > >
> > > - Thomas
> > >
>



%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%