I don't have a direct answer to your question, but I just wanted to suggest
that perhaps Nudist 5 might be more appropriate for a project of that size.
It's geared towards dealing with bulk data and is perfectly capable of
handling quantitative questions like the ones you list in your mail. Nudist
4 is also good, but now is sold as Nudist Classic for students mainly. N5
has some improvements, and is more user-friendly.
Might be worth considering - see what other people think anyway.
Sarah Delaney
-----Original Message-----
From: Oliver Treib <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: 14 November 2000 12:16
Subject: File size: Atlas.ti and NVivo compared
Dear list members,
we are a group of four researchers planning to analyze quite a large number
of expert interviews (around 200 interviews, each with a length of about 30
pages) with the help of a qualitative software package. Important features
for us include
* teamwork compatibility (i.e. easy traceability of codings etc. done by
different team members)
* editing text without invalidating previous coding
* quantitative data analysis (that feature does not have to be too
sophisticated, but things like "how often does this or that coding appear
in the interviews or in certain subgroups thereof?" should be possible)
* rich text formatting (incl. importing rtf files from word processors)
(would be nice, is, however, not essential)
>From the range of available software packages, NVivo and Atlas.ti seem to
be the most appropriate packages for the purpose of our research. As I
understand it, Atlas seems to have a slight advantage in quantitative
analysis, while only NVivo provides the possibility to edit text without
invalidating previous coding and has the additional feature of rich text
formatting. Therefore, we currently tend towards buying NVivo.
What I am wondering about, however, is the question of file size. If I
understand it correctly, in Atlas you do not import the text to be analyzed
into the project file but leave it in a txt file and store it decentrally.
This should keep the file size of the main project file quite small. In
NVivo, however, the text has to be imported and stored in the project file
together with all the codings, notes etc. I expect this to increase file
size to a considerable degree, which might make data portability and safety
copying problematic and could possibly also end up in program instability.
Does anybody working with either of the two packages (or any other package
providing the features mentioned above) have an idea how big a file for our
200 interviews would become? Any comments would be very helpful.
Regards,
Oliver Treib
¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬
Oliver Treib
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne
mailto:[log in to unmask]
http://www.mpi-fg-koeln.mpg.de/people/ot/
¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|