Hi there,
I hope readers of this mailgroup will tolerate a question, from a non-practitioner of qualitative data analysis, which is probably of relevance to only a small subsection of your membership.
My background is in quantitative data analysis and I work in the University computing service where I have responsibility for the provision of data analysis software.
I have been asked to investigate the "issues" involved in the provision, campus wide, of some form of qualitative data analyis software and I would be very interested in the experience of anyone who has been involved in a similar exercise. In particular, I would find it most useful to know if any UK academic institution has decided to provide this type of software on an institution-wide basis and,if so, which? Equally, I would be just as interested to hear the reasoning from from an institution which considered, but then rejected, this path.
I have spent a couple browsing through the archives of this maillist of hours and at the CAQDAS website (and I'm sure I am an enriched and more worthwhile person because of this :-) ) trying to get a small insight into the discipline, and a handle on current practice. It seems to me that there are drawbacks in choosing to offer just one source of QDA software. My readings seem to suggest that the different QDA software packages address different aspects of the discipline and that to home in exclusively on a particular package might preclude certain types of analysis. Is this a reasonable conclusion? An alternative view that has been expressed to me is that Nvivo will handle the vast majority of the analyses that might be needed. I would be most interested in ony comments on that statement?
Thanks for reading this. I do take the point, made repeatedly in the mailing list, that I ought to download the sample software available and try it, but my lack of knowledge of the discipline would make this a fairly pointless excercise. Thanks in anticipitation for any responses.
Best wishes, Paddy
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Paddy Riley, Statistician,
Academic Computing Services, Cripps Computing Centre,
University of Nottingham, UK
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
Phone: +44 115 951 3350 Fax: +44 115 951 3353
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