Diógenes Carvajal wrote:
> Hi, John,
>
> You said that besides the experiences of those who use CAQDAS, you are
> looking for any document that has the special features of each software
> spelled out. Weitzman and Miles (1995) is a very good option, but there
> is another document you can download from:
>
> http://www.gesis.org/en/publications/magazines/zuma_special/index.htm#zn-5
>
> I took this review from the site:
>
> ZUMA News Special, Vol 5
> A review of software for text analysis
> Melina Alexa & Cornelia Zuell
> (Mannheim: ZUMA 1999), 176 Pp., DM 25 Mark, ISBN 3-924220-16-6
> The book reviews a selection of software for computer-assisted text
> analysis. The primary aim is to provide a detailed (and up-to-date)
> account of the spectrum of available text analysis software and
> catalogue the kinds of support the selected software offers to the user.
> A related, more general, goal is to record the tendencies both in
> functionality and technology and identify the areas where more
> development is needed. For this reason the presented selection of
> software comprises not only fully developed commercial and research
> programs, but also prototypes and beta versions. An additional aspect
> with regard to the kinds of software reviewed is that both qualitative
> and quantitative-oriented types of research are included. Depending on
> research purposes and project design the text analyst can profit from
> available tools independently of his or her orientation. Today it is
> often the case that in computational support, the borderline between
> quantitative and qualitative methodologies can become obscured; instead,
> one can detect a number of commonalities which can be placed within a
> broader text analysis context. The following fifteen programs are
> reviewed: AQUAD, ATLAS.ti, CoAN, Code-A-Text, DICTION, DIMAP-MCCA,
> HyperRESEARCH, KEDS, NUD*IST, QED, TATOE, TEXTPACK, TextSmart,
> WinMAXpro, and WordStat and the criteria and methodology used for
> selecting them are delineated. The last part of the book contains an
> extensive discussion about text analysis programs and the issues raised
> from the review.
This reviews is indeed useful, but you have to look at the programs that
are compared. Not all of these are QDA-programs (Coan, Diction,
Dimap-MCCA, Tatoe, Textpack, TextSmart, WordStat), and not all criteria
that the authors use are apropriate for comparing QDA-programs (of
course, because QDA-programs are only a part of the comparison). My
personal opinion is that Weitzman/Miiles from 1995 is still state of the
art for the criteria to evaluate QDA progams in general. AFAIK there are
no common criteria for text analysis programs in general (which I think
is neither possible nor desirable). And a lot of programs - QDA and
others - are just missing. I tried a classification of text analysis
programs, have a look at http://www.textanalysis.info for details,
comments are welcome.
Harald Klein
-------------------------
Social Science Consulting
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Germany
Tel/Fax: +49 3672 488494
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