At 16:56 04/03/2004, you wrote:
>Can anyone comment on the new QDAMiner software? I tried it and it is easy
>to learn and use and cheaper than other software I have seen. It also
>offers some cool analysis tools that I did not found in other software
>(cluster, concept maps, bar charts).
>
>How does it compare with other software like Nvivo or Atlas-ti?
As always, we don't know where you are heading with your analysis,
therefore it is difficult to give any meaningful advice.
Let me, though, offer a few ramblings on QDA-Miner. To be fair, I only
glanced over it, so I might be in error at times.
If you have loads of files to deal with, then QDA Miner seems to perform
well. Of all the programs I checked out (ATLAS.ti, Kwalitan, MAXqda, NVivo,
Qualrus), QDA Miner was the only one that swallowed my batch of 2626
soundbite files (webforum postings) in a single operation. When
*auto*coding the files, only MAXqda could keep up its pace. NVivo did not
even work with so many files (N6 is the QSR choice for large numbers of
files) and ATLAS.ti took ages (i.e. 13 Minutes) per coding; Qualrus does
not allow for autocoding and Kwalitan is an somewhat intermediate case.
The search function of QDA miner is focused on straightforward Boolean
searches. It does, e.g., AFAIK not allow for placeholders (ATLAS.ti,
NVivo), fuzzy searches (NVivo), and does not have so many more complex
search options as ATLAS.ti, NVivo and Qualrus.
It also does not handle multimedia files as parsimoniously as do ATLAS.ti
or Qualrus, as it -- like most other CAQDAS -- does not accept picture,
video and sound files directly.
QDA-Miner is directly linked to Simstat, that makes some statistical
analysis of course easy. Then again, none of the programs gave me any
headaches in exporting data for SPSS.
If you give some hints, what you need the program for, we might be able to
give you more precise advices.
Just my 2c
Thomas
--
thomas koenig
department of social sciences, loughborough university
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/mmethods/staff/thomas/index.html
|