In the discussion of Christine Barry's article so far, noone has really
tackled the taxonomy she has come up with to help you choose between NUDIST
and ATLAS-ti.  I think it is commendable that she tried to develop one.
With the choice not just between NUDIST and ATLAS but also the Ethnograph
and WinMax etc, the novice in this area must find it very difficult to make
a choice.  I know that one way is to compare the demos but I think that
should be only one element in the decision making process.  It is not easy
from the demos to get a real overview of how each package works.  That
requires training (yes, I would say that as a trainer but I believe it is
true).

The taxonomy on one dimension makes a distinction between simple and complex
projects.  As an example of a simple project she uses one of hers.  It
involved in-depth interviews with men and women about morality.  The
analysis looked at thematic differences and similarities between men and
women.  Her example of a complex project is her current study on
doctor-patient communication. There are 20 GPs and 70 patients involved in
the study.  They have collected different types of data: GP interviews,
patient interviews before consultation, patient interviews a week after
consultations, audio-taped consultation and fieldnotes.  The fieldwork is
also being done at two different sites.

She argues that NUDIST works best with the complex project.  And it is true,
that NUDIST makes handling such complex data easy - first by taking
advantage of the autocoding features to set up the project into different
data types, respondent groups etc.  Secondly, by allowing the analyst to
keep cutting the data in different ways to look for patterns, to ask further
questions raised by those patterns etc.  (And none of these possibilities
are obvious to the first time user playing with the demo.)  However, Thomas
Muhr has already argued that it is possible to handle complex data in ATLAS
as well.  I won't go into the inaccuracies he has already identified in
Barry's description of ATLAS.

But I would argue that NUDIST works well with simple projects as well.  I am
amazed that occasionally at the start of a NUDIST workshop that I am running
someone says to me that they only have a small project and they are not sure
whether it is worth putting it on NUDIST.  It seems NUDIST's reputation for
handling large amounts of qualitative data is quite powerful.  My answer is
that it is not about the size or complexity of the project but what you want
to do with the data. With the simple project she outlined above it is
possible to use NUDIST's
tools to look at quite complex relationships.  But again, it is down to what
your research questions are, your approach to qualitative analysis etc.

So I don't feel that the simple to complex project dimension is very
helpful.

The second dimension takes account of the structural features of the
software which ranges from what she labels ATLAS'
interconnected/visual/spatial structure to what she labels NUDIST'S
sequential/structured/verbal structure.  I am not sure if I completely agree
with these labels.  I think both ATLAS and NUDIST are interconnected - in
the sense that codes are linked to the original transcripts and can be seen
in context.  ATLAS differs in that it has a network editor where you can map
out the connections you make between themes or even use Strauss and Corbin's
paradigm model.  NUDIST's hierarchical index tree serves a different
purpose.  It acts first like a thesaurus so it enables you to find
themes/codes quickly - very useful when you have a lot of themes.  It also
should be structured to use the 17 Index searches which are ways to ask
questions in NUD*IST i.e. look at patterns and relationships between themes.
This structure is not inherently rigid or sequential.  It is the way you use
it.  Lyn Richards has already commented on this in a previous post.

So where does this leave us? (Sorry, Christine to pull apart your taxonomy
but now I should suggest an alternative)  I like to use as a starting point
understanding the way the developers approached qualitative analysis
manually and how they translated their manual techniques to the computer.
But this can only be a starting point.  All the packages mentioned have been
further developed - in response to what researchers feed back, in response
to what other packages offer.  So I suspect the developers have moved on
from the original way that they would analyse things manually.  But it may
give a clue to the basic structure of the software.  I think this would be
more helpful to experienced qualitative researchers - as they are clear what
they want to get out of the analysis.  I think they would be able to
recognise the software suitable for them by the number of connections that
can be made with the way they approach their analysis manually.  However,
the problem is for novice qualitative researchers who really need (in my
view) to thoroughly understand how they are going to approach the analysis
before choosing and learning a particular software to help them.  However,
from my experience of training in these softwares (and yes, I've done mainly
NUDIST training but I am extending this to Decision Explorer and Atlas-ti)
usually about a third are doing their first qualitative study and are really
not clear about what they are doing.  And for them the choice of which
software must be bewildering.  I have not come up with an answer for them
but there may be a danger in giving them a taxonomy to use.  It may pre-empt
a decision about how they should approach the analysis before they
thoroughly understand what they are doing.  My view is that they should
first learn about the different approaches to qualitative analysis and
perhaps even do their first study manually before moving on to software.
But then I would say that as when I was learning to do qualitative analysis
there were no software packages to help me and precious few books to refer
to (except Lofland and Lofland, First Edition, which was  my Bible as an
undergrad!)

Dr. Silvana di Gregorio
SdG Associates
Research and Training Consultants
Tel/Fax: 0181-806-1001
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Http://www.sdgassociates.demon.co.uk



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