Ambreen,
Just to add to Ann's useful list of questions to ask (I'll only comment
re NUD*IST: as a developer I don't comment on others' software): I'd put
in a few other questions to ask:
I'd put highest priority a choice which we all now have - do you mind
staying with plain text, or do you want to have rich text (color, font
etc for emphasis, clarity, visual coding, editing, multiple subheaders
etc)? If you want to edit and code documents, check the software's
capability here. Even if the interviews are typed up, you're likely to
want to add comments, change or expand the text, or annotate. NUD*IST4
will edit without invalidating your coding, but you have to edit text
unit by text unit. In NVivo you can freely edit while you code any
characters - indeed if you wish you can create the document in rich text
in the program, creating codes as you write. If you're not used to
having your data in plain ASCII text, try the feel of reducing rich data
to plain text before you decide.
You need also to decide how you want to keep those observations on the
discourse. Programs have different ways of keeping memos. Back to the
N4/NVivo choice, both make memos and annotate. But NVivo will allow you
to hyperlink to an annotation or a memo at any place, and memos are rich
text, editable, codeable, linkable, searchable - full status documents.
To Ann's points:
Filtering of any documents or nodes can be done by coding in N4 or
NVivo, but the latter was designed for very fine-fingered selection of
where you look, or exactly where you ask a question. It will allow you
to select particular documents, nodes and sets of them, or filter very
finely, by nodes, attributes or a lot of other aspects (like whether the
document is before a certain date or owned by one team member). You can
"scope" any search in these very fine-fingered ways. You can ask "which"
questions about any data, too - e.g. which people are using this
phrase...?
Output? NVivo will "profile" your data in tables summarizing pretty much
any aspect of coding or attributes or data process. Rich text comes out
too - rich text reports that have your embedded annotations about
discourse, and other links, as endnotes.
On the question of interactivity between codes and text - both
N-programs give you all the text coded at a category in a "live" node
browser that lets you move between the coding and the context in lots of
ways, jump back to the text in context from retrieval of coded material
or code-on from the node. NVivo develops this, with a wider range of
ways of coding (drag and drop, in vivo coding etc) and ways of seeing
context.
Hope this helps. The website for either program is
http://www.qsr.com.au
cheers
Lyn
Lyn Richards,
Research Professor of Qualitative Methodology, University of Western
Sydney,
Director, Research Services, Qualitative Solutions and Research.
(email) [log in to unmask]
(Ph) +61 3 9459 1699 (Fax) +61 3 9459 0435
(snail) Box 171, La Trobe University PO, Vic 3083, Australia.
http://www.qsr.com.au
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