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>>Hi.... >> >>I am a PhD student at Cardiff Business School, in the 2nd year of my PhD. >> Whilst compiling the initial draft of my Methodology chapter I have come >>across a number of journal articles that are in favour of the use of >>NUD*ISTor similar programmes for the analysis of qualitative data. >>However, the nature of the PhD being as it is, I also need to consider the >>opposing view, and wondered whether members of this list were aware of >>journal articles or other publications that come down against the use of >>such software for the analysis of qualitative data. >> >>quite naturally, most publications expound on researcher's good experiences of qualitative >>analysis software. This answer takes a bit of a tangent but I thought might be helpful. First thought: There really seem to be two questions in this note. The first concerns whether any journal articles have been written discussing the the value of using specially designed qualitative software in general. The second concerns whether any articles have been written by people who have had bad experiences using this software. Obviously, the two questions are interrelated but they are not exactly the same. Second thought: Actually, I think that some of the articles on on the general topic of "computer supported cooperative work" might be helpful. The article that came to mind first was an article by, I believe, Steve Woolgar, entitled "Configuring the User." The basic thrust of that article was that in adopting software/computer tools, the user of those tools is forced to adapt to the requirements that the software/computer tools make of the person who is trying to use those tools. I know that there are several other articles/books on this topic which I don't have ready at hand but perhaps someone else on the list does. I know that some of these articles deal with particular types of software (though I don't think that any of them deal with qualitative software per se). The basic point is that there will be costs to adopting qualitative software - learning costs, not tackling questions that are precluded by the software, getting more caught up in the software than in the problem at hand, etc. as well as benefits - saving time, greater organization, enabling some tasks to be done that you otherwise couldn't do. (There may also be some "non-instrumental" benefits such as making quantitatively oriented colleagues who are in a position to effect your job status comfortable that you are doing "real research" because you can use computer tools.) In this sense, the question about qualitative software is really more broadly applicable. What are the benefits of using software/computers as research tools generally? You could ask this kind of question about SPSS or SAS (and nobody - as far as I know - does.) Bill Kaghan %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%