This is just a quick note to respond to Chris Baxter's qustion about how to
perform a word search in Qualrus. The search tool lets you specify a wide
range of searches including searching for sentences or paragraphs containing
a specific phrase or combination of phrases. You can specify the scope of
the search (e.g., one source, several sources, or all sources in a project),
the boolean combination of features that must be present or absent, and the
units to be searched (e.g., lines, paragraphs, segments). For users wanting
just a simple word search in the displayed file we have added a "search"
button in the main display to make that easier in the commercial release.
As to your concerns about using a new project for an important project, I
would point out that we have tested the program extensively over a period of
18 months encompassing exhaustive testing during the NSF study. More
recently the program has been beta tested by over 400 researchers around the
world. The testing ends August 1 and the results have been excellent. The
program is on track for commercial release in the first 2 weeks of August
and it is stable and reliable at this point.
Ed Brent,
Ed Brent, Ph.D.
President, Idea Works, Inc.
100 West Briarwood
Columbia, Missouri 65203
(573)445-4544
[log in to unmask]
www.ideaworks.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Baxter" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, July 24, 2002 8:37 AM
Subject: Searching for the best software to use
> Good morning,
> I am currently working on my PhD dissertation, which will require some
> qualitative analysis. I have viewed several qualitative software demos
and
> have experienced some difficulty in locating one that will work with the
> types of documents I have. I am preparing to scan 30,000 sheets of paper
> to convert them to files for analysis. These documents include basic
text,
> forms that have boxes with data included and some handwritten
> signatures/dates (not critical to the analysis) and tables (similar to
what
> you would create in Microsoft Word, usually 4 columns containing
> text). My analysis will include searching the text for key words,
coding,
> highlighting (maybe, even extracting selected text to shrink the size of
> the files down), and creating memos. I will also be looking at how many
> times certain relationships are mentioned throughout each organization and
> converting the data into numbers of the different types of relationships
> for further quantitative analysis using SAS.
>
> So with that said, the best format appears to be "rich text". Prior to
> having this scanned (quite expensive at this volume), I want to select the
> best software that can perform the above and handle forms (not as
critical)
> and tables (very critical). NVivo appears to be the most widely used,
> however when I attempted to open a sample rich text form with tables, it
> stated that it was unable to open a document with tables. I was able to
> open the document (and it looked very good, text in same position, not
> wrapped around, just missing the lines, which is fine) in Qualrus and
> MAXqda. I was unable to perform a word search in Qualrus (maybe my
> ignorance of the software) and I am concerned about using software that is
> still in Beta testing for such a critical project. MAXqda appears
> promising, but not as much is known about it (and the technical support
> seems limited) among my local fellow researchers as most use NVivo.
>
> Please advise. Are there other formats and/or software that you would
> recommend?
>
> Sincerely,
> Chris B.
> Doctoral Candidate
> Penn State University
>
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