>In a paper presented at the ISA RC33 conference in Amsterdam this week
>different QDA software programs were evaluated, one of the best were MAXQDA
>and QDA-Miner.
Harald - you contractict yourself :-) A few lines above you wrote:
>BTW: there is no best program, you have to find out what
>program is best for YOUR OWN research purposes.
I am not so familiar with QDA-Miner, but I suspect it is best if you are
more into quantiative analyis of qualitative data using a lot of text
searches.
well, just checked: It offers the regular code and retrieve functions and it
also provides unique integration with advanced quantitative content
analysis, text-mining....
By the way, it looks very similar to the interface of MAXqda. It offers the
code and retrieve functions that we have come to expect from any programme.
The more up-to-date stuff ist that you can use rich text documents (all
"better" programmes these days can handle rich text) and that you can edit
documents. But can you for example edit documents in a team context? How
about interactivtiy of codes in the margin? Can you link codes in other than
a hierarchical way? What about display of results in table format?
Combination of data attributes with codes? etc. etc. More sophisticated
functions is not what all users need - but I would therefore be very careful
in stating something like: They have found out that programme x and y are
the best..... which programmes have been evaluated in order to come to this
conclusion?
I have been around and working with CUQDAS for over 10 years now - and a few
years ago, when all programmes were still DOS based and rather simple (as
compared to todays version), I think it was still possible to evaluate all
available programes. Today - well it would need a sponsor to finance a
person for a considerable amount of time to become familiar (and I mean
properly familiar) with the main players on the market. Otherwise,
evaluations will be wrong or only superficial. A more doable option is to
evaluate only a handful or fewer programmes - but then, only statements can
be made on the basis of the "universe" one has looked at.
I would second Harald in suggesting that people look at demo versions. In
addition, look at what your colleagues are using in order to have someone
to ask questions, look at training possibilities in the neigbhourhood - you
always have a better start, if you begin with a 2-days or so workshop. You
will not only learn about the software, but also a bit about how to best
structure data, how to build a coding system and so on.
Susanne
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