At 23:53 16/11/98 -0000, you wrote:
>Georgina
>
>I hesitate to disagree with Pat Bazely, but ...
>
>You asked if anyone had used CAQDAS for policy research. Yes, I have done
>several policy projects (in a non-academic setting), and I have found NUDIST
>absolutely invaluable. (There is a partial listing on the QSR website if you
>want some brief details - and I have done more since.) The size doesn't
>really matter in my experience. What counts is what you want to do with your
>data. The big advantage of any decent CAQDAS software is that it doesn't get
>tired, or jump to conclusions, the way we humans are often prone to do.
>
>I have recently finished a study which involved 13 focus groups, and, like
>you, not many 'hidden themes'. The big advantage of using NUDIST for me was
>that I could keep track of the themes as they emerged. There weren't many
>surprises there (the group discussions were quite tightly structured) but it
>was comforting, to put it no higher, to know that I had got all the material
>relating to one theme together. The indexing features of NUDIST also helped
>with the theorising by giving me choices as to what concepts to associate
>with what others. Is this concept a sub-set of that higher order concept,
>and so on.
>
>I could go on at length, but it is late and I need some sleep! One last
>word - I am a very experienced NUDIST user and I turn to it
>(nearly)automatically. Perhaps if I was more used to using Excel in the way
>Pat describes I would adopt that tool instead.
>
>Good luck, anyway!
>
>
>
>John May
>
John, thanks very much for your reply. Can you answer me this:
many of the answers I have from my interviews 'ramble' and I'm not
interested in the ramble i'm interested in hard facts. hence I thought about
writing mini reports on the themes rather than using the full transcript
text. This seems to be acceptable to qual researchers as eg. in the
framework approach. Can I go one step further and highlight parts of the
text that contain the nuts and bolts of what I want to know and disregard
the rest without being accused of being selective and therefore of the
research not being rigorous???
Georgina.
>
>
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Dr Georgina Holt
Centre for Food Economics Research
Dept. of Agricultural and Food Economics
The University of Reading
PO Box 237
Reading RG6 6AR
***************************************************
Tel:0118 987 5123 ext.4190
Fax:0118 975 6467
email:[log in to unmask]
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