Advice on research software

Posted by Dr Andus
Aug 17, 2013 at 09:04 PM

Wayne K wrote:
Yes, Steve, I’ve read his blog. I may very well go with ConnectedText
>but I was hoping to get some feedback on whether anyone has tried to use
>a regular database program for the kind of work I’m describing.

Here is an example of someone who chose MS Access over CT. You might find this interesting.

http://jostwald.wordpress.com/2012/11/15/to-tweak-or-to-chuck-that-is-the-question/

A general question I’d ask when evaluating software for this kind of project is how easy it is to import tens of thousands of notes, and then export them after processing (besides the issue of how to analyse and organise them, which was already touched upon).

It’s also an interesting question whether or not CT could be right for this project. While importing tens of thousands of small notes sounds theoretically doable, and CT’s properties/attributes/categories can take care of most of the required organising (and then there is still the additional wiki feature of linking, as a way of analysing), and there are good search and reporting functions, adding properties/attributes/categories manually to tens of thousands of notes sounds like a gargantuan task.

Having said that, if you want to explore the viability of doing all this in CT, I’d suggest signing up and asking the folks on the CT forum, as there very well may be imaginative shortcuts to accomplish the above.

Another thing to keep in mind is that CT v. 6 is on the way (the beta is already making the rounds). One new killer feature is going to be the so-called “named block”, which will allow one to mark up sections of text (i.e. what is called “coding” in qualitative data analysis) across the notes database, and then gather those segments in a separate document. This is exactly the same feature that those “expensive” QDA software have (such as NVivo, Atlas.ti, QDA Miner etc.).