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NVivo 10 launched
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Posted by Dr Andus
Jun 28, 2012 at 01:39 AM
critStock wrote:
>Incidentally, since this genre of software has come up, I note that the newest version
>of the one I use, Atlas.ti 7, has just come out, also: http://www.atlasti.com
Just saw this blog post that compares NVivo and Atlas.ti, albeit the previous versions:
http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/ahariri/entry/atlasti_6_vs/
Posted by Cassius
Jun 28, 2012 at 05:02 AM
Dr Andus wrote:
>Actually both NVivo and
>Atlas.ti are primarily qualitative research tools, so categorising is mostly done
>on a textual basis (the user coming up with categories based on the meaning of textual
>segments). Although there are some features in NVivo that try to quantify some
>qualitative information, such as the frequency of words or summarising qualitative
>questionnaire results.
Interesting. Do these applications try to do it all automatically, or is the user deeply involved in determining the categories and judging what belongs in a category and what does not? I expect that a fair amount of judgment and intuition would be involved because much of the analysis often would include a fair amount of subjectivity.
Posted by Dr Andus
Jun 28, 2012 at 11:24 AM
Cassius wrote:
>Interesting. Do these applications try to do it all automatically, or is the user
>deeply involved in determining the categories and judging what belongs in a category
>and what does not? I expect that a fair amount of judgment and intuition would be
>involved because much of the analysis often would include a fair amount of
>subjectivity.
Primarily it is the subjective judgement of the user, although usually the user is guided by a theory he or she had chosen that guides the attention and recognition of categories. These software work like this:
1. I’m reading a long document (e.g. a transcript of a 2-hr interview).
2. As I read, I highlight sections of text that contain interesting information or answers to my research question and mark them by giving them a “code” (a category that describes them).
3. The software aggregates all the quotes with the same “code” into their own separate documents, which can be further analysed.
So these software are in a way for aggregating and organising quotes. The purpose is to discover new patterns in the material, the existence of new entities (categories) or new relationships between entities.
Posted by Cassius
Jun 28, 2012 at 12:11 PM
Dr Andus wrote:
>Cassius wrote:
>>Interesting. Do these applications try to do it all automatically,
>or is the user
>>deeply involved in determining the categories and judging what
>belongs in a category
>>and what does not? I expect that a fair amount of judgment and
>intuition would be
>>involved because much of the analysis often would include a fair
>amount of
>>subjectivity.
>
>Primarily it is the subjective judgement of the user,
>although usually the user is guided by a theory he or she had chosen that guides the
>attention and recognition of categories. These software work like this:
>1. I’m
>reading a long document (e.g. a transcript of a 2-hr interview).
>2. As I read, I
>highlight sections of text that contain interesting information or answers to my
>research question and mark them by giving them a “code” (a category that describes
>them).
>3. The software aggregates all the quotes with the same “code” into their own
>separate documents, which can be further analysed.
>
>So these software are in a way
>for aggregating and organising quotes. The purpose is to discover new patterns in the
>material, the existence of new entities (categories) or new relationships between
>entities.
Thank you for the explanation. Considering the price of the software, isn’t there more to it?
-cassius
Posted by Dr Andus
Jun 28, 2012 at 12:49 PM
Cassius wrote:
>Thank you for the explanation. Considering the price of the software, isn’t there
>more to it?
Well, yes, of course, there are other features (such as the automating of analysis of survey results) and various other ways of linking and organising documents (video, sound, image etc.) and snippets. But the aggregation of quotes is the heart of it.
The price I think is indicative of the fact that the educational market (universities, post-graduate students) is a bit of a captive market. The software is mostly bought by institutions. There is a great deal of inertia there. If all the other PhD students around you are using NVivo or Atlas.ti, there are workshops on a monthly basis telling you how to use them, your supervisor tells you to use one or the other, then you are generally not going to be exploring other options because using one or the other becomes a sort of a seal of quality. It makes your research sound more serious.
In fact in the past this process of coding used to be done manually, mostly by using index cards - which is why ConnectedText is well placed to substitute these expensive software because (as Manfred has often argued, http://www.connectedtext.com/manfred.php), CT is an electronic form of an index card system).