This assignment exposes my greatest weakness as a researcher, that is, reading technical data and descriptions. Somewhere between the third and fourth paragraph, my eyes start to glaze over, my gears start to grind, and I start to wonder what might be happening on YouTube right now. Still, an assignment is an assignment, so I'll talk a little bit about QDA Miner v 1.3.
This looks to me like someone's attempt to be all things to all people - its is touted as combining numerical and text analysis tools such that the researcher can utilize multiple methods of analysis without having to switch between programs. My past experience with programs that try to "do it all" is that they do a lot of things, but none of them particularly well. But let's put that aside for now and just focus on the QDA Miner documentation.
Evidently, this software requires/give you the option (depending on how you look at it) to define your own variables. That gives me the idea that it might be important for me to know what the variables are and how they're being used, which means I need to know something about what the program is doing when it analyzes my data, which means I am probably going to be pretty lost when trying to figure out how to define the variables. There is an add on word analysis module that can be set to define variables for you, and I'll bet that's what I use. Of course, that becomes problematic if I later need to know what the variables are.
Text data can be imported directly from word processing documents, which is nice, but if I understand what I'm reading correctly, the documents are converted to rich text format before they are analyzed. The program also allows in-line editing of the documents, but I wonder if the original document format is preserved, or if what you get back is .rtf, making it necessary to reformat the text if you want to use it for presentation?
The reviewers quoted at the end seem to like it, but then they also seem to know what something about what this thing is actually doing. I hate to seem so negative, but the fact is that I'm very uncomfortable trying to interpret technical data in a regime where I really don't know what I'm talking about.
By the way, does it work on Vista? The specifications don't say so, and if they don't, you are taking a chance.
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Good comments. I think it's helpful to be skeptical of these types of software. I also think it will be good to go through the simple program, Weft QDA, to give you a better idea of what they do.
ReplyDeleteWhy using QDA Miner v1.3? The version 3.1 contains a lot more features but is easier to use than this rather old version. It is especially easier to start a project from a list of documents.
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