Qualitative Software Basics

Please note: MERIT hosts this information (created by a former staff member). MERIT no longer has the staff expertise to support questions related to qualitative research tools. We encourage you to reach out to the Social Science Computing Cooperative (SSCC) for additional assistance. SSCC provides tools and advice to researchers who use statistical analysis in their work. SoE currently funds SSCC accounts at no cost to SoE departments.

Qualitative data analysis (QDA) software is used for organization and management, analysis, visualization, and presentation of qualitative data such as interviews, observations, documents, images, video, and audio. All QDA software will include tools for searching and retrieval, coding, querying, and visualizing your data. Here you can learn more about what QDA software can offer you and your research.

The Four Main Functions of QDA Software


Organization	Annotation	Search	Display
A hub where you can house and manage your data along with memos and other analytical notes in a single location.	A tool to both condense your data via coding and expand your data via memoing and other writing about your data and analysis process.	Not just finding where a particular piece of information exists in your data but also how your data interacts and where particular phenomena do or do not exist.	You can create visual aids for both your personal use to help you visualize, contextualize, and map your data or for use in presenting your data and analysis to others.

The Promises of QDA Software

	Time	Closeness	Methodology	Transparency	Teamwork
The Promise:	QDA software is a great timesaver, freeing you of many clerical and organizational tasks to allow you to spend more time on analysis.	By freeing yourself from clerical tasks and allowing for quick comparisons and querying, QDA software gets you closer to your data more quickly.	QDA software will determine and improve your methodology.	QDA software provides a framework and record of analysis which can be shared with others to make your analysis strategy transparent.	QDA software can improve teamwork by clearly tracking what different members of a research team are doing, develop and enforce coding rules for the team.
The Reality:	You will still need to invest time and effort to learn the software and understand how to use it well. This is significant, especially for beginners. While you will be freed from clerical tasks, you will still need to spend exactly the same amount of time with your data as you would in an analogue format -- you are still the one doing the analysis!	The mechanics of coding inherently lead to segmentation of your data which runs the risk of losing important contextual information and richness. Heavily coding your data can feel like closeness and methodological rigor when really it is just dehumanizing and mechanizing the data.	QDA software/coding IS NOT A METHODOLOGY. Coding is an important part of many methodological analysis traditions but coding itself is NOT analysis. You need to have a solid foundation of methods before you begin a project using QDA software. Coding may not be the appropriate process for all methodologies.	For this to be true, you will need a strong memoing and annotation framework within your project to account for the decisions made while coding.	Strong communication with your team is still necessary to successfully utilize these features. Most desktop QDA programs are single-user, meaning that only one team member can use a project at a time. Careful planning for data management, versioning, and data compilation should be completed before beginning a project.