Software packages for analyzing qualitative data?

April 8, 2010 5:40 AM

I am in the midst of writing my final Masters thesis, and one chapter involves interviews with development actors to determine human rights impacts on socially marginalized communities in and around Bangalore, India. By the end of my two weeks here, I will have 5-10 interviews. What options do I have in software packages to synthesize the qualitative data? All of the questions are opinion-based. Only one uses a numeric ranking metric. I would like to extrapolate trends in responses. Keep in mind that I need to have this done by May 1st.
posted by msk1985 to Writing & Language (3 answers total)

You can go to a website like this one here to peruse your options in software. But really, the question is whether you have someone on your thesis committee who is doing qualitative research, and what software they're using. It's not easy to learn new software in less than a month and perform thesis-worthy analysis with it. Reach out to people in your department who specialize in this type of research, because they can tell you the hows and wherefores and hold your hand through the process.

Kruskal-Wallis for numeric ranking data analysis? Show quantitative research some love.
posted by _cave at 5:59 AM on April 8, 2010

I would suggest nvivo - it's quite likely that someone in your department will be familiar with the software, even if it's not accessible on your uni computers you could download the thirty-day trial version given your time restrictions and finally, I found nvivo very user-friendly and fantastically easy to learn. I didn't take any courses, just used the tutorials which come with the software. However, hate to break it to you, but your timeline does not sound terribly realistic;(
posted by coffee_monster at 6:10 AM on April 8, 2010

Response by poster: What about software for a Mac? I got permission to get NVIVO, but I'm having issues partitioning my Mac drive to run NVIVO.
posted by msk1985 at 5:20 AM on April 9, 2010