QualCoder

Getting to know QualCoder

A new YouTube video in Spanish. Thanks to Ernesto Bouey.

What QDA Tool is Right for You? 

Tue, October 3, 12:30pm Online via Zoom 

Register: https://library.temple.edu/events/1529 

Qualitative Data Analysis software can save time and support all stages of your research, from collecting, organizing, and processing qualitative data, to coding, annotating, querying, and visualizing your analyses. QDA platforms can also enhance teamwork, mixed methods analysis with quantitative data, writing, and reporting. This workshop introduces and compares Atlas.ti, NVivo, Dedoose, Taguette, and QualCoder. 

ATLAS.ti for Qualitative Data Analysis 

Wed, October 25, noon Online via Zoom 

Register: https://library.temple.edu/events/1540 

This online workshop will introduce ATLAS.ti, commercial qualitative data analysis software that can help save time and support many stages of qualitative research. You will learn how to manage, code, auto-code, annotate, and report on different types of qualitative data in ATLAS.ti, such as text, images, video, geoplaces, and focus group and survey response data. 

QualCoder for Qualitative Data Analysis 

Fri, November 3, noon Online via Zoom 

Register: https://library.temple.edu/events/1543 

This online workshop will introduce QualCoder, free and open-source qualitative data analysis software that can help save time and support many stages of qualitative research. You will learn how to manage, code, auto-code, create relationships and annotate text, images, videos, survey responses and other types of qualitative data. You will also view different charts, graphs, and other visualization, reporting and export features. 

 

NVivo for Qualitative Data Analysis 

Mon, November 13, 11am Online via Zoom 

Register: https://library.temple.edu/events/1546 

This online workshop will introduce NVivo, commercial qualitative data analysis software that can help save time and support many stages of qualitative research. You will learn how to manage, code, auto-code, create relationships and annotate text, images, videos, survey responses, social media and other types of qualitative data. You will also view different charts, graphs, and other visualization, reporting and export features. 

Hi all,

QualCoder uses pdfminer.six for the pdf text extraction. Thanks to the maintainers of that project.

People have asked that direct pdf coding be an option. I can see the advantage is when coding text, you can see where the text is located near other text and images on the page. However, this is quite a challenging request.

The challenges: Unlike Microsoft Word or LibreOffice Writer or plain text documents, Pdfs are very different. They are designed in a print format and not designed to have text extracted. Some Pdfs may present the text as a full page image – so text extraction is not possible without using optical character recognition software. This will not be an option in QualCoder -you would have to do this separately and import the plain text. Where there is text on a Pdf page, the text does not naturally flow from one bunch of words to the next like in a Word document. Instead the text is displayed in text box chucks with x and y coordinates to position each text chunk on the page. Text extraction, like using pdfminer, estimates what the next flowing bit of text is, based on these x, y coordinates. This can be good and it can be wrong sometimes too.

I am experimenting with displaying a pdf, within the Qt graphics interface that is used by QualCoder. This uses pdfminer, so I work within the limitations of pdfminer and my limitations of re-interpreting a pdf and using pdfminer. The intention is to allow some text coding directly using a mouse with the pdf.

So far, pdf rendering is adequate I think, to be able to perform text coding.

There are quite a few limitations regarding displaying the graphics – Images and Polygon shapes. Pdfminer does not find all the images on a page and some images appear to be like photo negatives. Often images have a mask to display a portion of the image and not the full image – I cannot work this out yet. Other problems I have come across, is the order of displaying items, particularly, lines, rectangles, curves and images when overlapping. Curves are polygons which require extra instructions to display correctly. I have selected one font to display text as using Pdf fonts is not possible for now. Also, each character within a text box can have its own formatting (colour, size, emphasis), so most of this is ignored and formatting is estimated for the entire text chunk.

This is an example pdf page with a lot of graphics (images, lines ,rectangles, and curve objects). My experimentation with pdfminer is on the right, the original is on the left..

Below is an example of a primarily text filled pdf. The rendering is a lot more similar to the original. The image on the right is my experimentation and the image on the left is the original. At the bottom of the image you can see I added some check boxes to show or hide some of these additional objects (text, lines, rectangles, curves, images) that are rendered on the page.

Next I am trying to select text. The approach for now is to drag the mouse over an area to select the individual text boxes that make up the text portions of the pdf. Then try to match those with the plain text import of the pdf. This will be a first approach to then apply coding to the text of those selected text boxes.

Hello,

This short video from Van Tran shows how to install the QualCoder software on macOS. I appreciate these videos, ad I (the developer do no have a mac to test or show these things.

https://temple.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=db149143-5c05-41d6-9b6c-b02e01181171&start=1.73274

The librarian at the Uppasala University Library in Sweden has posted some videos showing how to use QualCoder in the Swedish language.

https://libguides.ub.uu.se/databearbetning/kvalitativ/analys

Thank you to Malin.

A big thank you to Alexios Brailas, Elena Tragou and Konstantinos Papachristopoulos who published an article about QualCoder in the American Journal of Qualitative Research, 2023, Vol. 7 No. 3, pp. 19-31.

https://www.ajqr.org/download/introduction-to-qualitative-data-analysis-and-coding-with-qualcoder-13230.pdf

The authors note that QualCoder is a reliable tool for beginner and advanced researchers.

The latest release of QualCoder is now available. There are binaries for Windows 10/11 and Ubuntu 22.

https://github.com/ccbogel/QualCoder/releases/tag/3.3

The changes are detailed below:

Main

Import a codes list from a plain text file. One code name per line. No categories are applied.

Accessibility

Throughout – added more key shortcuts. Under Help there is an option to display all the key shortcuts.
The colour selector shows how code colours can be seen with different types of colour impaired vision.
Under Coding menu there is a new window called Colour scheme. This allows a range of selected colours to be applied to a range of codes. This area also shows how the colours may be seen by people with different types of colour impairment.

Manage files

Can hide columns by right-click on the table header row for options to hide that column or to hide columns beginning with specific text. Or to show columns where the column name starts with specific text.
Can assign a file to a case via right-click menu when in the cases column.
Can right-click on a URL in an attribute and open the URL with the default web browser.
Faster table filling.

Twitter data

Import twitter data from a fully quoted csv file.
Example file in Examples folder.
Requires these exact column names: id and full_text headers for tweet data and screen_name for user data.
Additional tweet fields can be these exact column names:
created_at, coordinates, retweet_count, favorite_count, lang
Additional user fields can be:
location, url, description, followers_count, friends_count, listed_count, favourites_count, statuses_count

The twitter import page also has an example of how to use R with RTweet to extract tweet data. This was tested and worked before twitter applied a fee for service. Note that currently there is a cost associated with accessing twitter data. I cannot give advice on any problems you may have getting twitter data.

The tweet data is loaded into individual database files (Manage Files), The user data is loaded into cases (Manage cases). Multiple tweets (stored as files are assigned to the matching user (case).

Manage cases

Faster table filling
Can hide columns by right-click on the table header row for options to hide that column or to hide columns beginning with specific text. Or to show columns starting with a text value.
Can order by case name or by attribute value, ascending or descending.
Can hide rows by right-click menu and selecting a text value that equals or ‘is like’ some chosen text.

Case file manager

Some improved functions in this dialog include a check box to hide assigned files. The right hand side text edit will fill with any file text when the file is selected in the left hand side table.

Journals

Some markdown is enacted to make viewing journal entries nicer:
#, ##, ### for heading levels
text for bolded text
text for italic text

Code text

‘in vivo’ coding added. Selected text becomes the code

Colour scheme

There is a new window for setting colour ranges to codes. It also has options to see the codes from difference colour vision perspectives.

Three theses published and one research article (In Swedish, Croatian and Czech):

VREDNOVANJE SLIKOVNOG SADRŽAJA U POVIJESNIM NOVINAMA NA PRIMJERU JASTREBARSKIH NOVINA (THE APPRAISAL OF VISUAL MATERIAL IN HISTORICAL NEWSPAPERS – A CASE STUDY OF JASTREBARSKE NOVINE). Tamara Štefanac. Vjesnik bibliotekara Hrvatske 65, 3(2022), 129–146 https://doi.org/10.30754/vbh.65.3.953

Hållbar utveckling och miljöundervisningstraditioner i läromedel för kursen fysik 1 på gymnasiet (Sustainable Development and Traditions within Environmental Education Learning Materials concerning the Upper-secondary Physics 1 Course). Simon Karlsson. Thesis. 2022. KTH, School of Industrial Engineering and Management (ITM). https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1697497/FULLTEXT01.pdf

PhET-simulering som ett hjälpmedel för elevers förståelse av det fysikaliska begreppet fjäderkraft (PhET-simulation as a tool for student to help them understand the concept of Hooks law). Marzieh Karlsson. Thesis. 2022 (available from April 2023). Stockholms Universitet. https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1736162/FULLTEXT01.pdf

STEREOTYPY A IDENTIFIKACE V KONTEXTU BDSM (Stereotypes and identification in the context of BDSM). Radka Výborná. Bachelor Thesis. 2023. Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci. https://theses.cz/id/hhj4pb/VYBORNA_Stereotypy_a_identifikace_v_kontextu_BDSM.pdf

I failed installing RQDA on Debian 11, but I was able to install QualCoder to do qualitative analysis of text and imgages. It is also Free-Open Source, but it does not run in R but with Python virtual environment. So far I have liked it more than Atlas.ti web version (which, in addition, is paid)

Fracasé instalando RQDA en Debian 11, pero pude instalar QualCoder para hacer análisis cualitativo de text e imgagen. También es Free-Open Source, pero no corre en R sino con Python virtual environment. Hasta ahora me ha gustado más que Atlas.ti versión web (que, además, es de paga)

Thank you to Van Tran, social sciences librarian from Temple University, Philadelphia, for creating this detailed instructional video using the upcoming 3.3 version.

See under this heading:

Temple Libraries QualCoder Workshop using QualCoder 3.3 Codes

https://guides.temple.edu/qda/qualcoder