Advancing Qualitative Research Using Qualitative Data Analysis Software (QDAS)? Reviewing Potential Versus Practice in Published Studies using ATLAS.ti and NVivo, 1994–2013

Abstract

Qualitative data analysis software (QDAS) programs are well-established research tools, but little is known about how researchers use them. This article reports the results of a content analysis of 763 empirical articles, published in the Scopus database between 1994 and 2013, which explored how researchers use the ATLAS.ti™ and NVivo™ QDAS programs.* The analysis specifically investigated who is using these tools (in terms of subject discipline and author country of origin), and how they are being used to support research (in terms of type of data, type of study, and phase of the research process that QDAS were used to support). The study found that the number of articles reporting QDAS is increasing each year, and that the majority of studies using ATLAS.ti™ and NVivo™ were published in health sciences journals by authors from the United Kingdom, United States, Netherlands, Canada, and Australia. Researchers used QDAS to support a variety of research designs and most commonly used the programs to support analyses of data gathered through interviews, focus groups, documents, field notes, and open-ended survey questions. Although QDAS can support multiple phases of the research process, the study found the vast majority of researchers are using it for data management and analysis, with fewer using it for data collection/creation or to visually display their methods and findings. This article concludes with some discussion of the extent to which QDAS users appear to have leveraged the potential of these programs to support new approaches to research.

The “values journey” of nursing and midwifery students selected using multiple mini interviews; year two findings

“…Focus groups were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. NVivo (version 11) was employed for in-depth text analysis and cross-referencing between year one and year two data sets, (Woods, Paulus, Atkins, & Macklin, 2015) initially by the second author; subsequently checked by the first author.…”

The ‘values journey’ of nursing and midwifery students selected using multiple mini interviews; Year One findings

“…Focus groups were audio recorded, transcribed and uploaded into Nvivo (version 10) for in-depth text analysis and cross referencing between focus groups (Woods, Paulus, Atkins, & Macklin, 2015). A three-stage hybrid approach (Fereday & Muir-Cochrane, 2006) was employed, Table 2.…”

Uso de software de datos cualitativos como instrumento para aplicar un análisis de contenido en el proceso de modelización de un personaje de ficción

“…A pesar de que la literatura ha expresado las oportunidades y limitaciones de esta herramienta, sigue sin haber la suficiente claridad sobre cómo las QDA se aplican en los estudios cualitativos (Paulus et al, 2017;Woods et al, 2016). Algunos académicos han examinado qué tipo de análisis pueden abordarse y la comparación entre varias soluciones informáticas (Evers et al, 2011;Hutchison et al, 2010), pero no se sabe mucho sobre cómo y para qué se usan.…”