Qualitative Data Analysis Resources

This list of resources provides information and guidance for researchers interested in conducting qualitative data analysis using open source software. These free tools are an excellent option for researchers who want to prevent getting stuck in a paid platform, who might have budgetary constraints or simply want to have access to high quality free software. There are a variety of these types of software packages, and these curated resources are intended to help with choosing and using them for your research.

AQUAD is a platform developed in Germany (you will have to translate the website, which is also in German) that supports text of any kind, audio, video and image files. There is a plugin available to use with R, the open source statistical analysis software. See the R for QDA section above for details on that.

CATMA (Computer Aided Textual Markup and Analysis) is a free, open source markup and analysis tool from the University of Hamburg's Department of Languages, Literature and Media. It incorporates three interactive modules, a tagger enabling textual markup and markup editing, an analyzer incorporating a query language and predefined functions and a query builder that allows users to construct queries from combinations of pre-defined questions while allowing for manual modification for more specific questions. It also interfaces with the Voyant toolset. 

Tutorials
 

The HyperRESEARCH cross-platform software for qualitative analysis is designed to aid you in any project involving analysis of qualitative data. It's easy to use, powerful and flexible - which means that no matter how you want to approach your data, the software will allow you to "do it your way." The intuitive interface and well-written documentation – and especially the step-by-step tutorials -- help get you up and running with your own data quickly and easily.

There is a Free Limited Edition available under the "Free Limited Edition of HyperRESEARCH Installers" section on this page.  The Free Limited Edition is suitable for teaching the basics of qualitative research without requiring students to purchase the full package. The Free Limited Edition also acts as a "free reader," able to open a HyperRESEARCH study of any size for review and analysis. You can also use the Free Edition to explore HyperRESEARCH's capabilities to determine if it is the right software for your needs. The Free Edition is fully functional, with the following limits:

  • The Code Book is limited to 30 codes.
  • A study is limited to 3 cases.
  • Each case can have no more than 30 code references.

OTranscribe is a free, open-source and web browser based tool for transcribing audio and video. You can upload media and use the tool to create citations. See the help pages for information.

 

QCAmap is an open access web application for systematic text analysis in scientific projects based on the techniques of qualitative content analysis (Mayring, 2022). QCAmap can be used within research projects to analyze small and large amounts of any text material and images coming from interviews, group discussions, observation protocols, documents, open-ended questionnaire items and others. To access more info on QCAMap

With particular strengths for mixed and multi-method qualitative research in R, q coder is an excellent choice for researchers looking for a light-weight qualitative package for text analysis. By clicking here, you will be able to access instructions on how to install and use this package. Click here for a how-to guide to creating a qcoder project.  

QDA Miner Lite is a free easy-to-use version of a popular qualitative research software package.  It can be used for the analysis of textual data such as interviews, open-ended responses, transcripts, field notes, etc. as well as the analysis of still images.

  • Import documents from a variety of formats including Word, HTML, PDF, plain text, CSV and Excel.
  • Intuitive coding using codes organized in a tree structure.
  • Add comments or memos to coded segments.
  • Text search tool for retrieving and coding text segments
  • Coding frequency analysis
  • Export tables to Excel, Word or CSV.

Usage resources

Qigga is aQDA and reference manager software originally developed at Cambridge University and now continued as open source on GitHub. You can read about features on the Cambridge site but you'll need to download it from GitHub. It is perfect for annotating your PDFs, for reviewing your work and for creating bibliographies almost instantly. It helps you identify, tag and categorize them so that you do not have to go searching through and re-reading your research to find the piece you require. Secondly, it allows you to search through your research by using keywords, citations and authors. Thirdly, it can present all the pieces you need to add into your bibliography on a single page, from which you may create a pre-formatted and styled bibliography with the click of a button. Fourthly, the files you add and research are categorized in a way that shows you what you can and what you should research next. It is almost as if the tool is suggesting what you should research next based on your categories and what others you have researched. Not for the technically faint-hearted.

QualCoder: is a free desktop application for QDA that can be used to code Text, Images and Audio Visual materials. This program is most similar to our supported proprietary software, allowing for advanced case management, data management and analytical tools. 

QualCoder resources:

QualCoder 2.7 Settings Files Cases Journals

R is an open-source and flexible programming language that can be used for all kinds of data analysis, data visualization, text mining and even document creation. University of Illinois Research Data Librarian Sandi Caldrone offered an introduction to using R for text analysis in the Getting Started in R for QDA workshop. For anyone interested in using R for qualitative or liberal arts research, this workshop will show you how to get started in R with absolutely no coding experience necessary. Because R requires installing (totally free) software, please plan to attend this workshop with the computer you intend to use R on going forward. Click here to access and download R for QDA.

Open Sources Intelligence/ Investigations, refers broadly to any type of research or investigation that can legally be collected for readily available public information. For many researchers and practitioners this primarily means online sources such as social media, blogs, etc., however this can include any source of publicly available information. Often, OSINT requires the blending of a variety of disciplinary methods from computer science, journalism, sociology, law, etc. and is used widely to document abuses of human rights, monitor disinformation campaigns, study and promote social justice and accountability. Below are resources and tutorials to provide an introduction to OSINT tools and methods.

A spin on the phrase "tag it!", Taguette is a free and open source qualitative research tool (which works on all operating systems!). With Taguette, users can import PDFs, Word Docs (.docx), Text files (.txt), HTML, EPUB, MOBI, Open Documents (.odt), and Rich Text Files (.rtf).

After uploading documents, users can highlight words, sentences or paragraphs and tag them with the codes you create. All the work you do in Taguette is completely exportable, including tagged documents, codebooks, highlights for a specific tag, highlights for all tags and a list of tags with their descriptions.

Users can upload documents in any language to Taguette. The interface is currently available in English (US), French, German, Italian and Spanish. You can find more information about using Taguette via the getting started guide and FAQ.

You can install Taguette on your own computer with instructions and files from https://taguette.org/install.html.

If you need to collaborate on your qualitative project, you can use the free online server maintained by the developers of Taguette at https://app.taguette.org.

TAMS Analyzer is a free open source qualitative coding and analysis program for the MAC. TAMS stands for Text Analysis Markup System.  Use TAMS Analyzer to assign codes to passages of a text.  Just select the relevant text and double click a code you have added to a code list. You can then extract, analyze and save coded information. TAMS Analyzer is written to run on a MAC.  It does not run on a PC.

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