My Analysis of Analysis Tools

After last night's demonstrations of QDAminer and Transana, I'm feeling even more grateful that I was able to get Atlas.ti to work on my Mac.  I was simply not impressed with QDAminer.  A fellow classmate summed up my feelings with her analogy of comparing Notepad to Word.  They essentially perform similar functions, but Word is just more efficient.  That's exactly how I feel when comparing QDAminer to Atlas.ti.  I just feel like Atlas.ti provides more functionality for the kinds of things I'm hoping to get out of analysis software.  As for Transana, the jury's still out until at least Monday, I suppose.  It was really interesting to see the demo of what Transana can do with video, but I can't see how that will apply to my research agenda right now.  I do think Transana could be helpful for me in analyzing my audio data, but I'm not sure I'm thrilled with how the coding process is done.  I really like that Atlas.ti does not function under the assumption that everyone will be inputting a priori codes.  And, while I realize that there are ways to get around that particular function in both QDAminer and Transana, I'm just not sure it's worth the time or effort to work through all that if I can basically get what I need in Atlas.ti.  So, I'm willing to play around a bit more with Transana, but I am leaning towards Atlas.ti being my best investment of time and money for the time being.

Last night's conversation about this week's readings also have me thinking more deeply about writing up a methodology section for the course.  It was really helpful to think/talk about the analysis process in class, especially in light of using software to aid in the process.  I'm a bit nervous about writing this up because I'm still so new to the software, but I've been working on my analysis in Atlas.ti off and on all day today, so I'm hoping that as I become more comfortable with the software, I will be able to be more explicit in writing about my methods.