Kwalitan 5
Vincent Peters, Department of Research Methodology, University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands

General description

In the last decade, the interest for the analysis of so called qualitative data material has grown considerably. An increasing number of researcher in an increasing number of disciplines have to analyse the answers of open, unstructured interviews, documents and reports, articles in newspapers, diaries and journals, and so on. But the qualitative, interpretative analysis is not restricted to written material, it also extends to objects like paintings, pictures and video fragments. Kwalitan is a program that supports the researcher in doing this kind of analysis. It takes care of an efficient storage of the data and offers several features to analyse the qualitative material, like coding, retrieving, categorisation of codes, overviews of codes or words in the text, keywords in context and writing memos. With the help of Kwalitan you can analyse text, pictures, audio fragments and video fragments.



Coding
In order to understand what the qualitative material is all about, the researcher assigns codes to the material. With the help of these codes the researcher describes what is important to him/her in the content of the material. To each segment you can assign up to 50 codes in order to specify what the text is about or what your interpretations of the material are. Codes can be ascribed to the entire segment, but codes can also be linked to specific parts of the segment, i.e. text fragments. Most coding is done by hand, but Kwalitan also has a tool for assigning codes automatically to segments.

Retrieving
During the qualitative analysis it is important that you can select specific parts of the qualitative material. If you want to analyse all segments that deal with a specific topic, you have to select the concerning segments. Kwalitan offers a tool for making this kinds of selections, the so called filter. This filter has eight different keys for selecting text segments, like codes assigned to a segment, words occurring in the text, and characteristics of the document. In case you want to select segments on several codes, these codes can be combined by using the logical operators 'or', 'and' and 'not'.



Analysis of codes
As mentioned before, codes are an important tool for the researcher in order to get grip of the qualitative material. In Kwalitan there are several tools that enable you to analyse the codes you use. One tool is the overview of codes, that gives you insight in what codes you have invented and assigned and how often they occur. Two important tools for categorizing the codes are the so called categories, in which you bring together codes that refer to the same concept, and the hierarchical tree structure, in which codes are ordered in a parent-child fashion; this tree structure accommodates for six levels.



Analysis of words
Another way to perform a qualitative analysis is the analysis of the words that are in the text. In order to answer research questions by using words, you might need an overview of the words in the text together with their frequencies. Kwalitan generates this kind of list for you. In addition you can generate your own word list, containing words that are relevant and important in relation to your research questions. Kwalitan can tell you how often these words occurs in all segments, or in specific parts of the material. In addition Kwalitan can generate the so called 'key word in context' overview, in which each occurrence of a word is displayed accompanied by a small or larger context.



Preparing the material for further analyses
In case you want to continue the qualitative analysis with some more quantitative analyses, Kwalitan offers the possibility of creating several data matrices that can be used in other computer programs. In these data matrices it is for instance specified how often each code (or word) occurs in each segment or document, or how often each code (or word) occurs together with other codes (words).

Memos
In qualitative analysis it is very important to keep track of all codes you invent, of the definitions of these codes and other relevant concepts, of the decisions you take during the analysis process and of the theoretical framework and the way it develops during the analysis. Kwalitan offers the possibility of writing and maintaining memos. By default Kwalitan distinguishes between five different types of memos, but you can make and use your own classification of memo types.

Some other features of Kwalitan

• there are practically no restrictions concerning the number of documents, the number of segment, and the number of codes you use
• you can enter the texts that have to be analysed in five different ways into the database of Kwalitan (referred to as the project)
• you can easily change the way a document is divided into segments, by joining two segments or by dividing one segment into two segments; in addition you can make segments overlap each other
• Kwalitan has extended facilities for printing the results of the analyses
• Kwalitan has an easy to use, extended help system.