LibGuides: Research Methods Information : Data Analysis Software

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Getting Data from PDFs and Images

Converting PDFs and Images into Data
From the Data Cleaning LibGuide from the University of Illinois - Urbana, University Library.
How to Import a Table from PDF into Excel
From The Economics Network, University of Bristol (UK).

Using Statistics | INFO

See the USING STATISTICS page on this guide for more info on specfic methods, turtorials, etc.

What is Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis (CAQDAS) Software?

Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis software (CAQDAS) has been around for quite a while, and has assisted researchers in analyzing primarily text-based documents and storing that analysis in a findable and interactive manner. CAQDAS can help researchers to "code," or identify the occurrence of, various conceptual themes present across a corpus of documents in order to bring them together and pull insight from them.

Social Psychologists may use a CAQDAS platform to code the responses to interviews, both in text as well as audio, or graduate students may use it to read and keep track of their thoughts for a literature review. The uses are wide and the data management capabilities are many. NOTE: Some are free, others are expensive, and what they offer can vary widely.

Note sure what CAQDAS software to use?

Choosing an Appropriate CAQDAS Package
This page, from the University of Surrey (UK), compares the various CAQDAS programs and is a good place to see where each of these programs really differ from each other.

Qualitative Data Analysis Software | Free

Listed below are some good examples of high performance CAQDAS platforms that are offered free of charge. Some have graphical user interfaces (GUI) and others do not. Some investigation will be required to determine what will best suite your needs. Note that two of these free programs, Aquad and RQDA, make use of the powerful statisical analysis package R. While there is only a plug-in for Aquad, you will need to install R to use RQDA. R is free to download and supported by a vast user community.

Please see the Introduction to R LibGuide (at the University of Ilinois, University Library) for more information on getting started with R.

Aquad
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.
Coding Analysis Toolkit (CAT)
CAT was designed to utilize keystrokes rather than the mouse as a coding assistant. CAT can import an ATLAS.ti project to parse quantitatively, though it has a coding mechanism built into itself as well. CAT won the Best Research Software award from the Information Technology & Politics in the American Political Science Association in 2008. CAT is Web based.
Compendium
Compendium models itself as an application to visualize the connections between information and ideas. It is very visually based and offers similar functionality as most CAQDAS platforms.
QDA Miner Lite
A "lite" version of the proprietary software, QDA Miner Lite has a slightly limited functionality. You can still perform the basic functions of the full version but don't have some of the more advanced options. You can see all the differences side by side comparison: http://provalisresearch.com/products/qualitative-data-analysis-software/freeware/compare-versions/
RQDA
RQDA is another package from the exciting R Project, a statistical analysis platform that has developed a constantly growing community of users and developers that is designing all sorts of software for use in data analysis. What a plugin to such a power statistics program means is that implementing quantitative data to your project will be seamless and effective.
Weft QDA
Weft was a project by a student who was fed up with the pricing of many of the proprietary software providers. Weft provides solid coding capabilities of text in addition to full text search using Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT). There is no visualization capabilites. Unfortuneately, Weft has been abandoned, so there is no support from the developers. Probably best used by researchers only looking to analyze text.

Qualitative Data Analysis Software | Proprietary ($)

Listed below are some of the more popular proprietary ($) CAQDAS platforms. Which OS platform the program is based on is listed, though MAC users should note that there aren't many options for high performance CAQDAS platforms yet, though NVivo and Max QDA have MAC versions in the works, expected to be available late 2013.

ATLAS.ti
Features include intuitive interface, data management, coding, memos and comments, hyperlinking, visualization, advanced concept searching, survey import, optimized for teamwork. PC based. Educational discount available.
Introduction to ATLAS.ti | INFO
Libguide created by the University of Illinois - Urbana Scholarly Commons for ATLAS.ti.
Dedoose
Dedoose is a web based CAQDAS application. Features include intuitive user interface, visualizations of your data, tracking of data usage throughout project, as well as high level coding tree structure. Web based, not platform specific.
Max QDA
Features include text analysis, data management, import of variables and survey data, coding, memos, mixed-methods analysis, optimized for teamwork. PC based, MAC version coming late 2013. Educational discount available.
NVvivo10
Features include text analysis, multilingual interface, interface is designed similarly to Microsoft Office Suite, advanced text searching, multiple output formats, import web pages and social media datasets. PC based, with MAC version expected late 2013. Educational license available.
QDA Miner
Features include text management, coding, text retrieval and coding analysis, multilingual interface, optimized for teamwork, easy to save output in variety of formats. PC based. Educational license available.

Data Cleaning Software

These are tools to correct and clean up data, typically spreadsheets, and get them ready for further processing. They can do things like correct spelling, remove extraneous characters or even change the order and structure of a data table.

Data Wrangler | Must Have Google Chrome Installed
With Data Wrangler, you select locations in cells and the program suggests possible actions that are written in plain English. You pick the action you want and the program then does it. You can modify any action as well as chose type of action such as "split", "extract", "merge", "fold" and so on. The list of actions that have been done is always displayed and can be edited.

NOTE: The Wrangler research project is complete, and the software is no longer actively supported. The team behind Wrangler has moved on to work on a commercial venture, Trifacta.
Data Wrangler | INFO
LibGuide - Info Page from the University of Illinois-Urbana, University Library.
Google-refine / Freebase Gridworks
In Google-refine (V2.1), you use "text filters" and "text facets" to restrict what data is visible. When only the data you want to change is displayed, you create an action which changes that data. The filters and facets are then cleared to display all of the data including what was changed.
Google-refine / Freebase Gridworks | INFO
LibGuide - Info Page from the University of Illinois-Urbana, University Library.

Quantitative Data Analysis Software | FREE

OpenStat
OpenStat is a general-purpose statistics package that you can download and install for free. It was originally written as an aid in the teaching of statistics to students enrolled in a social science program. It has been expanded to provide procedures useful in a wide variety of disciplines. It has a similar interface to SPSS
PAST
PAST is a package created with the palaeontologist in mind but has been adopted by users in other disciplines. It’s easy to use and includes a large selection of common statistical, plotting and modelling functions
PSPP
PSPP is a program for statistical analysis of sampled data. It is a free replacement for the proprietary program SPSS, and appears very similar to it with a few exceptions
SOFA
A basic, user-friendly, open-source statistics, analysis, and reporting package
The R Project for Statistical Computing
A free software environment for statistical computing and graphics that runs on a wide variety of UNIX platforms, Windows and MacOS

Quantitative Data Analysis Software | Proprietary ($)

Minitab
A general-purpose statistical software package designed for easy interactive use. Educational license available.
SPSS
Statistical Package for Social Science, is the most popular quantitative analysis software program used in social science research. It is comprehensive and flexible and can be used with almost any type of file. It can be used to generate tabulated reports, charts, and plots of distributions and trends, as well as generate descriptive statistics and more complex statistical analyses. Educational license available.
STATA
An interactive data analysis program that runs on a variety of platforms. It can be used for both simple and complex statistical analyses. STATA uses a point-and-click interface as well as command syntax, which makes it easy to use. STATA also make it easy to generate graphs and plots of data and results. Educational license available.

Data Managment Info

"Data management is the process involved in creating, obtaining, transforming, sharing, protecting, documenting and preserving data." (Kelle O'Neal of BeyeNetwork)

See the Data Managment page on this guide for more info on the planning, creating, storing, organising, accessing, sharing, describing, publishing and curating of data.

Image & intro text credit: Research Data Management. Curtin Library of Curtin University, Perth, West Australia