As I am in the midst of my dissertation data analysis, I keep thinking that there has to be an easier way to do the data analysis than to cut and paste coded data (using the tracking and comment function of word) to do my data analysis. The problem is that I need to maintain a certain degree of privacy in my data analysis as per the IRB (Institutional Research Board) at our school. While I have access to data analysis programs at the university, I can't use them securely.
So after reading Michael Hanley's series on open source elearning, I began to wonder if perhaps there are some open source free research tools. Why do qualitative research tools cost so much? And why aren't universities trying to develop free research tools for others to improve the quality of research?
2 comments:
Oh the pain.. I remember it well. Sorry V! I physically cut out emerging themes and distributed hundreds of colour coded strips around my tiny apartment.This worked best for me at the time but there must be open source software that you could install locally.
That's what I'm doing now. I have index cards for the emerging themes as it was too difficult to keep track of in the comments section. I then took the index cards and moved them around to create the emerging themes and correlate them to the codes. It's just so time consuming and I want to finish my dissertation before my kids start College!
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