CAQDAS is an acronym for Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software. There are diverse opinions among practitioners in the field about the utility of such specialized software for qualitative data management and analysis. The software, unlike statistical computation, does not actually analyze data for you at higher conceptual levels. Software packages serve as a repository for your data that enable you to code them, and they can perform such functions as calculate the number of times a particular word or phrase appears in the data corpus (a particularly useful function for content analysis), and can display selected facets after coding, such as possible interrelationships.

Certainly, basic software such as Microsoft Word and Excel provide utilities that can store and, with some pre-formatting and strategic entry, organize qualitative data to enable the researcher’s analytic review. A few Internet addresses are listed below to explore these CAQDAS packages and obtain demonstration/trial software and tutorials. Several of these software companies have uploaded short films about their products and features on YouTube (search for the clips by product name). Also check The CAQDAS Networking Project website supported by the University of Surrey, which provides bibliographies, conference information, working papers, links, and additional resources at: https://www.surrey.ac.uk/computer-assisted-qualitative-data-analysis

AQUAD

AQUAD 7 is available as a free software download. With AQUAD 7 you can process the following data types: Texts of any kind (e.g. interaction transcripts, letters, documents), audio files (e.g. interview recordings), video files (e.g. observations), pictures (e.g. photos, drawings).

ATLAS.ti 

ATLAS.ti is a workbench for the qualitative analysis of large bodies of textual, graphical, audio and video data. The software is available for the Cloud, Windows, Mac, and selected devices.

CAT

CAT, an acronym for Coding Analysis Toolkit, is a free and open-source text analysis service. Users can load, code, and annotate text data in teams, measure inter-rater reliability, and adjudicate differences between coders.

Dedoose

Dedoose is a web-based, cross-platform app for analyzing qualitative and mixed methods research with text, photos, audio, videos, spreadsheet data, and more. The software has been called “intuitive” by several of its users, and Dedoose can be used by teams for collaborative work.

Delve

Delve is an elegant software program designed primarily for interview and focus group transcript analysis through coding and collaboration.

DiscoverText

DiscoverText offers a range of simple to advanced cloud-based software tools for users to evaluate large amounts of text data.

HyperRESEARCH

HyperRESEARCH is available for Windows and Mac. The software facilitates code-and-retrieve, memo writing, and theory building aspects of qualitative data analysis with various formats of data. The company also handles the program HyperTRANSCRIBE.

INTERACT

Mangold INTERACT is designed for qualitative and quantitative video content analysis. The company also provides recording hardware and systems for eye tracking.

MAXQDA

MAXQDA, for Windows and Mac, is a software package for qualitative and mixed methods research. It enables analysis with texts, images, audio/video files, websites, tweets, focus group discussions, survey responses, and more.

Narralizer

Narralizer, for Windows, enables researchers to conduct analyses of qualitative and textual data, to construct narrative descriptions, and to maintain bibliographic and literature review data.

Noldus

Noldus offers a wide range of software, systems, and services for observational research on animal and human behavior.

NVivo

NVivo software, for Windows and Mac, can import data from virtually any source, and enables the analysis with advanced management, query, and visualization tools.

Q-Notes

Q-Notes is a qualitative research program developed to help researchers manage and analyze data from cognitive interviewing studies. The software provides a grounded approach to the development of analytic codes and themes.

QDA Miner

QDA Miner is a qualitative data analysis software package for coding, annotating, retrieving and analyzing small and large collections of documents and images.

Quirkos

Quirkos, for Windows, Mac, Android, and Linux, is designed with an elegant set of flexible, colourful features, rather than the complex scripts of other systems. Quirkos works best with modest data sets.

Transana

Transana integrates video, audio, text, and image data in a single analysis. Designed for media files, Transana also provides transcript and video syncing, and a media conversion tool.

V-Note

V-Note is designed for video-based qualitative and quantitative research. The software enables the creation and management of multiple timelines to label and organize video segments.

Vosaic

Vosaic provides tools for recording, annotating, and marking up video. The software is designed and marketed for evaluation research.

webQDA

webQDA is a qualitative, web-based data analysis software program that enables the collaborative analysis of text, images, videos, audio, tables, PDF files, YouTube videos, etc.

Weft QDA

Weft QDA, for Windows and Linux, is a free and open-source tool for the analysis of textual data such as interview transcripts, fieldnotes and other documents.

WordStat

WordStat is content analysis and text mining software for processing large amounts of text data. The program can import from Word, Excel, HTML, SPSS, Stata, NVivo, PDFs, social media, emails, and web survey platforms.