A Windows Software Tool for Qualitative Research [Version 2; Referees: 2 Approved] Ehsan Abdekhodaie 1, Javad Hatami1, Hadi Bahrami Ehsan1, Reza Kormi-Nouri2
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F1000Research 2018, 7:536 Last updated: 12 SEP 2018 SOFTWARE TOOL ARTICLE WordCommentsAnalyzer: A windows software tool for qualitative research [version 2; referees: 2 approved] Ehsan Abdekhodaie 1, Javad Hatami1, Hadi Bahrami Ehsan1, Reza Kormi-Nouri2 1Department of Psychology, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran 2Center for Health and Medical Psychology, Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden v2 First published: 03 May 2018, 7:536 (doi: 10.12688/f1000research.14819.1) Open Peer Review Latest published: 04 Sep 2018, 7:536 (doi: 10.12688/f1000research.14819.2) Referee Status: Abstract There is a lack of free software that provides a professional and smooth experience in text editing and markup for qualitative data analysis. Word Invited Referees processing software like Microsoft Word provides a good editing experience, 1 2 allowing the researcher to effortlessly add comments to text portions. However, organizing the keywords and categories in the comments can become a more difficult task when the amount of data increases. We present version 2 report WordCommentsAnalyzer, a software tool that is written in C# using .NET published Framework and OpenXml, which helps a qualitative researcher to organize 04 Sep 2018 codes when using Microsoft Word as the primary text markup software. WordCommentsAnalyzer provides an effective user interface to count codes, to version 1 organize codes in a code hierarchy, and to see various data extracts belonging published report report 03 May 2018 to each code. It also offers basic visualization tools. We illustrate how to use this software by conducting a preliminary content analysis on Tweets with the #successfulaging hashtag. We also demonstrate that the software has 1 Ronggui Huang, Fudan University, China satisfactory performance on a large dataset of Iranian journals abstracts. We hope this open-source software will facilitate qualitative data analysis by 2 Yazdan Mansourian , Charles Sturt researchers who are interested in using Word for this purpose. University, Australia Keywords Computer assisted qualitative data analysis software, Microsoft Word, Discuss this article comments, coding, thematic analysis, code hierarchy tree Comments (0) Corresponding author: Javad Hatami ([email protected]) Author roles: Abdekhodaie E: Software, Writing – Original Draft Preparation; Hatami J: Methodology, Supervision; Bahrami Ehsan H: Methodology, Supervision; Kormi-Nouri R: Supervision Competing interests: No competing interests were disclosed. Grant information: The author(s) declared that no grants were involved in supporting this work. Copyright: © 2018 Abdekhodaie E et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. How to cite this article: Abdekhodaie E, Hatami J, Bahrami Ehsan H and Kormi-Nouri R. WordCommentsAnalyzer: A windows software tool for qualitative research [version 2; referees: 2 approved] F1000Research 2018, 7:536 (doi: 10.12688/f1000research.14819.2) First published: 03 May 2018, 7:536 (doi: 10.12688/f1000research.14819.1) Page 1 of 15 F1000Research 2018, 7:536 Last updated: 12 SEP 2018 automate organization of the qualitative codes through a fast REVISE D Amendments from Version 1 and easy-to-learn graphical user interface (GUI) while coding Updates in the software: the textual material using Microsoft Word as professional, - Many tweaks in analysis code to improve the software familiar word-processing software. performance on large datasets. - We added visualization tools: Code Co-Occurrence Matrix and Methods File Code Matrix. Implementation - We added search and move features in the code hierarchy. This software is written in C# programming language - We added capability to drag and drop codes from the code list using .NET Framework 4.5.2. The software also makes use or code hierarchy into other software. of OpenXml library to extract comments from Word docu- ments. Recent versions of Word store documents in XML for- Updates in the manuscript: mat. OpenXml provides an easy way to query comments from - We added a few citations to make the introduction more recent a document. To facilitate assigning multiple codes to a piece of and more convincing. text, we assume a simple convention: different codes are entered - We amended new features illustration to Use case 1 (with two in a comment with line breaks between them (as the descend- additional Figures) ant paragraphs of the comment element). The software uses - We amended a distinct use case for performance of software on a relational model approach to store the extracted codes and a large dataset of Persian/Arabic text. uses language integrated queries to collect different text portions - We amended a Table and discussion about comparison of the related to each code, to calculate the code frequencies and to sort WordCommentsAnalyzer capabilities with other QDA tools. the codes by frequency. The main visual interface of the program - We revised the conclusion so that it better summarizes the consists of three side-by-side panels (Figure 1). The left panel points made in the article. shows the codes in the comments with their counts, the middle See referee reports one provides a code tree that the user can intuitively organ- ize their codes in and the right panel shows the data extracts pertaining to each code. In the left panel, the code list can be fil- Introduction tered to find specific codes. The user can place codes in the code Commercial qualitative data analysis (QDA) software tools hierarchy simply by using drag-and-drop. The tree also allows such as NVivo, MAXQDA and Atlas.ti seem to be the most for moving codes in the hierarchy if needed. The user popular in the qualitative research community1,2, especially in can introduce a new parent code or a code that is of a higher health research. For example, a study found that 763 published level of abstraction. Additionally, the codes are changed or articles in the Scopus database (between 1994 and 2013) used combined by being wrapped in new codes. The code hierarchy Atlas.ti and NVivo in their work, and that the majority of these tree is saved as a tab-indented text file in the data folder (code- studies were published in health sciences journals3. However, hierarchy.txt). The tree is auto-saved every minute and can also be learning to use these complex software tools may be inconven- manually saved by clicking Save button. The previous tree files ient for some researchers. In fact, research has shown that learners are backed up in a subfolder of the data folder. When a collec- of complex qualitative tools often struggle with confusions, frus- tion of codes develops after coding several documents, the user trations, and feelings of inadequacy4. Moreover, using com- can drag and drop the codes into the word-processing software plex QDA software may create a feeling for the researcher that to avoid memorizing them. In addition to organization tools they are forced to work within the software structures5. available in the GUI, the software offers two visualization Besides, the purchase of commercial QDA software may not tools: Code Co-Occurrence Matrix visualizes the number be affordable for some researchers. On the other hand, free or of co-occurrences of sets of two codes in the data and File Code open-source solutions that are available often do not provide a Matrix visualizes the number of occurrences of each code per smooth editing and markup experience (e.g., QDA Miner Lite Word document. does not support Persian and Arabic languages; CATMA and CAT6 are not fast due to their web-based nature). For these Operation reasons, some researchers use professional word-processing The requirements for this software are Windows 7 or later and programs for their qualitative research projects. .NET Framework 4.5.2. After installing the .NET Framework, the user can unzip the latest release package from the GitHub The use of Microsoft Word for QDA is commonly link and run the “WordCommentsAnalyzer.exe” executable file. documented7,8. Using Word comments provides a straightfor- The program supports XML Word documents (using the .docx ward way to annotate specific portions of the text and attach extension). Older Word documents (using the .doc extension) keywords or categories (codes) to them. However, as the can be easily converted to XML documents by Word 2003 or amount of data grows, organizing codes in Word comments later (there are also resources available on the web to batch- becomes an exhausting task. convert older Word documents). The program allows multiple Word files to be analyzed. This feature can be utilized to sepa- In this article, we present WordCommentsAnalyzer, a free, rate transcripts of different interview or focus group sessions open-source tool that allows qualitative researchers to into different files. Page 2 of 15 F1000Research 2018, 7:536 Last updated: 12 SEP 2018 Figure 1. An illustration of the three side-by-side panels of the WordCommentsAnalyzer graphical user interface (GUI). The left panel shows the codes in the comments with their counts, the middle panel provides a code tree for intuitive organization of the codes and the right panel shows the data extracts pertaining to each code (or to children of a parent code). The code list in the left panel can be filtered to find specific codes. The user can place codes in the code hierarchy simply by using drag-and-drop. The tree also enables the user to move codes in the hierarchy if needed. The user can introduce a new parent code. The codes are changed or combined by being wrapped in new codes. Use case 1 As the number of codes in the code hierarchy increases, To illustrate how to use the software, we first present a mini- moving or reorganizing codes becomes cumbersome, particu- study of Twitter’s Tweets from 17 January 2017 to 10 April larly when the user intends to move a code to another distant 2018.