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TA_3-10 User Manual

1. TA works very hard to keep the source document and result document in step at least as far as the location of the listed result passages are If you manually type in the source window all bets are off TA will lose track of where the coded passages are The best thing to do is to lock out those functions that will put TA out of synch between source document windows and results windows To do that pick Project gt Reanalysis mode Pick it again to turn it off To mark records rows for adding codes or recoding select a row and pick Results gt Marked records gt Mark That will add a sign after the record number your signal that this record is marked You can unmark records by picking Results gt Recode gt Unmark speaker 1 Sam 2 Sam 3 Mary Figure 38 A marked record notice the sign by the 1 NOTE In reanalysis mode the only things you are allowed to do in your document windows are double click code code using the code button which you can set up to prompt for comments and delete code pairs These steps will keep open results windows in synch with the document windows C Adding codes Adding codes simply surrounds passage associated with the marked records with an additional code the original code is not affected After marking records See VI B you want to add a code to pick Results gt Recode gt Add codes You will get a dialog like this TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 55
2. Here I am recoding the first speaker s comment giving it a more negative spin by defining a new code veggie gt very gt bad PII click the lower OK since I m filling in the lower information and voila the code will be changed WARNING You could possibly see codes disappear from your results window since they may no longer meet the search criteria Also see the next section for warnings about bad side effects from adding and recoding data E Problems with Adding and Recoding TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 57 Adding and recoding can make a mess of codes The general problem is that you can land up with a nested situation which doesn t make sense to TAMS or anyone else If the original was a This is b some text that a will be recoded b and we recode b to a we ll have a This is a some text that a will be recoded a Basically TA will have no idea that the second a is there or which a it goes with it will stop looking And that second a will give all sorts of problems in any case You may not get an error but you ll get unexpected results The answer check the syntax by running Check for nested from the Coding menu Check often F Updating your results This is redundant with what has been said elsewhere but if you see a results window with a check by the Refresh button it means one of the documents that feed this results window has changed Clicking the Refresh button sho
3. from 13 You will still need to pick a comparison operator from menu 7 and fill in a value into field 8 3 At this point pick OK and the results will appear in an outline format Click the triangle The level 1 to see the records come matched records from the base set The level 2 records are the matched records from the comparison l set i t t F TT KIN rpeaker tade narrative y2 Xander 0 01 53 xan er narrative 1 Mander 0 01 53 xancer capacity 2 Xander 0 03 30 xander Capacity 4 Mander 0 03 30 xance capacity Figure 30 Results of Select Near 4 At this point you will want to get back to the table view of your results TA3 will not allow you to do any thing other than view results and export them from the outline view There are three different ways to toggle back and forth between table and outline views A Use the Results gt Switch data view menu item TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 50 B Use the quick toggle button on the info bar It will switch from O outline and T table to indicate which view you are currently in ev Penis A Data view toggle button It 2 SY also indicates which view you are currently seeing Rmv from sel Tags onoutiine tateble o r now tried to ask her administration Id have been real quick on nuclear Y and they re still learning the and wi el g level was like middle school if M le set a _data _comme narra
4. gt 3 3 _ Unlimited iveggie gt bad l hate carrots veggie gt bad they re stupid ve me speaker code _t 1 veggie gt bad 2 Sam veggie gt bad 3 Mary veggies Figure 35 Unlimited results from the mock interview TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 53 Here the first row is selected you can see the text for that record in the browser above Now click on Find record and you ll be taken back to that first record with it selected Ip F Ip l3 ls Is repeat speaker speaker Sam speaker veggies lend speaker Mary speaker veggies They re not stupid and they re not fruits they re an important source of vitamin A Vveggies lend Figure 36 Find record takes us back to the original text NOTE This is an important tool for examining context This takes you back to your source document and scrolls to the original text jave Workbench Find record Refresh Sort 3 3 V Unlimited ite carrots veggie gt bad they re stupid veggie gt bad Figure 37 The result refresh button and a check indicating a changed document file You can use the Refresh to re synch your results and your original documents TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 54 B Marking results An alternative to manual recoding is to have the program go through and change or add codes to for you This involves marking the records you want to change and then picking Results gt Recode gt Add code or Results gt Recode gt Recode
5. inner X short for innerrepeat designates a code already declared as a repeat code should be treated as if it had a endsection before it Warning inner cancels last and vice versa Synonyms first innerrepeat innerrepeat X See inner last X short for lastrepeat designates that existing repeat code X will always be the last repeat for a section and that the next occurrence of any repeat code after X should be treated as having endsection before it Warning inner cancels ast and vice versa Synonym lastrepeat lastrepeat X See last map X gt Y A gt B specifies that instances of repeat value X should be put in the column called Y mapped into Y values of repeat value A should be put in the column called B X Y A and B must all be designated as repeat values Y and B TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 71 should be repeats at the beginning of your search list so that columns are created for them name X creates or assigns a universal code called FileName to value X noemptysection specifies that empty searches should only be returned for end s not endsections noheader specifies that result files should not produce a header row when saved as text noquote specifies that quotes should be converted to escape characters noskipinneratend overrides the default behavior in which after an lend or endsection metatag the first encountered occurrence of the inner
6. 1 _ A a AA T a B a o TA addCode recode Existing code alj Code to add sound gt pig B C OK New code Name a Co Color M Use inherited color Definition Cancel Figure 39 The Add code dialog box You have two ways to go here you can pick a code that exists from the menu and press the top OK button or you can type in a new code into the Name field and its definition and press the lower OK This may take some time it s doing complex cutting and pasting and then refreshing of the window WARNING See problems section for bad things that can happen when you add codes D Recoding Recoding is trickier for TA than adding codes This goes through and actually replaces the codes and includes comments that the original id ol ol ol ol ol ol TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 56 codes had Note that you cannot recode based on any search that involves an and i e or is not simple So be warned As with adding codes you are presented with a dialog that either allows you to pick from existing codes or substitute a new one to the code file a so ees se a Save Workbench Find record Refresh Sort Select all Select addCode recode ial Existing code Recode to veggie gt bad HA OK New code Name veggie gt very gt bad OK Color M Use inherited color Definition hates veggies with a passion Cancel Figure 40 A filled in Recode dialog box
7. animal your search would be veggie animal Or you could look for sections that have both codes in them veggiet animal Notice that AND and OR mean different things in this context If a section has both codes in it even if they do not apply to the same passage of text that section 1 e an area ending with a end metatag will be shown in the results window Similarly for OR if either code appears in that section of text that section will be copied into the results WARNING Because inner and last implies that endsection rather than end as a break point TA may not TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 36 return the data you want Normally TA looks only for end s To make TA aware of endsections Go to TAMS Analyzer gt Preferences and under the searching tab make sure Report empty searches for each endsection is checked 3 String searches and Regex searches In addition to searching for codes TA provides two mechanisms for searching for raw text in your documents Entering a string of characters into the search field and conducting a string search will return all occurrences of that string defaults to case insensitive check the exact box to make it case sensitive Furthermore the browser will show not just the string but a little bit of context for the string how much is determined by a preference option Regex string searches use the regular expression support to search for text With this yo
8. s name Once you have code sets defined there are two ways to get information about code sets First with your workbench as the front window you can get lists of which codes comprise your code sets by picking Reports gt Code set definitions From the dialogue it pops up you can click on the code sets you are interested in and then click Refresh to see a report of the code set names followed by the codes that comprise them If you want to have the definitions for codes provided as well click the definitions check box before hitting refresh TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 21 Note To get a report of your codes and definitions use the Code set definitions dialogue but leave all code set names unselected before clicking the Refresh button For a more graphic image of how codes are related to code sets and code sets are related to each other through the codes they share use the Reports gt Graph code sets with the workbench in front Dot graphs are is discussed in section VII in great detail Just know here that your options include a map like a concept map of codes to code set or code sets to each other indicating which codes overlap showing all of the codes or only the non overlapped codes in the boxes representing the code sets and matching codes to code sets exactly or non exactly See section VII for more details on these reports Code sets are not just a convenience feature Many elements are linked to code set
9. Grouping your data in code sets and getting a count The simplest analysis you can do is to simply see how a selection of results records map onto the code sets you ve defined This is done by picking Results gt Code Sets gt Group by code set This will clear away any Select near analysis you have done and show you an outline with each code set represented at level 1 and matched records underneath at level 2 _code _data gender 1 marked and nec 4 1 narrative narrative ho M 2 capacity fcapacity try M 3 capacity fcapacity i m M 4 capacity gt negative capacity gt ne M P2 positive reason 6 E3 45 reasons 1 4 negative reason 4 Figure 52 The results of Group by code set The name of the code set is placed in the code column and a count of how many records are matched with that code set is placed in data In figure 41 I ve moved dragged the columns so that _code and data are first for instructional purposes You may find you have to scroll over to find your code and _data columns Note that these results can all be moved to other programs or saved through the Files gt Export data operation Just make sure that the outline view is showing By default codes are matched with code sets non exactly meaning a gt b is matched with a code set if it has code a You can force an exact match by selecting Results gt Sort options gt Case sensitive C Counting the r
10. _coder Export format Tab separated E _doc _begin_loc Between columns 2 2 Between rows Exit Export Figure 51 The export data dialogue You have a variety of options you can either export the selected records or all the records have it escape returns tabs and other characters that can cause problems in excel strip the selections of tags and export to the clipboard or save to disk In addition you can separate the columns with tabs commas returns or your own delimiters use t and n to indicate tab and new space if you enter your own VIII Analysis of Code Sets A Using code sets as an analytic tool At late stages of analysis often codes are not good enough to serve alone as defining the categories you are interested in tracking The real dependent variables you are tracking will probably exist in a variety of code families rather than in one genetic tree Code sets were designed to provide cross code family analysis Until TA3 1 there was no easy way to get counts of the relationship between code sets and other data categories Here I will briefly discuss the several key means of mining code set relation information from your data grouping by code set and graphing code sets While this section should really have followed section VI the fact is that it uses a lot of the ideas introduced in VII so I am concluding this manual with a discussion of using code sets TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 63 B
11. analysis Once you have searched the list of files in the search list you will be looking at a results window something like this TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 38 e080 E tempResult B3F304E1 BB12 11D9 B16A 000D93COF7AC xtrs O y ie ABA Emr amp Be Be Customize Save Workbench Find record Refresh Sort Select all Select 7 7 Unlimited t setting gt ruralsound gt pig oink oink sound gt pig a verse _code _data _comment _coder _doc 1 iL sound gt pig setting gt rural sc oldh 2 1 sound gt pig setting gt rural s oldh 3 1 sound gt pig setting gt rural s oldh 4 1 setting gt rural setting gt ruraljOl oldh 5 2 sound gt cat setting gt rural s oldh 6 2 sound gt cat setting gt rural s oldh 7 2 setting gt rural setting gt rural Ol oldh lt gt Figure 21 A results window A results window is a browser for data It allows you to move through your data further search your data and even modify your source documents This section will talk about the first two of those ways of analyzing your data First let us note the anatomy of the results window The lower pane In the lower half of the results window you will see one row for each record returned by the search This row is broken into columns a column which just keeps count of the records that are showing a column for each universal code that applies to the data in that row a column for each repeat code that applies to the data in that
12. code the selected text e808 Sample rtf z KI nd fal Customize Save Workbench Edit i Search Iname YDEOOO aw NH NSH NS NS NA a Code to toolbar Def Ruler Select Code New Codes food gt parsley Fig 11 Coding After double clicking the choice in the Codes list on the left side of the window this will look like this TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 15 e080 Sample rtf as eS LEA fi Customize Save Workbench Edit Search Iname Sample rtf 4 food gt parsley mgw hate parsley food gt parsley 5 mgw a i ee OOOOOG _ SB Code to toolbar Def Ruler Select Code y New food gt parsley Codes food gt parsley Figure 12 After coding Notice that the text is still selected so you could keep applying codes to this section of text ADVANCED When you have a lot of codes it s convenient to have a couple of frequently used ones on the tool bar To put a code there select a code from the code list click on it one time and press Code to toolbar REALLY ADVANCED TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 16 What if you want the button bar to come up each time with certain codes Put a metatag at the top of your document that lists the codes you want on the button bar you can also have text and insert vertical bars as well button food gt parsley end The first time you type this in you will
13. correctly if your document is structured On the other hand unstructured documents are TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 27 very easy to work with and initially will give the results you want in most circumstances Context codes set the environmental conditions for subsequent data codes through your documents If you are updating TA you might want to turn off this new default unstructured behavior Easily done Put the metatag struct in your init file or on top of each interview if you don t have an init file What is the structure of a document Often qualitative documents have a sort of natural syntax interviews have speakers field notes have time coded passages etc One reason I created TAMS was so that there was a way to have associated information the name of the speaker the time code of the field notes included with the results of queries into the data To take advantage of these natural sections the first thing you will need to do and TA offers few tools to help with this is mark the ends of these natural sections with end metatags or endsection metatags see IV C Manual structuring You can manually structure your document by putting end metatags after each natural break in your document After a person speaks at the end of a time coded passage or at the end of a newspaper article for instance After an end TA2 will forget who is talking and what time it is etc so you Il need to have context tags indica
14. files interviews memos etc use the menu items on the Project menu not the ones on the File menu or the buttons above the file list NOTE If you are upgrading from TAMS 1 to TAMS 2 pick Convert ver prefs to project files from the Project menu This will create a TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 8 series of TAMS project files on your desktop You are not quite done however When you load the file you need to move the codes and definitions from the central code file to the project file Select the code file from the Files list view Then pick Import codes and defs from code file from the project menu and save the project file You now have upgraded your project to TAMS 2 D Converting from TAMS 2 to TAMS 3 To facilitate moving to the new directory structure TAMS has a new conversion menu item to help create the directory structure and move the files into the proper folders To convert from earlier 2 x versions of TAMS do the following 1 Save the project in a new empty folder as an XML TAMS Project file The program will say something about saving as absolute paths just click Ok 2 Pick Project gt Convert gt Convert to ver 3 directory structure 3 You will then be walked through a number of steps First creates the directories then it tries copying the files into the directories assuming files are not already there Question Found 11 files not in data directory Add them Yes No Remove J S
15. line connecting the code sets More complex images can be generated from result files In result files Graph data reports represent the connection between different columns think of the columns as variables The lines connecting the values in the columns show the frequency count TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 61 _code IN Figure 50 A graph of the _code and speaker columns of a result file The shape and arrows of both whole levels and individual values at ach level can be individually specified See the Dot Graph Output How To for more instructions on producing these type of graphical reports G Exporting data Most reports including counts and summary reports can be saved at text Actually it is saving the files as tab delimited text so that these files can be dropped right on Excel or FileMaker and opened You can also copy and paste data not the reports to other programs using the File gt Export Data dialogue This dialogue provides powerful flexibility in terms of moving data to other programs either through a file or through the clipboard The dialogue takes the current selection only and allows you to rearrange the column order dragging the column names into different locations and select which columns you want exported TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 62 Export Columns v Selected records only a verse _ Export records with escape characters b code Gaal j p _ Tags ata E v Export to clipboard _comment
16. need to pick Build button bar from the Coding menu or you could close and reopen the file This example will create 2 buttons separated by a vertical bar The left button will be a coding button that will code selections food gt parsley The other button will insert end when clicked Note that this second button has quotes around it They signal that this is not a code This weird syntax with the is explained in I E below For full documentation of the document toolbar see the tool bar HOW TO in the how to folder D Working with tags and codes To help you work with tags TA provides some very simple tools to select and move tags around as well as to delete tag pairs and leap from the open tag to the close tag of the pair and vice versa These are all on the Coding menu I wont walk you through them they should be pretty obvious The one practical piece of knowledge that I will share is that I often find the need to move the end tag of a pair to a different location after I find that the next paragraph should also have been included No problem Click in the end tag pick Find current code from the Coding menu This will select the tag Now drag it to its new location E Using the Define Codes Tab of the Workbench TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 17 e080 P OldMacD xtprj Info Files Search Define codes Code sets Memo Mail Codes setting gt rural Name _ setting gt rural sound gt cat sound gt pig Col
17. preference panel item checked Note 1 The Select button allows you to type in other patterns of characters and add matching codes to the current hot code list Note 2 If you hit select or hit return with the code field empty you will see all of your codes Note 3 To refine your hot code list use the menu options under Coding gt Select codes menu item TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 23 Lode dennition oT selected text Back 8 Set comment for selected text Select Select within Select more Remove from selection Generate code list Integrate with central code list Bookmarks p gt Toolbar p Select all Turn selection to code set Insert date time y Check code definitions Figure 17 The hot code set menu The group of four items under Back allow you to select from the total pool of codes refine the selection you have add from the total pool of codes to the hot code list and remove items from the hot code list The Back menu item restores the last hot code list you made and then as many previous ones as you have allotted with the preference panel item which indicates how many previous hot code lists to save The second to last item Turn selection to code set allows you to turn your hot code list into a proper code set You ll be prompted for a name under which to save it The last item is a toggle which lets you indicate whether or not TA3 should check the code definitions as
18. repeat value is not treated as having an endsection before it Using this metatag treats the first occurrence after an lend as having an endsection in front of it noskipinnertopofdoc overrides the default behavior in which the first time the inner repeat code is encountered at the start of the document it is not treated as having an endsection in front of it nozapuniversal specifies that universals should not be cleared at end of file repeat X used to indicate that code X is designated a repeat code Synonyms context contextcode setcomment X appends comment X to the comments provided in all subsequent end tags Using this metatag with no value i e setcomment clears the comment This also replaces any previously established comment created with setcomment or lappendcomment with X setrepeat X Y sets existing repeat code X to value Y if X does not exist it creates it skipinneratend reasserts the default behavior in which after encountering a end or endsection the next occurrence of the inner repeat code is not treated as having an endsection before it All subsequent occurrences in the document are treated as having an endsection before it TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 72 skipinnertopofdoc reasserts default behavior in which the first occurrence of the inner repeat code is not treated as having an endsection before it All subsequent occurrences in the document are treate
19. report at end or endsection Show coder Should the coder be reported when examining a raw search EOF is same as end Should the end of a file be treated as if it had an implied end there Evaluate repeat variables If checked coded passages that cross an end boundary are evaluated in the last section other wise they are evaluated at the first section that the coded passage includes Universal variables zapped Should universal variables carry their value from document to document or be cleared Include repeat variables If checked repeats are treated just as normal data codes when doing a non simple search Use old Mac new line When doing a save to of result files should the program use OSX file new lines or older style new line characters if you are exporting to programs that are run in classic you probably need this checked Export result file format This sets the character set of data being exported when a result file is saved with save to type text Number of characters This sets how much context should be given when doing a string search Recognize Should V be taken as itself or as an escape character Scan for line numbers If you use the line number and wrap feature you should have TA scan for line numbers adds a line number to the first line of results Unmark Should marked records be unmarked after doing a recode or addcode Update results Should TA a
20. sets Memo Mail f W A f A fs _ New Open Remove Import is Sets Holder Files Init File Search List Add gt Addall gt gt ans A AD lt Remove lt gt lt lt Remove all Checkin gt o Check out gt Init file Path mode R Figure 3 The file tab of the work bench The file tab provides the interface for adding new data files to the project Here are some ways of putting together a project A Case 1 the files already exist If you have already typed in your interviews save them as RTF documents Click the small Import button over the Files list view on the left side of the project window and use the standard open file dialog to select the files you want to add The files will be copied into the project s data directory and then appear in the File list They will not be open You can add text txt RTF and RTFD rtf and rtfd files to your workbench Extensions are necessary for TAMS to know if it can open the files TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 6 New Open Remove Import Sets Holder Files in mgw oldMacD rtf CA Adc emisia Vv lt R lt lt R Chi 1 Che Init file Path mode R Figure 4 File added to a project B Case 2 creating data files in TA When you create new files in TA you will be saving them as RTF files by default You can also save them as text files or rtfds by picking the file type f
21. steps involved in that selection to be your autoset press Add history the sequence of steps you have just done in area 3 You may need to modify what appears in area 4 using areas 1 2 and 3 and removing wrong steps using the button in area 4 To create an autoset from scratch you start in area 1 see Figure 14 by indicating whether the steps you indicate should start with all of the result records no matter what is currently showing or with a current selection If you have used the Results gt Sort up and Results gt Sort down to organize your data TA can remember this sort order and automatically sort your data before applying the next actions to it To the base established in step 1 you can add two types of steps first you can apply selections through the menus and fields in area 2 Alternatively you can do set operations using other autosets through area 3 In either case once you ve filled in the information through the TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 45 menus fields and check boxes click add step to have this operation registered in the autoset If you don t click Add step the act will not be registered Area 4 is where these steps show up In area 4 you can rearrange the order of steps using the and v arrows you can delete one step click on it and press the button or all steps press the button Once the steps are in place decide if you want this auto set available project wide If
22. that comes up with manage file sets They are identical Inter rater reliability TAMS can calculate the interrater reliability as both a percent and as kappa This requires the construction of special test files that two coders will attempt See the Inter rater reliability information folder in the How To folder in the docs folder Line number documents TA can wrap and line number your interviews and field notes to help discussions of particular lines Make sure you turn on the Scan for line numbers option in the results so that line number information is included in results Shareable project format By default TA is not shareable between machines If after initially saving your project you change the project type to Same folder or relative keeping all of your files either in a single folder or in the same file tree respectively the project will be shareable If a colleague gives you a project folder that can t seem to find its files then move all files to a single folder and change the project type to Same folder close and reopen the project These options are in the Project gt Preferences menu option not the usual preferences Multiple coders There is support for codes being signed by different coders searches can be coder specific The signature is specified in the preference panel Searches can be done for specific coders One can even do searches that amount show me passages of veggie coded by MGW and
23. the second ALL DATA will be reported with time 112 The 110 never gets registered because it is changed in line 10 before the data is written in line 15 Even the food gt parsley code in line 8 will say time 112 The answer to the problem is to put a speaker before line 8 so that when time is found in line 10 the data is written or put an endsection metatag on line 9 context time speaker last speaker time 100 time speaker bob speaker a food s good a time 110 time OANA UU BPWNE speaker bob speaker food gt parsley I like parsley food gt parsley 10 time 112 time 12 speaker bob speaker food gt parsley it really cleans my 13 breath food gt parsley 15 time 115 time The moral Automation is useful in fact necessary but dangerous Make sure that every intended section has as its last repeat value the one listed in last filling it in if necessary You may need to hand enter TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 30 endsection s to cover those places that don t fit the pattern Also see inner in the Metatag appendix appendix 3 C end vs endsection To reiterate these are used when manually structuring a document When TAMS hits an end tag it clears all the repeats that it has found None of the values will carry forward from the previous part of the document Using endsection rather than end is one answer to this It keeps the last values so that if only a few change in the ne
24. the workbench I will only discuss workbench searches in this document 1 A simple walk though TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 31 To search from the workbench first put together your search list This is done in the Files tab of the workbench Practically this means moving files over by selecting them from the file list the left side of the files tab clicking the Add and Remove buttons to move them onto the right hand search list Once you have your file list assembled click the search tab and fill in the codes you are looking for separated by commas into the field marked Search and hit the button labeled search When asked for a file name just click the Ok button That s actually enough to get you going l i Si Search codel code on 3 4 Cle Coder IDs l Ade wi Raw _ Empty _ Exact a Simple HA Codes disease Hae eae Figure 19 Searching for 2 codes B The unlimited search This simply refers to searching without putting in a code into the search field of the search tab just leaving it blank Hitting the search button will return a record for every coded passage in your document That means the following will generate two results records veggie food gt parsley I like eating things with parsley veggie food gt parsley One for veggie and one for food gt parsley even though the data will be almost identical This is coded twice and it will provide two results in an unlim
25. using the tilde in a search Searching for m will return all coder s whose name begins with m Or searching for food m will return all passages coded as food by anyone whose name starts with m or was unsigned Again this is not done in the Coder IDs field but in the Search field itself H Saving for Excel and databases When you have results you may want to export them to a database TA produces very nice tab delimited files readable pretty much straight away by Excel and other databases Just pick Save To and pick Text from the File format menu on the save dialogue BEWARE If you re using a classic environment database yov ll need to pick Use old Mac new line character for results from the preferences menu before you do a search BEWARE Panorama database stops reading things at the end of quotes Put the following metatag at the top of your documents noquote This will turn quotes into Q for double quotes and q for single quotes Alternative The easiest and most flexible way to get results data to other programs is through the File gt Export data dialogue Here you are given all sort of options for how to delimit fields and records You can drag the field names around to change the order of the exported data and then select the fields you want shift click or apple click to extend the selection Data can be exported to the clipboard or to a file this way VII From results to
26. well as the code names Note that all of these same functions are duplicated under the search tab of the workbench TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 24 Hot code set a fed set f Sset Esel 0 Remove Selall l gt Code set v Search code definitions Sets w Figure 18 Creating a hot code set from the workbench Note that lt is the equivalent of the back menu option gt Code set turns the current hot code set into a permanent one Advanced user note The searches that are used to compose hot code lists are regular expressions This allows you to use the full range of regular expression technologies in making your selection For instance if you want to find all codes with fruit or vegetable in part of the name and definition enter fruit vegetable The vertical bar above the key is the or function in regular expressions The searches are case insensitive and use the multiline mode provided by AGRegex this assures that and work to mark the beginning and end of a line so that you can find codes that start with a by typing in a or that end with a by typing a I Problems coding There are a number of problems with coding that can crop up and TA provides two tools to help you catch these problems 1 Broken up codes sometimes the mouse slips and tags can end up in tags setting gt ru sound gt cat ral Here sound gt cat has accidentally been inserted
27. 5 67 Appendix 2 Working with large projects TA has a large variety of tools to help researchers manage large numbers of files and data I hope in this section to just point them out and give some tips I will not be doing much in the way of hand holding Named searches The first tool for large projects is the possibility of saving and restoring different search lists This way you can just by picking an item off of a menu pull up a search list that just has memos for instance The search list menu is just above the search list To save the current search list and init file just press the button above the search list on the work bench You will be prompted for a name To restore a saved search list just pick it from the menu above the search list To delete a searchlist first select it from the menu and then press the button You can clear the search list of all search lists by pressing the button The init file Perhaps the most important element for multiple file searches Conceptually the idea is simple The init file is simple a file with commands metatags that you want designated as the start of a search It is just the first file searched To indicate which is your init file just select the file from the file list on the work bench and press the button marked Init File The init file is subsequently listed at the bottom of the work bench There are five tags that I usually will put into an init file a button co
28. I talked about Repeat metatag rather than the context I find the word context more descriptive of what this does and have edited this section and the tams code base to reflect that Note that repeat is still supported context speaker If you have time code information you could also add that like this context speaker time code and so on But see the next section for problems that could arise B Breaking a document into sections Initially starting with TA 2 47 TA starts by assuming that your documents are unstructured Actually this is only true if you have a new installation Check the default by going to the TAMS Analyzer Preferences and looking under the Search tab for the Documents treated as unstructured check box If it is checked then the assumption unless you use one of the triggering metatags will be that the document has not been structured else it will assume it has By structuring a document you enable additional features of TA especially the section search Using this search you can ask questions like which turns in my interview with Bob involved the code food and the code parsley If your document is unstructured TA will not know what a turn is in your document A search will return either the entire interview if it had those 2 codes in it or any coded passages meeting the criteria depending on how you have set up your program preferences Similarly empty searches will only work
29. TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 1 TAMS Analyzer 3 1 User Guide Revision 8 This documentation is really just to get people started and give them an overview of what is necessarily a complex system This is not comprehensive documentation However after many complaints I ve been convinced that the existing and out of date documentation needs to be supplemented Contact information Dr Matthew Weinstein Assoc Professor of Science Ed Kent State University 404D White Hall KSU Kent OH 44242 mweinste kent edu http www personal kent edu mweinste http tamsys sourceforge net aim allemandel3ft I What is TAMS Analyzer TAMS Analyzer TA is a software program for coding and analyzing qualitative textual information such as interviews observations field notes and other textual documents A TAMS The analysis of a document is done by you the reader ethnographer in this program TA just keeps track of actually embeds the information you indicate You read the document select sections and indicate what such a selection represents TAMS stands for text analysis mark up system It s sort of HTML ish or XML ish but it is very distinctive People have asked why I m not using XML and my initial response is that multiple independent ways that we qual researchers have to analyze texts doesn t work easily with XML which for instance doesn t allow overlapped sections To just make clear that I am not using XML or a
30. ach comparison record may be assigned to multiple base records To understand this complex new function I want to work through the Ist example above Here it is diagramed with its different parts TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 47 cup qitin Syanute df each ocourrence of code Fr Wag Figure 28 Sample Query 1 To turn this into a TAMS operation first select the records that you want to take as the base of the Select near operation This is determined by the part of the question I ve marked as C the each occurrence of code Y To do this select the code column and do a simple selection for code Y Note select near will work with any selection it doesn t have to be the code column It can be as complex a selection of records as you like 2 Pick Select near from the results menu It will provide you with this sheet TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 48 Before am after a Comore specific field _coder fey nteger H Figure 29 Index to the parts of Select near dialogue A Since we are looking for code X pick code in the Match box menu land then pick X from the lower menu Menu 2 This matches the A part of the diagrammed query above B Presumably we want the comparison set to be with all of the records in the result file If so pick All records from menu 3 Alternatively you can use the current selection or a particular results set In the latter case pick the r
31. ally means adding another layer of subtlety to your codes First time through you may have just wanted to catch any mention of veggies So you coded anything that seemed slightly relevant veggies Then you want to see what people are saying about vegetables so after searching for veggies you ll want to change those codes to veggies gt good veggies gt bad veggies gt whatever I refer to this process as reanalysis and it involves recoding your data which fits the example I just gave and adding codes to your data A Finding the results in the text The first way you could do revise your initial codes is manually To go back to the original place in the text from a result window click on the record row you want to look at in the original context and then just click the Find record button and the coded text in the original document will pop up Consider this section of a mock interview TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 52 structK context speaker 4 speaker Sam speaker veggie gt bad hate carrots veggie gt bad they re stupid veggie gt bad fruits veggie gt bad Sam is r silly me lend speaker Mary speaker veggies They re not stupid and they re not fruits they re an important source of vitamin A veggies lend Figure 34 A mock interview If you do an unlimited search you should get a results window like the following Customize i Save Workbench Find record Refr
32. and dirty ascending sort for the selected column not the best way to sort in TA however Find record will take you back to the document window and select the text connected with the currently selected row of the lower pane This is the best way to go back and see the context of that particular row s data Refresh re runs the search in case the source document has changed You ll be tipped off that such changes have occurred by a check mark next to the count of how many records This count is displayed as a fraction with the numerator representing how many records are visible and the denominator providing a total count of records in the search As you select records from the search a string next to the checkbox will change to give you some record of the records you are currently browsing here we see the word Unlimited meaning that this is an unlimited search A Selecting data Often clicking the search button is only the first step in exploring the meaning of data Having pulled up the records related to veggies we now want to find out what did Bob say about veggies What or how many passages about veggies included the word carrot Did any of those also include rutabaga What records under veggie have neither rutabaga or carrot TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 40 To answer these questions we need to do complex searches of our result window The result window is really a fairly complete flat file database i e a database pr
33. are selected TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 42 We now want to further whittle down the data to be only the ones where people used the word carrot To do this we simply do another Results gt Select after clicking on the data column where the coded text resides Each time we select data we are working only with the records showing not with the entire count of records returned from the work bench search So in this case we will pick the data column by clicking on the title data and picking Results gt Select a second time and press OK Now only records that met criteria in both selections will be visible we have selected veggie in the code column and carrot in the _data column Logical ORs in selecting records What if we wanted records that were either coded veggie or fruit If we select veggie the fist time the way we ve already described we will have all the records coded veggie To add to this the records coded fruit we select the code column and pick Results gt Select additional This will give us the same dialogue box to type in fruit but instead of selecting from the shown records TA goes back to the whole pool of records and adds the ones meeting this new condition to those shown Naming a selection TA is very big on sets meaning subsets of lists of things It supports working with code sets subsets of all your codes so you don t have to scr
34. d as having an endsection before it struct Indicates that a document or document part is structured i e is broken up using end endsection last or inner Important for conducting section searches universal X Y creates or assigns an existing universal code X and assigns it value Y unstruct indicates that there is no structuring elements Program treats each close tag as though it had an endsection immediately after it Section searches are pretty much meaningless This is the default state of the tams interpreter zapmap Clears the map of all entries zapuniversal specifies that universals should be cleared at the end of each file TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 73 Appendix 4 Preferences Coding preferences Prompt for new code definition Should TA ask you for a code definition when you enter a new code i e press the new button on the document window Use time date stamp in new code definition Should TA prefix a new code definition with a cryptic time date stamp Take the code by double clicking list Is double clicking the code list your preferred way to code data Turn off if you want it to take the code from the little box under the buttons on the document window fill in box and click code Code list reveals codes as tool tips a legacy from before TA used split views to accommodate long codes Codes appear as tool tips Slows down the system significantly Not recommended Use coder
35. elall J gt Code set Figure 6 Answering Yes here will copy not move the missing files to the data directory JE a You may be prompted if it can t find a file whether you want to remove the dead record from the project file If you say NO you can locate the file and drop it in the data directory If you say yes you can always find the file and import it later TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 9 Question Should check the media files could be slow Yes No b Remnve Sel all Cnrle cet Figure 7 Answering yes will go through each data file looking for the mediafile metatag If that file exists in that spot it will copy it into the media directory of your project If you have moved your media files it will not find them however You can still use your media file by dragging them to the media directory yourself The program always checks there for your media first even before the directory specified in the mediafile tag If you answer no no attempt will be made to suss out the media files locations If you have mp3 s or other media attached to your documents you probably will want to move them to the media directory c The program then report any files it could not find on the hard disk There s nothing to do here but click ok d The process then repeats itself with result files It starts by asking if you want to move result files to the results folder Question Found 23
36. elations between variables and code sets TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 64 More often you will want to see how the values of a repeat code are matched with your code sets Starting with TA3 1 there is a simple way to get information like this in two simple forms a table and a graph Once you have the selection of data you want to analyze this way simply pick Reports gt Graph code sets Note that this will first do a group by code set which will obliterate any Select near data you ve gathered The following dialogue will appear g Bh ttl ett Graph code sets co 76 Map fields to code sets al Code set options Code sets marked and neg negative reason positive reason real Field options Field Columns gender FileName time speaker _code _data Separator C Convert to lower case Edge options l Show count Arrows Both HJ Show report Show graph Exit Figure 53 Graph code sets Result window version At the top you can pick the code sets you want to study Below you pick the fields columns you want matched with those code sets Note that you can pick more than one field in which case the values of those fields are combined using the separator and all values will have to match to be counted This is useful if you want data separated by file for instance if a value crosses different files Note that the separator can use escape characters Use t for tab and n for return T
37. esults set from menu 4 C If we want only to match X and not its children select check box 5 if we want anything in the X family leave it unchecked D If we want the matching records only to come from the same source data file as the base record select box 6 If box 6 is unchecked comparison records from any file will be matched to the base set E If we want blank records to count as a numerical 0 check box 14 Otherwise leave unchecked and empty records will be thrown out of the analysis F According to our Query we want comparison records that are less than 5 minutes from their matching base records see part B of the query So for G we ll pick lt within is similar to less than from TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 49 menu 7 Fill in 5 in field 8 Pick minutes from menu 9 If we want those 5 minutes to be before or after the time in the base record pick Before and after from menu 10 otherwise select before the base record time or after as is appropriate Note that TA will pick the field to examine based on your choice in menu 9 For time units it will use the time field indicated in your program preferences for characters it will use _begin loc for line numbers it will use _line_number if you are scanning for line numbers and have used them in your source files To over ride these decisions use items 11 12 and 13 Check box 11 pick the field to search from menu 12 and indicate the type of data included in it
38. files not in result directory Add them Remove Sel all gt Code set Figure 8 Click yes to have these results files copied to the results folder e The program then asks if you want to remove lingering crufty useless data that it is holding onto about various files that it still has data structures for This is a good time to clean up the project file by saying yes to questions like TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 10 Question a gt b Result file all results test xtrs not found Remove from project Yes No Daman Figure 9 f Voila you are done You now have a TAMS Analyzer 3 project One thing you might want to do is to add this new project to your work menu and get rid of any old TA 2 XX projects from the work menu you have converted Il Coding A What is a code A code is a name that identifies the meaning or significance of a passage of text In TAMS the passage is surrounded by tags that have the code and other information with it Codes can be nested and overlapped without problem 1 Valid characters The names of codes can have letters numbers and underscores _ They cannot have spaces Codes can be hierarchical i e you can create a whole family of codes indicating the various levels with gt For instance to create a food family with carrot parsley and cilantro in it you would name the codes food gt carrot food gt parsley food gt cilantro carr
39. have a lot more than just the code they also include signatures and comments Advanced note You can also attach a comment to a region of your document that effects all codes within that region through the setcomment MYCOMMENT and endcomment MYCOMMENT metatags B Adding a new code TA makes it easy to add a new code First select the text that will be coded TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 13 Second just fill in the name of the new code in the box on the left side of a document window Do not hit return That does something very special in TAMS called creating a hot code list e Press the button marked New e a ard oe fl Customize Save Workbench Edit Search Iname Sample rtf Code to toolbar Def Ruler gt Select Code New gt put gt new gt code gt here Codes Figure 10 Entering new codes Then you ll be prompted for the definition of your new code and when you click ok and 1 your code and definition will be added to the code dictionary in the project workbench which you better save 2 added to the codes list under the box you typed in your code name into 3 as noted applied to the selected text TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 14 C Applying an existing code Now things get really easy If you already have the code in your list just select a passage and double click the code as it appears in the code list So in this example just double click food gt parsley to
40. he third part of this dialogue is for the graph output You can control how arrow heads appear and whether a count is shown over the arrow Note that the report which opens in your browser ignores these options TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 65 and provides a count In this example I ve picked both positive reasons and negative reasons from the top list and gender from the bottom list clicked show count and then clicked show graph to get this graph of the gender relationship between code sets positive and negative reasons positive reason negative reason Figure 54 Graph output from Graph code sets Result window version If I click on Show report I get the following table in my browser gender mapped to code sets gender positive reason negative reason me kp F B Figure 55 Report output from Graph code set Result window Good luck write if you have problems Matthew Weinstein mweinste kent edu http educ kent edu mweinste TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 66 Appendix 1 Types of codes TAMS works with three types of codes 1 universal codes which are generated for every results window record and hold their value through the whole document The syntax is as follows universal codename mydata I use since most documents don t use this At some point I will add an escape character so you can use without triggering a response by the processor A typical example w
41. ia that does not have the word within included This tells TA to forget all previous sorts and start again The menu items that include the word within add onto whatever sorts have been done So after the first time you sort use the within s to sort additional s What s important is that TA remembers the sorts done by the menu and can import the criteria for sorting into data summary reports and autosets If you use the sort button none of those criteria are available to the TA program TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 46 B Select Near Advanced topic warning Select near provides a hierarchical view of the data that groups records related to other records in an outline structure Select near allows users to answer questions such as What occurrences of code X occur within 5 minutes of each occurrence of code Y What occurrences of code set X are within 4 sections of the current selection In both of these model questions there are two sets a base set which is defined by the current record selection and a comparison set In the first question Y is the base set and X is the comparison set A set image of this relationship is suggested by the following Base record set selection Comparison record set SS SI C m cooo oo eS EAN ceo e no e Figure 27 Select near matches many records to the current selection It is clear here that each base can have many comparison records assigned to it and that e
42. id insert a coder id you provide it in the box as you code Scan init file Should TA scan the init file every time you open a document to see if there are button metacodes Color tags What is the default color for meta and code tags Automatically refresh tag colors Should TA automatically refresh the colors when a file is opened or other changes occur Could slow down your system You can manually uncolor and recolor tags from the coding menu Display comment dialogue for code button rather than manually typing comments into the end tag you can set this up so that when you single click a code and then use the code button you are given a dialogue box into which to put your comments Use HH MM SS format If checked insert time code and the display of media time will be in HH MM SS format If unchecked the program will use raw seconds for both insert time code and the display of media time in both the document and results windows Note this does not change your data from seconds to HH MM SS format Use the convert menu options on the Coding gt Audio Visual menu to transform your data to one format or the other TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 74 Searching Preferences Detached result sheets Should dialogue boxes float above all windows or be attached to them affects some not all dialogues Recommended Autoreload after Should the results window refresh after recoding or add coding Report empty Should an empty search
43. inside of setting gt rural This will not make any sense to TA If you pick Check for pairs this will select problem tags basically tags that don t seem to have an end or beginning The one it shows you probably is not the problem tag but it will be near the problem tag It is a clue as to where the problem is TA is saying that for some reason it can t find the other end TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 25 2 Incomplete codes Sometimes in working with a document a tag at one end or the other will get deleted The solution is the same as for problem 1 Choose Check for pairs off of the Coding menu A tag will be selected if there are problems i e if there are not an even of beginning and ending tags This is a clue to the problem for some reason TA did not find a match for this 3 Nested codes Sometimes the same codes can end up inside each other This might be represented by the following situation a Some text a that I m a trying to code a This is not the sort of nested code that works with TA It would be fine if the inner code was any code including a subcode of a if it were a gt b for instance or even if it was done by a different coder with a different signature The problem is that TA can t figure out where the passage ends and it will choose the shortest passage In this example the phrase trying to code is not seen by TA These problems can be found by picking Check for nested f
44. ited search this assumes simple is selected as the search type Note the tags do not have to be properly nested as this example shows the end tags and start tags could be in either order C Looking for particular codes TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 32 Of course more often you will want to look for particular codes From the workbench you just double click the code from the code list on the workbench and hit search You could also manually type them into the search field and hit the search button By the way searching for food will return the whole food family food food gt parsley etc If you want to find only food search for food That s a single quote and the word food This is called an exact search and you could alternatively do it through turning on the exact flag under the search as well Search disease Coder IDs ro I Ff M Raw _ Empty Exact Simple HH Codes disease Hot i children gt etiology gt other disease fear gt about gt disease Sets Uni Figure 20 Double click from the code list to enter a code into the search What if you want to find both food and its family OR things coded likes gt food which is part of the likes family You can search for food at any coding level by searching for gt food This indicates that it should look for food at all levels of the code TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 33 What if you wanted to find food moody good or neighborhood Y
45. k code sets l Code sets marked and neg negative reason positive reason real a to pa T Graph shared codes B In the code sets Don t include codes M Exact All codes rrr St Show graph Exit fF Figure 47 Graphing code sets Project window version TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 60 To generate a graph of the relationship of currently selected codes to code sets select the code sets you are interested in examining and pick Graph codes to code sets from the pull down menu That will produce a graph like this negative reason reason gt negative gt standards reason gt negative gt unreal Figure 48 Code to code set graph The ovals in figure 48 represent codes from the current code set the boxes represent the selected codes On the other hand to generate a graph between code sets pick from the first menu in figure 47 either Do not graph shared codes or Graph shared codes In addition you have options on what is included in the box representing the code set In this example I have included no codes in the boxes and am choosing to graph the shared codes reason gt equity reason gt equity gt gender reason gt equity gt learningStyle reason gt equity gt race reason gt equity gt reading reason gt ethics PEP reason gt nos positive reason 4s reasons Figure 49 Code set to code set graph In figure 49 the codes in common between the two code sets appear above the
46. l Sel Selall Selnone _ Exact Regex Codes setting gt rural sound gt cat sound gt pig verse Definition Figure 14 Code sets tab Alternatively you could create code sets by picking Manage code sets from the small menu next to the code list on the search tab This provides a dialogue that allows you to create subsets of code The procedure is to select the codes you want in the set by clicking or extending the list by shift and apple clicking the codes then name the code set by filling in the top blank of the form and register it with the button TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 20 Code Sets aaa rw an a ao T a wh i i Select C Regex Exact IN Select Sel Sel Sel none Sel all Codes veggie gt bad veggies LoL LILI Close Figure 15 The Code Set dialogue As an alternative to selecting the codes by hand you can use the search criteria to pick more or fewer codes This way you can select entire code families in a single go You can also revise code sets and delete them using the menu and the button The button on the dialogue deletes all current code sets On the code sets tab the button to delete the currently selected code set is marked delete Be careful Creating a code set does not select it You need to return to the code set menu on the file tab or the Project gt Code sets menu and select your code set
47. mmand which provides project wide code buttons for the document button bar an empty universal command which simply lists the universals in the order I want them to appear in results windows universal name city type At the top of each document I will have a universal with those values filled in in whatever order Third I will declare my repeat codes in the header repeat speaker time gender Fourth if I am using an inner or last repeat I will declare that value in the init file as an indicater of the structure of my files Finally I will use the if statement to attach any additional information to my result files if speaker Amy gt gender F If I have declared a repeat value gender it will automatically be assigned a value F everytime speaker becomes Amy 9999 9999 File sets TAMS allows you to group your files together so that the file list can display just a subset of files rather than the whole body of data TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 68 in your project You can create a file set for just memos or just interviews This is selected by the little set menu that is to the left of the file list Every project always has one set already established which is the results set which contains every saved and open results window file In fact the menu item View all files should really be view all files except the result files See the code sets section on how to operate the dialogue box
48. nd case non simple TA TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 35 will check at each character whether this character is in a zone that meets the criteria you ve set Consider searching for food veggie for a document that contained this passage veggie food gt parsley I like eating things with parsley veggie food gt parsley If you are doing a simple search both food gt parsley and veggie meet the criteria So TA will generate a result for each tag You will have two rows one for each tag in your results windows with almost identical data On the other hand if you select non simple search TA will ask if each character in I like eating is in a zone that is either food or veggie and return it as meeting the criteria There will only be one result record for this TA indicates that this is not a simple search by prefixing the code in the results window with a or Generally you will want the simple flag checked NOTE Searches with AND are always non simple searches WARNING Only simple search results can be recoded This is because passages returned from searches with AND may not be at tag boundaries 2 Section searches If you have used end markers or inner or last to mark up your text so your text has sections you can look for sections that meet certain criteria regarding codes For example you could look for all sections that have either code veggie or code
49. ne column in your output called dataType and for records from this document it with fill it with Interview ey This type of tag which starts with a is called a metatag rather than a coding tag It conveys information to the program rather than marks information There are a large number of metatags in TA all of which are listed in the Coding gt Insert metatag submenu They are described in Appendix 3 F Reminding yourself of a code definition At some point after 50 or more codes are added it is useful to quickly see the definition of a code To do this pick the code off of the code list i e click one time on the code list of your document window or the workbench and press the Def button A window explaining the code will pop up You can also click on the code lists and pick Coding gt Code definition Alternatively you can select the code in your document or even from a results window which is getting ahead of myself and pick Coding gt Code definition of selected text G Creating code sets Some times it s easier to work with smaller sets of your codes than the whole body of codes in your project These smaller groups of codes are called code sets in TA The easiest way to access code sets is from the code sets tab on the workbench TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 19 6686 P OldMacD xtprj Info Files Search Define codes Code sets Memo Mail Name Add HA Delete Select Se
50. ny other standard I use and to mark my tags At some point someone maybe me maybe you will create a TAMS to XML converter ce TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 2 Il B Coding TA s first job is to help you code that is to mark sections of documents as to their significance Whether importing documents TAMS can work directly with rtf rtfd and text documents or creating them in TA your first job is to select text and indicate what it means C Analyzing TA s second job is to extract information from a marked up document Basically TA just compiles a table of text meeting specified criteria This is called analysis After compiling this table TA let s you search the table and generate summary statistics counts of how many records meet such and such criteria It also lets you use this table to change the codes in your original source document D License issues TAMS is released under the GPL license the text of which is available at www gnu org At some point I ll do the tedious work of including a statement in every source file regarding it there are also some parts of the program which are released under Apple s License which is not as liberal as GPL so be careful in particular the parts of the program concerning the find text dialog box Getting started with a project When you first launch TAMS Analyzer you are presented with the New Project dialogue This permits you to name and locate your projec
51. ogram that works on one file at a time Searches have to be done one column at a time BUT through doing multiple searches you can create complex AND and OR relationships Furthermore once you find a set of records that answer your question you can name this set of records so you can pull them up instantly You can also create autosets macros or little programs that can pull up similar records from any result file I used the word search in the last sentence but from here forward I will use the word select to mean search in a result file window and reserve the word search for workbench or file searches of your source documents Finding a value in a repeat or universal column I will use the example of finding Bob who I have marked as a speaker which I have named as a repeat code If this is unclear review section IV To find only Bob as speaker I first click on the head of the column titled speaker so the entire column is highlighted I then pick Results gt Select or just click the Select button from the menu and am confronted by this dialogue box tlie eo Ed ee ee Ll i ed i select Select string Search case insensitive J _ Floating point numbers Regular expression co Figure 23 The select dialogue box TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 41 Enter Bob into the Select string field and press OK Now only records with Bob or bob or boB in the speaker column will be
52. oll through however many hundreds of codes you ve created file sets so you can keep your memos separate from your interviews and results sets aka data sets which name a portion of the records returned from a search In the case of having found all of those records that are coded veggie and spoken by bob and use the word carrot it might be nice to bookmark these records so you can just leap back to them whenever you need With just those records showing i e you ve just done the selection of speaker bob code veggie and _data carrot by equal we means contains in reality pick Results gt Result sets gt Create named set You should be prompted to provide a name type in something like bob veggie carrot i e some meangful identifier for this selection of data Click OK and you have now created a named set A new item has been added to the Results gt Result sets menu which is your named set To show these records at any time you can just pick Results gt Result sets gt bob veggie carrot WARNING TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 43 Named sets are saved with result files but are disposed of the minute you refresh your data As a result If you need something persistent use auto sets Named sets are best for on the fly data analysis since they are easier to use than autosets but autosets have the advantage of permanence and shareability ADVANCED Named sets and autoset
53. or m M Use inherited color M Active verse References to country life History Delete colors Delete Save Clear Figure 13 The define codes tab To allow you to modify and amend set colors for tags as well as indicate which codes are active and inactive TA3 has a special tab on the work bench for working with codes a similar set of functions is available through a dialogue called the code browser which you can access through the Project gt Code browser menu item One thing you will notice is that there is no save button The fact is things are saved every time you do anything whether it s click clear click a different tab or select another code The program is always saving your codes So if you hit Save Clear it will save the codes and definitions you have just entered To get rid of a code use the explict Delete button E Universal codes and metatags sometimes erroneously called metacodes by me The types of codes we ve been talking about are data codes They specify the meaning of some portion of text In comparison universal codes describe a whole document rather than a section of it For example you may want to indicate that the type of data you are dealing TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 18 with in this particular file is an interview You could put at the top of the document the following to remind yourself of this in the output universal dataType Interview This will produce o
54. ot parsley and cilantro are subcodes of food Note that TAMS is case sensitive Also you can still use food no subcode as a code You could specify further levels of coding such as TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 11 food gt parsley gt curly food gt parsley gt italian 2 From codes to tags In your text to indicate that something is coded you surround the passage with tags which contain the code Showing is easier than telling in this case Say that you are going to code the following passage in your document Parsley makes me sick To do so in TAMS you just surround it with tags containing the code food gt parsley Parsley makes me sick food gt parsley The end tag must begin with a slash the front tag must not have a slash just like HTML Every open data tag must have a matching close tag Your Coding menu has a couple of diagnostic tools to help you find bad or missing tags Note here you can see that tags contain codes but are not the same thing as codes They have that other stuff and as well Note you could just type all that junk in but what would be the purpose of my program In TA you select the text and either pick the code out of a list or type it in a box on the side of the document if it s a new code More on this below 3 Signed tags To support multiple coders TA 1 0 introduced a new syntax that added a signature to a tag A signature is a group of letters no space
55. other repeat code it should act as though there is an endsection before it These are easiest to use if only one repeat value is deployed through the document Then you just make that one the ast Advanced note The way that endsection and end work or implied endsections with last is that no data is collected during a search until it finds that end endsection metatag Also context values aren t paired with data until the section ends This means that if in a given section the context code time changes value only the last value it received will be reported Consider this case TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 29 context time speaker last speaker time 100 time speaker bob speaker a food s good a time 110 time OANA UBPWNHEeE food gt parsley I like parsley food gt parsley 10 time 112 time 12 speaker bob speaker food gt parsley it really cleans my 13 breath food gt parsley 15 time 115 time Here speaker is our last code There are two sections one starting at line 1 and going to line 6 since that is the first time a repeat code is found after speaker our designated last code and the second going from line 6 all the way to 15 Again it s the speaker in line 12 that tells TA that the next repeat code should be treated as if it had a endsection before it Now consider the value of the time code for each of these For the first section all data will be reported with time 100 For
56. ou could search for ood asterisk followed by a pattern this basically just searches the code name for a substring D And amp Or I m no expert in designing lexical analyzers As a result there are not proper Boolean operators Sorry However you can do AND s and OR s AND s are indicated with the sign and or s with a comma AND s take higher precedence than OR s and there is no grouping with parentheses so you have to distribute things yourself Again so sorry But at least the feature is there To search for either food gt parsley or food gt carrot you would enter food gt parsley food gt carrot To find passages that are both food gt carrot and loves gt vegetarians you would search for food gt carrott loves gt vegetarians Search food gt carrot loves gt vegetarians oder IDs v Raw _ Empty Exact Simple B Figure 19 A search involving AND E Search Flags In both the document search pane and on the workbench there are three flags or check boxes that control how TA does searches 1 Raw searches Raw simply means that the tags are shown in the results TAMS will show you all the tags that are open for the start of the found passage by the way For actually putting things into papers you will want to turn off the raw flag when you search By the way returns are substituted with n and tabs with t The original characters would be confusing to Excel or o
57. ould be universal type interview 2 repeat codes which change their value throughout the document and generate a separate value in each record produced These mark distinctive attributes for a section of a document marked by end or endsection typical repeat codes include speaker time question all of which you would want to be attached to a passage of text you have marked coded in some way To indicate that the code author is a repeat code place repeat author toward the top of the document or in the Init file Then mark each occurance of author by surrounding it with a start and end tag author Matthew Weinstein author notice that unlike the repeat command there is no mark here this is just a data code In an interview the speaker might be marked as a repeat code In field notes the time of an observation might be a repeat code In our project which involves numerous newspaper articles per document author title and date of each article were repeat codes 3 data codes These are the passages that you are really interested in These are marked with code interesting passage code You don t need to declare anything just fill in the word code with whatever you see fit sample Just some text sample is now coded as sample Note codes consist of numbers spaces and underscore _ charaters No spaces permitted Passages of text can have multiple codes codes can be nested and can overlap TAMS Analyzer 5 12 0
58. passages of fruit coded by LJS where MGW and LJS represent 2 different coders Polymorphous data The search list can contain multiple types of data To facilitate mixing data types the map metatag allows researchers to have different codes in the same repeat data column TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 69 Appendix 3 The Metacodes appendcomment X appends X to the comment established with pp pp previous setcomments and appendcomments backloadrepeat for a coded passage that crosses an end value the record will have it s repeat values assigned from the values at the end of the passage block X if repeat code X has already been declared then no values for X will be returned in results X will be ignored bookmark X designates a bookmark in the document file accessible through the Coding gt Bookmarks menu button X creates a button bar with button X clean designates that subsequent repeat values should have their values cleared at end metatags clearcomments clears all existing comments set by setcomment and appendcomment comment X See dummy context X See repeat contextcode X See repeat dirty designates that subsequent repeat values do not reset their value at an end dummy X comment X a do nothing code which allows you to insert parenthetical comments into your code Synonyms comment emptysection specifies that the program should repor
59. ranged to be counted In other words the data has to be sorted so that what you are grouping is together To keep the meaningful data together you need to use the Results gt Sort up and Results gt Sort down menus NOT THE GENERIC sort button on the default button panel Data summaries are described in separate documentation Data Summary How To This report can generate a frequency count by document or speaker or just about any other selectable sortable criteria Graph data Output TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 59 Graphs or dot graphs which refers to the file name extension of the files generated by this report dot provide a graphical view of data The actual program Graphviz available at www pixelglow com makes images like concept maps nodes connecting to each other This is perhaps the most dramatic report that TA produces The same menu option actually produces two very different reports When Reports gt Graph data is selected from a document window or the workbench it produces a graph of the tree structure of the current code set Figure 46 A graph of the codes in a project Here sound gt cat and sound gt pig have been converted into a tree picture representing the coding system in this project Graphs of the relationships of codes to code sets as well as code sets with each other can be generated using the Reports gt Graph code sets menu item I OCE Graph code sets Pic
60. rom the Coding menu One type of error that TA is not good at catching is missing close braces Often times if you re getting an error message while doing a search this is the source of the problem The moral of the story is clear run Check for pairs and Check for nested from the Coding menu often IV Documents sections and context information A Context Codes and the Context tag I will be using the example of an interview here but we could be talking about field notes in which case time code would probably substitute In an interview I always want to know who is speaking when I look at results Unfortunately if a coded passage crosses speakers only the first will be included To include that information I need to take two steps first indicate who the speaker is second indicate where that information is found TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 26 To mark whom the speaker is just code it as you would any data We might call the speaker speaker for instance speaker John speaker food gt parsley I hate parsley food gt parsley end Now speaker is really a different sort of code than food gt parsley One indicates data the other information you want attached to that data To indicate that speaker is a special sort of code that isn t data you put a metatag at the top that says that this is what I call a context code Context is identical to the keyword repeat In earlier versions of TA
61. rom the small pop up menu on the dialogue where you give the file its name TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 7 P OldMacD xtprj Info l Data file name Mail C New Open RAT Ccc GOD OOO DE rtfd text 5 y Holder Files d wiles 1 mgw oldMacD oldMacD rtf Add gt Add all gt gt lt Remove lt lt Remove all Figure 5 Naming and selecting the file type for new data files To create a new file simply click on the New button over the file list give the file a name no extension choose the file type and a new document will be opened for your immediate use Saving amp restoring projects The overall details of a project are saved in a project file a saved representation of the project window This file includes among many other things the location of the files that comprise the project a list of files to be searched through for information and vitally the codes that you have created Unlike all the other windows that TAMS provides project files automatically save themselves as new information is added Never open a document source or results file directly i e an interview observation etc directly i e through the finder Instead open the project and then double click the document you want to see from the file list TAMS can open a project by simply double clicking a project file a file which has the extension xtprj To add delete and create source document
62. row the data that met the search criteria comments attached to that data the coder for that passage the name of the document for that passage and the beginning character offset in that document for that passage These columns can be resized and dragged around reordered by dragging the column titles The browser pane The upper half of the window is dominated by the browser pane that shows the value of the _ data field column which is the part of the table that has the actual data in it for whichever record is TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 39 selected in the lower pane If you want the browser to show a different column value change it using Results gt Set field to browse You can also adjust how much of the window should be browser and how much should be lower pane by dragging the dot on the bar between them 0 OOA F tempResult B3F304E1 BB12 11D9 B16A 000D93COF7AC xtrs X B wr B ke 8 amp Customize Save Workbench Find record Refresh Sort Select all Select 7 7 Unlimited setting gt ruralKsound gt pig oink oink sound gt pig Figure 22 Results window button pane Button pane Above to the browser pane is the information pane and toolbar The two buttons labeled lt and gt are forward and backward buttons that allow you to flip through different selections of data more on selecting data below The Workbench for project brings up the workbench for this result window sort provides a quick
63. s Count co frequency count Graph data output all look at the current code set to generate their output In addition you can look for records from a code set within your results window See section VIII for more on analyzing your results using code sets H Hot code sets Hot code lists are temporary code sets created in document windows or on the search tab of the workbench They allow quick access to relevant codes in projects that may have hundreds of codes total They are stored in the project window but are not saved with it They can however be turned into regular code sets which are saved and restored with your project To generate a hot code set from a document window type in a key word or a part of a key word or code name into the code text field above the code list that you are interested in and hit return TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 22 Code to toolbar Def Ruler s r Select b d Code b d New earc Te Put letter pattern here and hit return dealer Codes anthropology Documen anthrxSentence T anthrxWord T docn um C author biology gt detectives biology gt Tact Copyrig ht biology gt image Publishing hiolonow law Figure 16 Creating a hot code set from a document The code list will show only those codes that contain this word and those whose definitions contain that word phrase pattern the latter is true only if you have the Check definitions when selecting codes
64. s that are your handle for coding These are stuck in brackets after the code inside the tag If my handle is mgw then I could sign the passage by coding it as food gt parsley mgw I hate parsley food gt parsley mgw note the code and the signature must match in both tags TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 12 Again it would be silly for you to type all that You indicate that you want to sign your tags in TA s preferences dialog on TAMS Analyzer menu In TA3 signed tags take on additional significance as the program has added a whole new layer of support for multiple coders One which allows researchers to share their work Your initials in TA3 are also your login to the database that allows you to share your research 4 Tags with comments Sometimes you want to leave yourself a little memo about the passage TAMS does this by allowing you to leave it in the close tag after the signature if there is one The memo is offset from the code or signature by a space food gt parsley mgw I hate parsley food gt parsley mgw This guy s crazy You can also insert it with a colon after the signature or code if there is no signature food gt parsley mgw I hate parsley food gt parsley mgw This guy s crazy which makes it look a little nicer TA does not facilitate adding memos or comments as I prefer to call them you just type them in though see the preferences in appendix 4 Now you can see that tags
65. s are not just book marks for your data though they are primarily that You can do complex set operations with data sets Using the Results gt Result sets gt Set operations menu option you can take the selection that is showing in your results window and do things like intersect it with a named set or find the union of it and a named set These of course can then be named as well This allows for very complex analysis and mining of data Autosets In named sets you are just giving a name to a group of records With autosets you actually teach TAMS how to find records meeting the criteria you used The advantages of this are many autosets will persist after you refresh and autosets can be applied to other searches To create an auto set choose the Results gt Result sets gt Create autoset option That will show the following dialogue TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 44 Autoset Name i o 7 f Clear Save PA Load Delete Steps 1 f WY FY E Add history Start with All l Use current sort at start of set 2 Select Select 5 Select string po Search case insensitive Floating point numbers me Regular expression res 3 verse Add step Set intersect with B B _ Project wide auto set E EXit Figure 26 Autoset dialogue ah c 5 s5 With the autoset dialogue you teach TA the steps needed to make a results set If you have done a selection and want the
66. t Starting with TA3 the location of files is tightly controlled by TAMS Analyzer In previous versions new projects documents and result files would start out as Untitled and you would save the documents in the typical way With TA3 there are no untitled documents ignoring some report windows Instead before you are presented with the window you are asked by TA3 to name the file With document and results windows the project saves them automatically in appropriate locations This is necessary for future improvements as well as for the multi user capacities that TA3 adds to the program This is what the New Project dialogue looks like TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 3 Create new project Project name Untitled Project location Users matthew Browse l Add to work menu PEE Figure 1 New Project dialogue Replace Untitled with a project name Cooperative learning or Cancer narratives or whatever is appropriate The second line indicates in what folder the project should be located Use the Browse button to pick the appropriate folder Once you have you can see the folder location next to the browse button But you should know that TA3 will create a folder with a tams extension and put the project file and create the necessary subdirectories all within the chosen folder If you wish to automatically add this project to the work menu check the Add to work menu box before hi
67. t on empty endsection s when doing empty searches end marks the end of a section by default repeat values are cleared Data found is stored endcomment X clears the comment set by previous setcomment and appendcomment of X X has to match verbatim a comment added using setcomment or appendcomment endcomment with no argument 1 e endcomment clears all comments TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 70 endlastcomment removes the last comment set by setcomment or lappendcomment To remove a specific comment use endcomment endsection like end but repeat codes keep their values they are not cleared eofisend end of file is treated as end eofisnotend end of file is not treated as end escapeoff treat as a regular character escapeon attend to as an escape character i e it is a flag to TAMS to not treat the next character as special Useful for texts that have braces and in them first X See inner frontloadrepeat for a coded passage that crosses an end value the record will have it s repeat values assigned from the start of the passage lif X something gt Y a value For already declared universal or repeat code values X and Y the program will automatically assign Y to a value every time that X is assigned to something X and Y must both be repeat values or they must both be universal values you cannot mix and match
68. te all of that at the front of the next section Alternatively you can use endsection which carries values of context values forward i e if you think of structuring a document as cutting each part of an interview for instance onto 4x5 cards end carries no information to the next card endsection carries everything to the next card You may also need to play with various program preferences regarding endsections and ends in the program preference dialogue look on the searching tab to get the results you expect The original use of an endsection was to allow users to subdivide a section into smaller parts e g coding letters to the editor The whole letters to the editor article may terminate with an end but each letter would get an endsection HINT You may want to check out TexEdit Plus for this both of which have very fancy search and replace functions which can save a lot of time in marking up documents initially TAMS also has a very fancy though very technically complex search and replace mechanism known as regular expressions You can use TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 28 this to bulk code a document often But the learning curve is steep There is documentation included in the source folder regarding regular expressions often called regex as implemented in TAMS which uses a programming library called PCRE perl c regular expressions to implement them Also search the web for tutorials on regular e
69. ther databases 2 Empty searches Usually when you search for data you only want to know what passages meet certain criteria If you turn on the empty switch TA will produce a record data or not at every end or endsection if TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 34 you turn on that feature in the preferences panel This way you can find out how many times someone didn t mention X Y or Z Note this only works for structured documents 3 Exact searches Normally if you search for food you will get the whole food family food food gt parsley food gt carrot etc To look for only those things coded food but not food gt carrot turn on the exact flag NOTE you could also prefix a single quote in front of food F Search types TA can search a wide variety of ways giving very different result sets depending on need These search types are chosen from a pull down menu under the check boxes on the workbench Search food gt carrot loves gt ve Coder IDs vi Raw _ Empty Simple J Non simple ed search Section 9 String aaa Regex String OOOI Figure 20 Search types 1 Simple searches and non simple searches There are three types of searches that TA can do given a mix of codes The first two simple and non simple are the primary ways researchers will search for data In the first case TA searches for the tags that match what you ve indicated and returns passages that meet the criteria you ve set In the seco
70. tive hollow capacity try to ir capacity i m def Sho negativ capacity gt negati Figure 31 Data view toggle button C You can add an optional button to your toolbar which will toggle the two views Use Windows gt Customize tool bar sy Toggle views Figure 32 The Toggle Views Icon C Exporting Select near records Select near results are not saved when the result file is saved The only way to save these results is to export them with the File gt Export data menu item First make sure that your results window is showing the results of your select near search In other words the result window must be in outline view Pick File Export data and you will get an export data pane with some additional fields and altered text from the one for the table view TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 51 Instead of selected records you can choose to export only what s aie visible expanded or all data an Simm o tuned from your Select near kare Expart omonda with sicupe charactors f Tag r a T apai Taran Pe Eer men I icon armai Tab neparaind Ez co aoa te soe 2S Here you can enter a string ore to prefix both level one Saarem prin fF main row and level two 3 a subrow records Est Lepart Figure 33 Export data for Near Results VI Interactively reworking your coding Based on what you find in your searches you will want to go back and recode your document which usu
71. ttempt to revise your results based on addcodes and recodes This is an art and I m not an artist If you really need to see accurate results uncheck this and refresh your windows TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 75 Save Graphviz files If you want the default response of Report gt dotGraph Output to be to save the report rather than open it directly in graphviz check this box Useful if you want to use X11 graphviz software rather than the aqua version Enable the back button Should the back and forward buttons of the result window button panel be enabled Why disable them They use a lot of memory If you re close to the limit you might want to turn off this feature Open document Should TA open affected files as it recodes add codes etc This can get quite messy with possibly dozens of files being opened but these can then be undone file by file Otherwise unchecked add code and recode etc work in the background and are not undo able Documents treated as structured When doing a search should TA treat the document as structured which means that repeat values aren t matched up with data until an explicit or implicit set through last or inner end endsection is found Otherwise the program assumes documents are unstructured which means that every end tag is treated as if it has an endsection following it
72. tting create Note that this will add the project both to the little pop up menu on the New Project dialogue next time you start the program and to the File gt Work submenu Once you hit the create button you will see the project window also known as the workbench TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 4 009 P blankProj xtprj info Files Search Define codes Code sets Memo Mail Project name Description Server Database type MySQL A SSL Port Database name User Initials Password Largest file size 20 Meg Sync Report Save project info Manage users Figure 2 The project window aka a workbench A project consists of a series of files each of which usually represent one thing an interview an observation a memo etc It is through this window that you will add files to your project remove files from your project and open files you have already added to the project as well as do multi file searches This window also holds all of the codes and definitions that are in your project The key functions for managing these things are distributed across the tabs that line the top of the workbench For example clicking the file tab reveals functions and information for adding and removing files from the project as well as for selecting the files that you will search when you go to mine your data TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 e808 M My Project xtprj Info Files Search Define codes Code
73. u can search for all sentences or occurrences at the beginning of a sentence or words that start with b followed by three of any character and ending with x It s powerful but really requires its own manual Look on line for tutorials on perl regular expressions or just regular expressions G Searching for coders If you want results for simple searches only from a certain coder you could simply put in their code in the Coder IDs field of either the workbench or the document You could also list coder s separated by commas If you want to include unsigned tags use no this doesn t mean wildcard in the context of the Coder IDs field it means no coder was provided To look for unsigned and tags signed by mgw Pd fill in mgw You can do much more complex searches however by including coder information in the search field If I want all cases of food coded by mgw I could search for food mgw or if I wanted unsigned results as well I could do food mgw Notice that the coders are separated by semicolons rather than commas If I wanted only unsigned results Pd look for food If there was another coder with bob as his initials I could look for food mgw bob or if I want to know what both mgw and bob coded as food I could look for food mgw food bob TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 3 ADVANCED FEATURE You can set up pretty complex coder name systems and search for all sorts of subsets by
74. uld update your results VII Reports Getting results is one step of transforming an interview into data An additional step is done through generating reports from your data A Frequency counts The simplest report to generate is a count of the codes in the files in the search list This is done by having your project s workbench as your front window and picking Reports gt Count from the menu This will list the number of times each code was used in the files listed on the search TAMS Analyzer 5 12 05 58 list but not broken down by file But wait there is a way See data summaries below rch 8080 IDs Codes Count v a veqgie gt bad 0 veggies 2 ch 7 Figure 41 Code count report Note that this report only uses the codes in the current code set so you can control the codes reported upon D Co frequency counts E F A second easy report to generate is the co coding frequency report This report shows how many times a passage of text in the search list has been coded with each pair of codes in the current code set This is a good report for analysis to see what codes seem related to each other across the project or portions thereof Data summaries Data summaries are the most complex and powerful reports in TAMS They operate from the current selection in a results window A data summary report allows you to group data in a column and then count matching criteria These counts assume that data is ar
75. visible Now the record count will have changed in the button panel as well And we can see in our fictional example here that for instance 4 out of the total of 7 records in our search had speaker Bob rol 4 Save Workbench Find 3 6 Unlirr 002 11 18 20 08 49 0500 De Figure 24 Changed record count Seeing all of the records Given that only one select ago we were looking at all the records we could use our browser forward and back buttons to leap back one selection and see all of our records RLY e ol 4 Customize Save t veggie gt bad veggie gt Figure 16 The browse back button Alternatively we could leap to all records by picking Results gt Select all Selecting values in your data What if we want to find things that were coded veggie and have in their coded text the word carrot This basically is done through two selects In this case the order of the selects does not matter though there may be cases when it does I ll discuss one shortly The first thing to do here is to select all those records coded as veggie veggie is a code and these are put in the column called code all of the columns that TA creates start with an underscore Pick this column by clicking it s title and making sure that the whole column is highlighted Then select veggie pick the Results gt Select menu option and type in veggie and click ok Now only the veggie items
76. xpressions There are a lot of them out there Powerful stuff HINT TA will let you turn a passage of text into a tool bar button After the first time you type end or pick it from the Metatags gt Structure menu select the tag with your mouse and pick Turn selection into toolbar button from the Coding menu That adds a button to your toolbar that will insert that text when you click it Then it s a simple single click to stick end s where you need them Note See Coding gt Toolbar for keyboard shortcuts to your toolbar items Automatic structuring Rather than manually structure your document there is some support for having TA structure your document for you There are two metatags which you can use to save yourself a lot of time and have TA automatically decide where ends fall These are the inner and last metatags use one or the other not both You use both of these with context values which can act as a sort of demarcation of sections in your document see last section of this guide The syntax for inner is inner contextCodeName and for last similarly is last contextCodeName These should appear in the init file or towards the top 1 e before data codes of your document files inner indicates that each occurrence of repeatCodeName should be treated as though it has an endsection before it llast indicates that repeatCodeName is the last repeat code being assigned to this section If TA finds an
77. xt section of the document the previous values will be retained In the previous example with an interview where you are tracking who is talking and maybe only occasionally entering a time_code you will want to use endsection but be careful to mark all the speakers or you will think the wrong people are saying the things you are finding Also make sure that you put in an endsection whenever the value of speaker changes or you will be seriously mislead as to who is speaking ADVANCED NOTE An alternative to the endsection metatag is the dirty and clean metatags which can be sprinkled throughout your document They handle how end metatags are handled dirty tells the TAMS processor to carry old values forward when it finds an lend clean tells TAMS to zero values when it finds an end By default TAMS assumes that end s should be clean V Getting information out of documents A Workbench vs Document searches After you have coded your documents you will want to extract information from them This generally involves looking up different codes and sifting through the results There are two ways to do this on TA through the workbench and through the Search tab of each document window if I port this to X11 Linux only workbench searches are likely to be supported in fact workbench searches can do everything and more that document searches can do If you want to search across multiple documents you need to use
78. yes make sure the box in area 6 is checked In all cases you need to enter a name for this autoset in the box in area 5 and press save Under area 5 is a menu which allows you to recall and delete older autosets When done press the Exit button in area 6 To actually run your autoset pick the name you entered off of the Results gt Result sets menu Sorting There are two ways to sort data in TA The first is through the sort button right in the button panel on the results window This sorts up A before Z and is good for quickly arranging a single column The preferred method of sorting however is through the Results gt Sort up and Results gt Sort down menus These allow you to nest sorts so you can sort columns inside of columns You can also control the type of data that is being sorted i e you can specify whether the column contains dates but set the date format first through Results gt Date format integer string real number floating point or a code Sorting codes require you to set a code level through the Results gt code level menu item If the code level is 0 then the code is simply treated as a string and is sorted alphabetically If code level is 1 then a gt b and a gt c are considered the same Only the first level is examined If code level is 2 then a gt b gt c is the same a gt b gt d but bother are different from a gt c or 66 99 just a When you use the menus first you sort using one of the criter

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