Weft QDA User's Manual
Contents
1. R North Lambeth you know up near Waterloo round there I So what were main reasons you had for moving here then R Well I was expecting him indicates child and though we liked that flat it was three floors up and no lift Plus it was fine for two people but we just thought that we d be needing mannna oman annn ha seein d aed A ha nanine ba mein sebila Changing the size and font used to display text You can change the size and font used to display text from documents Simply choose Set Display Font from the View menu The same font is used to display document text in all windows in the workarea Using document text in other applications Text from the document can be copied and pasted into other desktop applications such as word processors and spreadsheets To copy text from Weft QDA select the text you want to copy and press CTRL c To select all the text in a document press CTRL a Changing a document s title and adding a memo Within the document s window click on the Details tab Within the text boxes you can enter a new title and a memo for the document Before closing the document save any changes by clicking the Apply Figure 4 3 The document details pane Working with Documents Weft QDA New Project File View Project Search Script Window Help amp Maggie interview Created Fri 10 02 2006 17 37 06 Modified Fri 10 02 2006 17 37 06 r Memo Interview with Maggie2. 98 and NT4 Windows XP or 2000 are recommended if possible simply because these are the most common and so best tested platforms for running Weft The easiest way to install Weft on Windows is to use an all in one easy installer package see the section called Easy Installer for Windows be low GNU Linux Unixes Weft QDA is known to work major Linux distributions including Debian Redhat Ubuntu and Mandrake and will likely work on many other nixes Because of the variationsin Linux dis tributions and tools installation is a slightly more involved process than on Microsoft Win dows You should have some familiarity with using your distribution s package manager and compiling applications using gcc Mac OS X Weft QDA does not currently work on OS X However pending developments in wxruby it is likely to be possible to run Weft QDA on OS X in the future If you are looking for a free CAQDAS package native to OS X you may be interested in TAMS Analyzer http tamsys sourceforge net which is a stable and fully featured package Hardware Requirements An advantage of Weft s simplicity is that it will run on quite modest computer hardware Hardware requirements will vary depending on your operating system and project size but a Pentium processor and 32MB of RAM should be adequate for Weft QDA itself Software Prerequisites Weft QDA makes use various other free software components and libraries If you are us ing the Windows
3. Type in the name a short summary of the question is good such as Where living before if the respond was asked Where were you living before you moved then click OK 17 Working with Categories Using categories to mark documents As you read documents that have imported you can mark passages of text as relating to one of the categories you have created First to mark a document open it by double click ing its name in the Documents amp Categories window There are several ways to choose the category that you want to mark the open document with The first of the methods below is simpler the others may be faster for more experi enced users or when working with a large number of categories e Select the category from within the category tree in the Documents amp Categories The name of the category will appear in the document windows next to the Mark button e Click the mouse in the text box within the document window to the left of the Mark Type the first few letters of the name of the category you want to code the document with Press Enter to get a list of matching categories The first match is shown in the space where you are typing other matching categories can be selected from the drop down selection below e As you proceed with coding a document a list of recently used categories is kept in the dropdown next to the Mark button Once you have chosen the category select the part of the document that yo
4. e Click the New button below the category tree A small window will appear prompting you for a name for the new category Enter your name here this should be a short but descriptive name for the category e Alternately you can create a new category by selecting Add Category from the Project menu e Press Enter or click the OK button to create the category The new category will be dis played in the category tree e There are no rules about the names you can give to categories but no more than a few descriptive words is ideal The name can contain punctuation characters but should not have the slash character at the beginning or end If you are working with interviews where you have ask different respondents similar ques tions one place to start is to create categories that mark text where a particular questions was asked in different interviews This will allow you to come back and compare people s replies side by side First it s a good idea to create a single cateogry in the tree under which to store the different questions This will help organise your categories as you cre ate more as you develop and refine your analysis Figure 5 1 Creating a new category to organise interview questions Enter the new category name Add Category Interview Questions OK To then add categories to represent the questions click the New button with the newly created Interview questions category selected in the Category tree
5. On Ubuntu Linux for example GTK 1 2 can be installed using apt get install libgtk1 2 dev http www gtk org WxRuby WxRuby the ruby bindings to the WxWidgets library version 0 6 0 http rubyforge org projects wxruby wxruby2 the redevelopment of wxruby SWIG doesn t yet support all the features needed for Weft PDFtoText The PDFtoText utility is required if you want to import documents from PDF documents The utility is available from http www xpdf org and the executable should be installed somewhere in your PATH Installation There are a number of different ways to install Weft QDA They re listed below in descend ing order of ease You only need to use one of these methods and unless you re inter ested in the technical aspects of Weft you should probably choose an installer or compiled binary Easy Installer for Windows Installing on Microsoft Windows should be a simple matter of downloading the most recent installer from the Weft QDA website http Awww pressure to qda Save the installer file to disk then click on the downloaded file to start the automatic installation process During this you ll be offered the choices to install the help file and to add shortcuts to your Start menu It s recommended that you accept both When the installation process is complete Weft QDA can be started by clicking its icon in the system Start menu Installing using Rubygems Weft QDA is written the programming language Ruby Rub
6. Searches Queries and Code Reviews Weft QDA New Project File View Project Search Script Window Help Query 1 text query Find text that IS CODED BY Kids Secondary School age OR X IS CODED BY Kads Primary School age 7 AND IS CODED BY v Space needs x Code Review To start a code review choose Code Review from the Search menu A new window opens in the work area Choose the categories you wish to compare in the grid either by select ing them from the main category tree in the Documents and Categories window or by typ ing the first few letters of their name in the dropdown and pressing Enter Then click the Add as row or Add as column button To remove a category that has been previously ad ded to the grid click its name in the row or column label and press the Remove button Once there are categories in both the columns and the rows the grid cells show the num ber of documents in which text is coded by both the row category and the column category Each cell within the grid is tinted more or less strongly based on the number of documents in which the coding of the relevant categories coincides Figure 6 4 A code review 28 Searches Queries and Code Reviews Weft QDA D socres mincs qual_anal hulme_096 qdp DER File Project Search Script View Window Help E Code Review 5 DER Likely to move away 7 Add as row Add as column Remove j m Display options Count w
7. The text sections can have further categories applied to them This is very useful in devel oping an analysis The procedure for coding text within a category is the same as coding a source document directly select the category you want to code with from the tree select the text sections you want to mark click the Mark button 20 Working with Categories Copying text passages into other applications The marked text can be copied and pasted into other desktop applications such as word processors and spreadsheets To copy text from the category select the text you want to copy and press CTRL c To select all the marked passages from the category press CTRL a Exporting to a file To export all of a category to a file containing all its text along with its memo first ensure the category is open in the topmost active window in the Workarea Then choose Export from the Project menu You can currently only choose to export HTML the format that web pages are written in This is often a suitable format to use the exported file in word processor as it includes simple formatting and structure information for text passage headings Suggestions are welcome for other useful formats to export in and what information to include PDF is one likely future addition Changing a category s name and adding a memo Memos allow you to record further information about a category such as the specific types of things it refers to or notes abo
8. by a category After marking some of your data with categories you can then review all the document sections coded by a category side by side This allows you to compare them seeing what they have in common and how they differ To view all the text marked by a category either double click its name in the tree in the Documents and Categories window or select its name and press the View button below The category opens in a new window in the workarea Figure 5 3 Viewing a category s text Working with Categories Weft QDA New Project File view Project Search Script Window Help Main reasons for moving What was the main reason you moved to here then R I was offered this place Maggie interview 227 557 I So what were main reasons you had for moving here then Well I was expecting him indicates child and tm h we liked R All the text from different documents marked by the category is shown in sequence Each passage of text has a heading before it indicating which document the text comes from The passages are shown in alphabetical order by document title The numbers indicate whereabouts in the document the text is taken from in numbers of letters Viewing coded passages in context To view any section of coded text in its original context double click on the text The origin al document will open in a new window and jump to show the coded passage Coding on with other categories
9. has dedicated the code to the public domain Anyone is free to use copy distribute modify or sell the code in any form by any means and for any pur pose All patches and other contributions to the code are submitted on the basis that they will be used and redistributed under the same public domain licence as the software itself This public domain licence applies only to the design and code of Weft QDA itself Soft ware components and libraries which are used by and redistributed with Weft QDA may be licensed for your use under different terms You should consult the documentation for each component if unsure Obtaining the Source Code The source code for Weft QDA is available for reference study modification and re use You are very welcome to submit changes to the source code though you are in no way ob liged to submit or share any changes you make Source code for released versions is made available for download as described above in the section called Installation The latest development snapshot of the source code may also be obtained by anonymous CVS http rubyforge org scm group_id 665 from RubyForge http www rubyforge org projects weft qda Warning The CVS HEAD version may well be unstable and you should only use released versions which are tagged in CVS as weft_x x x on real projects that you are working on If you have used the Windows easy installer you may also obtain the source code directly from th
10. have already installed the prerequisites yourself There may be more than one current version of Weft available at any time The stable ver sion with a version number 1 x y where x is an even number is the most tested and reli able release This is the one recommended for general use An experimental version has a version number 1 x y where x is an odd number Experimental versions have the newest features but may have more bugs and less documentation They are intended for people who want to test out the latest features The Weft Project File Format qdp can be read by any version 1 x x of Weft QDA Very old pre release versions of the software 0 9 5 and below may not be able read projects created in newer versions of Weft QDA version 0 9 4 Version 0 9 4 experimented with an alternative file format which is incompatible with all oth er versions of Weft This version should not now be in use but if you have a project cre ated in 0 9 4 that you need to use elsewhere you should consult the version 0 9 5 docu mentation which explains how to upgrade Chapter 3 Getting Started This and the remaining chapters describe how to use Weft QDA For the benefit of users familiar with CAQDAS software the following section summarises some steps in a typical working session The remainder of the manual describe all the software s features in more detail beginning with starting a new project Quick start summary e Start a n
11. idiosyncrasies arising from the software s age or from the whimsy of the software developer Secondly they re encumbered by complex options and tools This complexity is partly due to the range of sophisticated tools which the packages provide but which many users will never have cause to use It is also in some cases due to the embedding of com mitments to specific analytic methodologies into the design of the interface Whilst perhaps helpful for those familiar with that methodology s terms and processes it obscures the use of the package for the unfamiliar For example much of the sociological literature on qualit ative analysis is little cited in social anthropology cannot recall ever seeing grounded the ory mentioned in an anthropological paper despite its prominence in recent sociology The initial development of Weft QDA was spurred by having a commercial licence expire just as was starting work on my dissertation research project on credit unions in South London It was first used for the analysis of interview transcripts and field notes from this fieldwork Weft QDA is designed to present a GUI that is easily comprehended and used by anyone familiar with common desktop applications and their interface metaphors Weft QDA is not designed with any particular analytic method in mind The process of reading text and selecting and marking passages as about a topic and then later return ing to review marked text about that topic i
12. installer package all of these components are already bundled together for you there is no need to download or install any additional software You can skip this section and go to the section called Easy Installer for Windows If you are using Weft QDA on GNU Linux some or all of these items may need to be installed separately before Weft can be used Ruby A recent gt 1 8 version of the Ruby interpreter ht tp www ruby lang org Ruby is the object oriented programming lan guage in which Weft QDA is written SQLite The SQLite library version 2 http www sglite org SQLite is a small file based relational database which Weft uses to store project documents and categories Ruby libraries Weft QDA users two add on packages sqlite ruby the ruby bindings for sqlite version 2 2 x http Awww rubyforge org projects sqlite ruby Installation and PageTemplate v 2 x WxWidgets The WxWidgets library version 2 4 2 http Awww wxwidgets org Ver sion 2 4 not 2 6 is required WxWidgets enables the creation of nat ive GUls graphical user interfaces on different desktop operating systems GTK 1 2 GTK is a Linux interface toolkit and is only required if you are using Linux as WxWidgets is built on top it In many Linux distributions it will already be installed In almost all others it should be available through the package manager and will be most easily installed by this method instead of compiling from source
13. mailing list and by email However other packages may be supported by a dedicated helpdesk institutional IT departments or academic networks Terminology Project Document Category Marking A project is a collection of related text documents stored in a single file togeth er with observations insights and notes relating to those documents The units of textual data that are imported into the project for analysis Docu ments may be annotated with editable memos However once imported a document s text cannot be altered This is a temporary limitation rather than a deliberate feature An analytic theme idea variable whatever that attempts to describe certain passages of the text data These are sometimes referred to as codes in the literature and in other packages Categories can be organised in a hierarchic al pattern and can have editable memos associated with them A user records the connection between a category and a passage of text by marking the document section with the category In the sociological methods literature this procedure is often called coding a document Marked or 2 Introduction coded text can be retrieved subsequently for comparison and review Chapter 2 Installation Requirements Supported Operating Systems Microsoft Windows Weft QDA is fully supported on Microsoft Windows Weft QDA is known to work on various versions of Microsoft Windows including XP 2000 ME
14. Weft QDA User s Manual Alex Fenton Weft QDA User s Manual Alex Fenton Published 2006 Table of Contents A IAtVOCUCUION 2 03 icce eit e ct eied ition clenched ES 1 CAQDAS Features Supported ccceeeeeeeeeeeee ee aeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesaaeeeeeeeeeeeeaeaaeaaes 1 Choosing Weft ODAN rerainane tuore teaim iieii ate eeeeeeeeaaaaaaeeeseeeeeeasaaaaees 1 Reasons for choosing Weft sssssssssssrrssssrrrneerrnresnnrnennnnnsnnennnnnnnnennnne 1 Reasons to consider another package sssssssssssssirissrrirssrrrrssrrressrrens 2 TONOV oe S E EE tea E A EEEN EA EAE EEA EEEE 2 2 lnstallation s3 sane E A E ORS 4 FRROQUIFGIMGINS ccd ois enres ar AN E AE ET 4 Supported Operating Systems ccceceeeeeeeeeneeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaeaeeeeeeeeeeeeaea 4 Hardware Requirement cecccceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaeeeeeeaaeeeeeeaaeeeeeeaaeeees 4 Software Prerequisites ccccceceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaeaeeeeeeeeeeeeaaeaeeneeeeeeeeeaaa 4 Installationicvccu ween ke et Piet ba seed so bec de dase ba een ee eee ok 5 Easy Installer for WiINdOWS ccceceeeeeeeeee tees eee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeaeeeeeaaaeeeeeaaaes 5 Installing USING RUDYGEMS 2 00 ee eee eee eeee eect eee ee eeeeeeeeeeeeaeeeeeaaeeeeeeaaees 5 Running Weft QDA from Source Code ceseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaeaaeeees 5 Upgrading oe Sele a eee eee Aires EEE ev eda deg iva ded ean 6 VEISION O 9 4 EE EE E E beelanwurederougeeeh E 6 3 Getting Started sve renade auraa a
15. ame and creating a Memo eceeceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees 21 Poma a tert soare sea a EREN 24 A bank QUeLY henii a NTE a deed E A A aa 25 AN CXaMple Query e Ea Aa ii ee it et ee 27 A GOCE SCVIGW oirne interin ea nin aaia aera nee ee Ge ere ae 28 vi Chapter 1 Introduction Weft QDA is a software tool for the analysis of textual data such as interview transcripts documents and field notes It s available free under a public domain licence CAQDAS Features Supported Import documents from plain text or PDF e Code and retrieve document text with different categories Attach and update memos to categories and documents e Free text search and boolean queries e Coding statistics and simple cross tabulations e Export text and numbers for browsing and further analysis Single file project format qdp Choosing Weft QDA Most textbooks and articles on qualitative data analysis stress the importance of choosing a software package that fitting your own particular method and methodology Weft QDA of fers a generic set of facilities for working with text documents and doesn t make any partic ular assumptions about how to think about and generalise from data At the same time there may be a fair number of other CAQDAS packages available to you especially if you use Microsoft Windows and especially if you have money So the following list summar ises some situations where Weft QDA may be particularly suitable a
16. e coded by both the row and column categories or to show the number of letters in those passages Reading text summarised in a Code Review You can jump from a cell in a Code Review table to see the text passages that correspond to that cell Double click a table cell and the text that is marked by both the row category and the column category is displayed in a new workarea window In the example above double clicking the cell headed Likely to move away and Local would show the sections where the local families talked about being likely to move away Exporting a Code Review to a spreadsheet Code Reviews can be exported for use in other applications such as spreadsheets statist ics packages or simply for later reading To export a Code Review first ensure it is the cur rently focussed window within the Workarea Then choose Export from the Project menu Weft QDA will prompt you for a file and format to export the Code Review to 29 Searches Queries and Code Reviews The formats you can currrently use to export Code Reviews in are CSV comma separated values or HTML format Choose CSV format if you want to use the code review figures in a spreadsheet or statistical package HTML is more suitable if you want to inspect or print the Code Review using a web browser or if you want to use it as a table within a word pro cessor 30 Appendix A Licence Source Code and Warranty Licence The author of Weft QDA
17. e installed files Open a command prompt change directory to the folder where Weft QDA is installed On Windows this will typically be c Program Files WeftQDA Type the command weft qda ex justextract and the application libraries will be unpacked into the directory Weft s libraries are un packed into a directory called 1ib Warranty Weft QDA is offered in good faith in the hope that it will be useful for applications in re search teaching and study However there is no warranty that it is fit for any particular purpose or that it will work at all You use Weft QDA solely at your own risk and no liability can be assumed for any damage or loss incurred by your use of the software Privacy and Security Weft QDA does not routinely gather or transmit any information about your use of the soft ware your projects or the system on which it is being run However Weft QDA may collect information about errors and crashes solely for the purpose of improving the software No 31 Licence Source Code and Warranty crash report information will be sent over the internet without your explicit consent No per sonally identifying information is included in crash reports Crash reports do not normally contain any project data but may occasionlly include short text excerpts from project docu ments If you are working with sensitive data you should check the content of the error re port before sending it as the error rep
18. eiaai tea ai kaat aiaa enaa Ea EE NS a aneka A Enae isa EEA ataa 7 Quick start summary ria Aa r ia i diet ik 7 Starting a NeW Project este a ie A et a a enai 7 The Weft QDA workarea essssssssssesssssrriirrssssssrrrrrrrssrernrrrrnrssrsrnrrrnent 7 Creating a NEW project cee ceeeee cece eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaeaeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaeeeeeeeeeeeeaaa 8 The Documents amp Categories WINdOW ccceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaeeeteeeeeeeeeeeaaa 8 Saving and discarding project changes ceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaeaaeaees 10 4 Working with DOCUMENTS 0 0 2 cece cece ee ceeeee cece ener ee aaeeeeeeaaeeeeeeaaeeeeeeaaeeeeeaaenees 11 Importing COCUMENES reena aeaaea AAA R 11 imponming Fian TEE wiesen periere eE EE E ESE AKEE EEEE 11 Importing Acrobat PDFS ssescsnin n E ES 12 More about importing documents sssssssssssssrreserrrissrrrrssrrrrnsrrrrssrrnne 12 Reading amp COCUMENT a E T 13 Changing the size and font used to display text seseeeeeeee 15 Using document text in other applications cee eeeeeeeeeeeteeeeeenees 15 Changing a document s title and adding a MEMO cceceeeeeeeeeneeeeeeaaeeees 15 Deleting a COCUMEMIT sienen adia aiia a a 16 5 Working with Categories ccccccceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaeaaeeeeeeeeeeeeaeaaeaeeneeeees 17 Creating categories cccccecececeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaeaaeeceeeeeeeeeaeaaeeneeeeeeeeeaeaaeaees 17 Using categories to mark documents sssss
19. ensitive Whole words onl Search Cancel Enter the word or phrase you want to search for e Enter the amount of additional text you want returned around each search result This is used to provide context for each search results e Choose if you want the search to be case sensitive if a search is case sensitive a search for Nursery will not return results with the word nursery with a lower case let ter e Choose if you want to match whole words only If you choose not to match whole words a search for nurse will return results for nursery and nurses as well 24 Searches Queries and Code Reviews e Click the Search to close the dialogue and see the search results A new window will open showing all the text segments that matched the search term At the same time the search results will be saved under the heading SEARCHES in the list of categories in the Documents and Categories window Limitations of text searches e Searches for single words are much faster that searches that include multiple words or searches that include punctuation characters e There are no special or regular expression characters sometimes one might want to search for a pattern of characters that might match several different words for example help helped or helping It is possible to do this by allowing the use of special characters punctuation in a search term that specifies a variable pattern of letters tha
20. ents Line endings When saving plain text files you may be asked whether you want to insert line endings either option is fine though you may find that not inserting hard line breaks in the plain text as Weft will automatically wrap and resize the text in documents automatically when you are reading it Text encodings You may also be asked what encoding you want to use to save a plain text file On Win dows gt for European languages including English the ASCII iso 8859 XX or windows latin are most suitable Do not choose utf 8 or utf 16 encodings especially if your source document file contains accented characters or special symbols If you are working with non Western scripts on Windows choose your platform s native encoding for that script in preference to a universal encoding like utf 8 or utf 16 for example GB2312 for Chinese On Linux choose a text file encoding that matches your system locale on most systems for European languages this will be an iso 8859 XX encoding However some recent ver sions of Ubuntu for example use UTF 8 as platform default encoding in which case you should save your text files in this encoding Maximum document size Weft is capable of handling large documents It has been tested with documents as long as three hundred A4 pages Problems may arise with very large source documents and if this 12 Working with Documents occurs it may be possib
21. ew project by choosing New Project from the File menu Import some text documents by clicking Import button beneath the empty list of docu ments e Create some categories by using the New button beneath the empty category tree e Open up the document you want to examine by double clicking its title in the document list or by selecting it and clicking the View button e Click once on a category in the tree to select it as the currently active category for marking document text Then select text passages within a document that you want to mark and click the Mark button to apply the code to that section e Double click on a category or select it and click the View to open it in a separate win dow and review all the passages of text that have been marked by it Starting a new project The Weft QDA workarea If you haven t already done so start Weft QDA Weft should start with just the menu bar showing at the top and a blank area below This blank area is the work area The docu ments categories searches and other parts of your project appear in this area when you are working on them Figure 3 1 Starting a new project in The Weft QDA workarea Getting Started i 7 Weft QDA 0 View Project Search Script Window Help Creating a new project All the data that are added to a Weft project and all the categories and analysis using those categories are stored together in a single file a Project File So before
22. field observation notes texts produced in the field such as posters or leaflets newspaper art icles and so on At present Weft only supports the analysis of textual material though it is hoped to add support for the analysis of images in future versions of Weft QDA Importing documents Documents are added to a project by importing them from files saved on your computer Weft can import documents in the plain text and PDF formats The process of of importing a file copies the text in the file into a new document It also indexes the text in the file so that it can be quickly searched later Importing Plain Text Plain text is a simple file format that contains just letters and punctuation without special formatting such as bold colour or differen sized type Plain text is the preferred file format for importing into Weft QDA Preparing documents for use in Weft QDA Plain text can be produced in many common software applications including word processing software To save a file in plain text format from within a word processing pack age such as Word or OpenOffice there is usually a menu option to Save As and then se lecting the option for Plain text txt in File Type setting in the Save dialog You may be offered additional options when saving a text file such as line endings and encoding the default options are normally suitable See the section called More about importing docu ments below How to import plain text d
23. hat Number of document In the example above the project documents are interviews with people bringing up chil dren in a neighbourhood Some of these families already had ties with the area when they moved into their house such as having relatives nearby or having lived there before The whole text of these documents has been coded by a category called Is Local Other famil ies had moved in without existing ties to the neighbourhood and these are coded as Not Local Each interviewee was asked how likely they were to move out of the neighbourhood in the coming five years and the section of the document where they talk about whether and why they might leave has been coded by a category Likely to move away or Unlikely to move away The code review indicates that a large proportion of local families think it is unlikely they will stay in the area even though the interviews had suggested that these families were generally much happier with the neighbourhood as a place to raise children The number of documents coded is usually the most suitable measure when comparing the incidence of coding between documents that are cases as in this example In other situations we may be more interested in the coincidence of particular coded analytic themes within documents Using the dropdown menu at the bottom of the code review win dow it is possible to change the display in the coding grid to show the number of separate passages which ar
24. he analysis develops and the number of categories increases you may find that they need to be re arranged to keep the category tree manageable To move a category go the category tree and drag the category from its current position to the category under which you would like it to be attached The procedure is similar to mov ing a file in Windows Explorer The category will be moved to the new position along with all the categories that are attached underneath it Using categories to record document attrib utes As well as recording observations about passages within the text of a document some times you may also wish to record facts or observations about a document as whole Com monly where documents are interviews the attributes one might wish to record include known facts about the individual interviewed such as their sex age range or membership of a designated part of a sample You may also wish to apply categories developed in the course of your analysis to documents Document attributes can be used in conjunction with the search tools to examine the incidence of text marked by certain categories in particular types of documents This can be done by marking all the text of a document with a single category To record an attribute of a document create a category to represent the attribute For example if you wanted to be able to relate the words of interviewees with their sex you might create a cat egory Sex with two sub categor
25. ies Male and Female beneath it To note that an inter view was with a man select the relevant category in the category tree open the corres ponding document select all the text in the document the shortcut CTRL a is usually available and click the Mark button 23 Chapter 6 Searches Queries and Code Reviews The preceding two chapters described how to create categories and documents and how to mark and retrieve passages of text from your project Weft QDA offers a number of other ways to navigate project data As well as simply retrieving text marked by a single cat egory Weft QDA can search a project for occurrences of words and phrases It can also match passages against more complex specifications such as all text segments marked by Category A that are ALSO marked by Category B Weft QDA enables this though Queries Finally Code Reviews are a way to compare the coding of many categories at the same time to identify patterns and coincidences Text Searching Weft QDA can search through a set of documents and return all the occurrences of a given word or phrase In Weft QDA the text results of a text search are presented as a list of ex tracts similar to text coded by a category The results are also automatically saved for later reference Doing a Text Search e Select Search then Search from the menu A search dialogue appears Figure 6 1 Doing a text search Expand results by i200 characters Case s
26. in her kitchen one aftemoon she d just got back from picking him up from reception class he was quietly watching a I cartoon through the interview Pretty happy overall with the area but sounds more ambivalent about whether they will stay she would prefer somewhere with less traffic and not sure about primary school But partner has family nearby Deleting a document To delete a document simply highlight its name in the document list in the Documents and Categories window and press the Delete key Alternately highlight its name and choose Delete Document from the Project menu The document and any associated memo and coding will be deleted Warning You should think carefully before deleting a document Once deleted a document cannot be retrieved except by reverting to a previous version of the project Chapter 5 Working with Categories Categories are themes ideas coincidences and variables that you use to describe and inter relate passages of text within documents Particular passages of text are marked by categories Creating categories e Go to the category tree at the bottom of the Documents amp Categories window Here all of the categories in your project are arranged in a tree e Select the existing category under which you want to add a new category by highlight ing it in the tree If no category is selected the new category will be added to the base of the tree of categories
27. le to split a source document into several parts Note that larger documents will take longer to import and very large documents may cause Weft to work more slowly Obviously this will also depend on how fast a computer you are using Search indexes When a document is imported its textual content is scanned and indexed so that word searches can later be performed quickly See Chapter 6 Searches Queries and Code Re views for more information Reading a document Once a document has been imported from a file it can be read and marked for the cat egories it contains To open a document for reading either double click its name in list in the Document and Categories window or highlight its name and press the View button Figure 4 1 Using the document list to open a document Working with Documents Documents amp Categories Diane interview View New A window will open within the workarea showing the document s text Use the scroll bar on the right of the window to move through the document The next chapter explains how to use the coding buttons at the bottom of the screen Figure 4 2 A document opened for viewing Working with Documents Weft QDA New Project Fie View Project Search Script Window Help amp Maggie interview So first of all can I ask how long you ve been living in this neighbourhood R It s five years well nearly six years now I And where were you living before
28. nd displayed in the query window s text box The results can be perused and have coding applied to them To save the results of a query to a new category click the Save results button at the bot tom right of the query window The results are saved to a new category in the category tree under the SEARCHES node To modify the query click the query tab above the search results From here the clauses and operators in the query can be modified and the query re run An example of using queries Say we have a set of interviews in which parents talk about how comfortable and adequate they find their homes for living with children Some say they find they have a particular need for more space So we have a category called Space needs which we have used to mark all the passages where the interviewees talk about this topic You ve also recorded the age of the children in the house using categories for different age groups see the section called Using categories to record document attributes We particularly want to look at what the families with older school age children say To turn this is into a query we want text passages that are from families with school age children document text CODED BY the category Primary school age OR CODED BY the category Secondary school age Then within those we want to look at passages CODED BY the category Space needs So we create the following query Figure 6 3 An example query 27
29. nd some where you might be advised to use an alternative software tool Reasons for choosing Weft You are unable or unwilling to pay for commercial CAQDAS software Ease of use matters You are using qualitative data analysis software for the first time Commercial CAQDAS software is expensive putting it beyond the reach of many students and researchers who would otherwise find it useful Even crippled and restrictively licensed versions are sold for hefty prices Weft QDA is available completely free of charge or re striction who doesn t love getting Free Stuff Weft QDA is easy to use compared to other CAQDAS packages This is partly because it offers doesn t squeeze in every possible extra concentrating on a sol id set of core features based around code and retrieve However it s also because it uses modern platform standard GUI controls actions and window handling and strives to avoid the idiosyncracies and irritations common in commercial and free CAQDAS As well as an uncluttered interface Weft QDA comes with complete user documentation It s particularly aimed at those who have a general familiarity with desktop software but no prior experience of using qual itative data analysis tools Introduction You are teaching qualitative Weft QDA is ideal for introducing some common CAQ data analysis DAS approaches and practices to students who have not previously used this sort of software Weft s free a
30. ocuments Make sure you have a project open into which to import documents e Click the Import button within the Documents amp Categories window Alternatively choose Project then Import Document from the menu e Find the file or files on your computer that you want to import To import multiple files in a batch you should select each one by clicking its name with the CTRL button held down e When ready click the Open button and then the file or files you selected will be im ported as documents Importing many documents or long documents may take a little time as the words in the file are scanned and indexed A little window shows to update you on progress e Imported documents will appear at the of the document list in Documents and Categor ies window Each imported document will be given a document title based on the name of the file from which it was imported So if you imported a text file called inter view txt a document called interview would be created You can change a docu ment s title once it s imported see the section called Changing a document s title and adding a memo e If you import the same file twice a new separate copy of the document is created it will have a number appended to its title to distinguish it from the first copy So if you im ported a file called interview txt and there was already a document with the title interview in your project a new document called interivew 1 wo
31. ort is sent unencrypted over the internet You should be aware that the qdp project file format does not have any special security features to prevent unauthorised viewing of the contents using Weft QDA or other soft ware You should treat a project file with as much care as you would treat all other re search data ensuring that any and all sensitive information is kept securely You should check that your use of the software complies with all relevant legal requirements institu tional rules and professional ethical guidelines 32 Appendix B Implementation Notes History and Aims When first studied social anthropology the teaching of research methods and methodo logy focussed on data collection fieldwork and much less on the analysis of the data col lected When five or so years later first used a CAQDAS tool the basic code and retrieve features seemed to me to be useful for the kind of data that many anthropologists work with However having used one package in earnest and briefly tried a few others there seemed to be a number of barriers to their wider use The freeware packages could find were either unavailable for Windows or were console or browser based applications rather than having graphical user interfaces GUIs Commercial packages are expensive and restrictively licensed The user interface of the commercial packages I ve tried also seem daunting for various reasons Firstly some suf fer from
32. rting a Code Review to a spreadsheet e ne ereere 29 A Licence Source Code and Warranty cccccseececesseeeeeeeaeeeeeeaeeeeeeaaeseeeeaaenees 31 to a e E E EE A tet ete Se ots E Sie ca 5 ea oe tlie A oo Biel teed na 31 Obtaining the Source Code eceeceeeeeeeeeeeee cece eeeeeeeeeeeeeeaeaaeeeeeeeeeeeeaeaaeaees 31 Warranty eset ieia avec ease hated eee el ieee eee eee 31 Privacy and Security 2 2steiscleccecetvosdadel a ra a aaa kanai 31 B Implementation Notes nieicsrirereierin tevree tree eee kiekin aure Veina kan KE AAEN EN EKNK NEY 33 History and AMS oee A n A E N 33 The Weft File Format nsnrisdia uoit eaa aia a iadi 33 List of Figures 3 1 3 2 4 1 4 2 4 3 5 1 5 2 5 3 5 4 6 1 6 2 6 3 6 4 Starting a new project in The Weft QDA workarea c ceceeeteeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaee 7 Importing a new document from the Documents and Categories window 9 Using the document list to open a document eee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee aa eeeeeenneeeeees 13 A document opened for viewing ccceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaeeeeeeaaeeeeeeaaeeeetaaeeees 14 The document details Pane nesses eee e eu aee RE REKE EEEE 15 Creating a new category to organise interview QUESTIONS cceseeeeeeee ees 17 Marking a text passage from a document with a category ceeeeeeeeeee 18 Viewing a category s text resi sretnes iki tenine ee eee ee ee case ONNE Sa FORETAR ERSTA 19 Changing a category s n
33. s termed coding Weft QDA is designed on the principle that this activity is a generic interpretive strategy applied under a range of names in a wide range of social sciences and humanities It is designed to make this activity straightforward whilst allowing flexibility for adaptation to various specific analytic ap proaches The Weft File Format Weft QDA s qdp file format uses SQLite a small fast file based relational database sys tem as its storage format A QDP file is simply a SQLite database and can be opened and exported using the free sqlite program http www sqlite org The schema of the database is described in the library file lib weft backend sqlite schema rb 33
34. sesssssrsssrrsissrrirssrrrrssrrrrenrrenann 18 Reviewing text marked by a category sssssiissssrrisssrrirssrrissrrrrssrrrresrrene 19 Viewing coded passages in context e sssissssrrisssrrissrrrissrrerssrrenns 20 Coding on with other categories ccceceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaeaaeeteneeeees 20 Copying text passages into other applications ccceceseeeeeeeeeeeees 21 Exporting toa Me earar ense AE E A R 21 Changing a category s name and adding a Memo cccceeeeeeeneeeeeeaaeeees 21 Deleting a Category osier iie riiai aA E aAA SAAK EN AEREA NVE EY 22 Organising categories eiiieaen anan aara Ar Aa an iNT 22 Using categories to record document attributes sseessseesenrserresrresrresren 23 6 Searches Queries and Code Reviews ccccceccceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeueeeaeeeaeeaees 24 Text Searching mesane aed ee ia u a 24 Doingsa RES Aet e E A a awe ele T 24 Limitations of text searches 2 0 00 cece ceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaeeeeeaaaeeeeeanaes 25 QUOTES ik rhe ieee iar a a eda ele ee A ah ha ae een oles 25 Clauses nihere n aaia aeaa aaraa O raaa e Akadia 26 II ReO EEA E E E E AS 26 RUNNING a QUON wk ee A TEENAA as ek 27 An example of USING queries 0 2 ee eect cece cette eeeeaaeeeeeeaaeeeeeeaaeeeeeeaaeeees 27 Codex Review tiviion eet E E E ite eee ee ii Ate 28 Weft QDA User s Manual Reading text summarised in a Code Review cceeeceeeeeeeeeeeaeeeeeees 29 Expo
35. t should be matched For example help ed ing would be one way to specify matching all three words but Weft QDA does not currently support this e Although search results are saved they do not automatically update themselves when new documents are added to the project They always contain search results only from the documents that had been imported when the search was run Of course the same search can be run again to find results from new documents Queries Queries allow you to ask more sophisticated questions about the categoriesin your project For example you might be interested in how often text marked by one category is also marked by another category Or you might wish to do a text search only within text marked by a certain category Queries allow you to explore a project in this way To start a query choose Query from the Search menu A dialog appears to allow you to create the query Figure 6 2 A blank query 25 Searches Queries and Code Reviews Weft QDA New Project File View Project Search Script Window Help SEE IS CODED BY CONTAINS WORD Clauses Each row in the query window specifies one part of the query Each row corresponds to a clause Queries can contain many clauses but at present it is only possible to create quer ies with two clauses Each clause retrieves some text passages from the documents in the project The clauses are joined by operators AND OR AND NOT which de
36. termine how the text passages from each clause are combined to find the results of the query The following types of clauses can be used CODED BY Retrieves text coded a category To choose the category whose coding is to be retrieved type the first few letters of its name in the dropdown box in the middle of the row Press Enter to find a list of matching cat egories and choose the correct one from the dropdown CONTAINS Retrieves text containing a search word This works very much like a WORD text search Operators To compose a query clauses are joined by operators These determine how the text pas sages returned by each clause are combined to make the results of the whole query The following operators can be used AND Combines two sets of text passages by returning only those passages that are found in both sets OR Combines two sets of text passages by returning text passages that are found 26 Searches Queries and Code Reviews in either of the two sets AND Combines the two sets of text passages by returning text that is appears in the NOT first set and doesn t appear in the second set Put another way it removes all text passages found in the second set from the first set Note that unlike AND and OR the order in which the clauses joined AND NOT matters Running a query To see the results of a query straight away click the View button at the bottom left of the query window The results are retrieved a
37. the main Workarea window and The Documents amp Categories so you can move comfortably between the two while working Weft QDA will remember your preferred arrangement of windows between working sessions The Documents amp Categor ies window can be shown and hidden while working on a project by using the Documents amp Categories in the View menu Use this menu command to show the Documents amp Categor ies window again if you have closed it Note Getting Started These descriptions of the Workarea and Document and Categories windows tothe Microsoft Windows version of Weft QDA The menu options buttons and working actions are the same in the GNU Linux version However the windows are organ ised slightly differently Documents and categories are loaded into the main win dow when a project is opened or started Saving and discarding project changes Once you have made changes to a project by importing new documents creating categor ies or marking text you can save these changes to the project file Choose Save from the File menu If you are working on a new project Weft QDA will prompt you for a name and location to save the project to If you want to discard changes to a saved project and return it to its last saved state choose Revert Weft will warn you that all your unsaved changes will be lost Chapter 4 Working with Documents Documents are the raw material of your analysis They may be interview transcripts
38. u want to code by highlighting the relevant text in the document window To highlight a passage click the mouse at its start hold the mouse down down and drag the cursor to the end of the pas sage Figure 5 2 Marking a text passage from a document with a category Weft QDA New Project I So first of all can I ask how long you ve been living in this neighbourhood R It s five years well nearly six years now And where were you living before torth Lambeth you know up near Waterloo round there I So what were main reasons you had for moving here then R Well I was expecting him indicates child and though we liked that flat it was three floors up and no lift Plus it was fine for two people but we just thought that we d be needing marn anann annn ha sreriind and Hd ha naninr ta marin serhila Where living before z Working with Categories Click the Mark button at the bottom of the document window and the text is marked as re lating to that category As an alternative press CTRL mto mark the selected text passage Note how Once you have done some marking as you select a category passages already marked by that category are shown in a highlighted colour Note Windows only To remove marking by the currently selected category from document text select the relev ant passage and click the Unmark The keyboard shortcut CTRL may also be used to un mark text Reviewing text marked
39. uld be created 11 Working with Documents Tip Plain text files give the most consistent results when imported into Weft as they can be imported directly without an prior conversion If possible acquire or convert your documents into plain text format before importing them Importing Acrobat PDFs Acrobat PDF is a file format that is commonly used on the internet It is often used for ex ample for distributing articles from journals Although PDFs can contain images and dia grams Weft is only able to import the textual content of the files The process for importing PDFs is broadly the same as for importing plain text documents When finding files on your computer to import select PDF documents from the menu Files of Type option list at the bottom of the file chooser window Note Some PDF files are locked This is especially common and especially irritating among files from some journal article providers It means that the text in the PDF cannot be copied or extracted and so cannot be imported into Weft When trying to import locked PDF files no text will be imported and a warning will be shown in stead Note Note that the ability to use PDF documents depends on the pdftotext utility Win dows users using the installer will have this automatically as part of the bundle Other users may have to install the software themselves for more information see the installation chapter More about importing docum
40. ut how it was developed To create or edit a category s memo open the category then click the details tab in the category s window Type the memo for the category in the large text box provided You can also edit the category s name by typing in the small name box at the top Figure 5 4 Changing a category s name and creating a memo 21 Working with Categories Weft QDA New Project File View Project Search Script Window Help Space needs text details e Statisti Documents 1 Passages 1 Characters 158 Memo References to size intemal space of homes size of bedrooms matters more to families with older kids To save your changes click the Apply button in the bottom right To discard any changes simply close the category window without applying the changes Deleting a category To delete a category select its name in the category tree in the Documents and Categories window and press the Delete key on your keyboard Alternately choose Delete Category from the Project The category categories attached to it and any memos and coding as sociated with them will be deleted from the project Warning You should think very carefully before deleting a category Once deleted a cat egory cannot be retrieved except by reverting a previous version of the project so losing all your changes since the last save Organising categories 22 Working with Categories As t
41. vailability means that students can download and use the software themselves outside of classroom or com puter lab sessions You use Linux Weft QDA is one of very few CAQDAS applications which runs on Linux It also runs on modest hardware Reasons to consider another package You need to work with images Weft QDA currently only allows the analysis of text doc audio or video uments whereas many other packages allow the ana lysis of still images video and or audio files You need to work with rich text Many commercial packages allow the analysis of rich text with styling like bold italic colour and possibly in cluding tables or figures Weft QDA requires documents to be converted to plain text before being imported into a project You need specific advanced Some other packages include specific advanced fea features tures to support specialist types of analysis such as concordances fuzzy matching visual theory modelling and so on If you definitely need these features you need a package that offers them though suggestions for future additions to Weft are very welcome You are working with multilin Weft does not support working with documents in mul gual documents tiple different scripts such as Latin Japanese Chinese Cyrillic and so on within a single project Some other packages do support multilingual projects You need dedicated paid sup Weft QDA is well supported by user documentation a port user
42. ygems is a package manager for Ruby and is probably to get Weft QDA and its required packages if you cannot use an installer You will first need to install Ruby itself if you do not already have it Then you will need to install wxruby and possibly the sqlite library if you do not already have it All the other requirements can be installed automatically usingn rubygems Run gem in stall weft qda to download and install the weft qda gem plus all the other require ruby packages Weft QDA can then be run by running the installed weft qda rb from your ruby bin dirs often usr local bin ruby weft_qda rb on Linux or C ruby bin weft_qda rb on Windows Running Weft QDA from Source Code If you need or prefer to run from a standard source code package this is available as a standard tarball for use on Windows and Linux You will have to download and install all the requirements as listed above Installation The source is organised so that it can be run in place provided all the prerequisites above are fulfilled Simply unpack the tarball and run ruby weft qda rb in the base directory There is currently no setup rb to support installing weft s libraries into Ruby s standard lib rary directories Upgrading Weft QDA is being actively developed and versions are periodically released with new fea tures and fixes for bugs Upgrading Weft should be straightforward whether you use an in staller or are using a source package and
43. you can start your analysis in Weft you must first start an new empty project by choosing New Project from the file menu Alternately you can continue work on an existing saved project file To open a project choose Open Project from the file menu and select the appropriate qdp project file from your hard disk Note that you can only have one project open at a time If you already have a project open when you start or open another project the old one will be closed If there are unsaved changes in the current project you will be prompted to save or discard these before the next project is opened The Documents amp Categories window When a project is opened or a new one started a new smaller window will open in which the project s documents and categories will appear as you create them This is called the Documents amp Categories window In the top half of this window labelled Documents is the Document List All documents that you import into the project for analysis are listed here In the lower half of the window is the Category Tree labelled Categories All the categories you create to mark your documents are displayed here in a organised in a hierarchical Getting Started tree structure Saved search and query results woll also be found in the Category Tree Figure 3 2 Importing a new document from the Documents and Categories window Documents amp Categories View New You may wish to arrange
Download Pdf Manuals
Related Search