The Analysis of Qualitative Study Data Using Software

The use of softwares for analyzing research data is increasing everyday. Making use of softwares specified for the analysis of qualitative data has begun since 20 years ago, and has been exposed to so many changes so far. Researchers have used the existing softwares such as word processors to facilitate the analysis practice, even before using specific softwares. Different softwares have several capabilities from encoding the text and searching through the text for repetitions of the codes to proposing hypothesis. Furthermore, other feَAutres such as determining the codes occurring simultaneously or at the same place, finding the associations between the codes, attaching notes to the codes, searching the notes to find common instances, and displaying data in different modes are some other potentialities of these softwares. Making use of these feَAutres leads to saving time, managing large volume of information, enhancing the accuracy and validity of the data, and possibility of performing more complicated analysis. Beside these benefits, there are some limitations in using these softwares such as uniformity of the approaches used to analyze qualitative data, emphasizing too much on coding the data, separating the researcher from data, and the trading aspects of the softwares. Presence of such benefits and limitations brings up the question that whether or not to use these softwares for analyzing qualitative data. Although there is no clear answer to this question, it is the researcher's job to decide for this issue, considering different aspects of his own study. There are so many points to consider in choosing the type of software which will be mentioned in this article. In general, the available softwares are just to facilitate the analysis process, not to analyze the data by themselves. In other words, the analysis and interpretation of the qualitative data is always the researcher's main responsibility.