#ATLASTI BETA SOFTWARE#

The reflexive, iterative, technology-mediated development of our data analysis procedures is also a significant part of the research project.

#ATLASTI BETA SOFTWARE#

Additional data has been collected through participants sharing documents and notes they have made about software use in their written memos, notes, blog posts or similar reflective writing. Of course, it’s also substantially reduced fieldwork travel costs and time.

By using that method we’ve generated a rich view of the layering of research activity and interaction between the software, research work and writing practices. These systems enable recording on-screen software use and an experiential, demonstrative interview approach to explore software use and issues.

We’ve tested several different webinar platforms (including testing Webex, Zoom, GoToMeeting and Adobe Connect) to engage with distributed researchers across the UK, Eutirope, Australasia and the Americas. This project uses web-based screen-capture interviews of around an hour with 13 researchers working in STS or mobilities. How are breakdowns, limits and workarounds understood, drawn on, incorporated or theorized? Methods How is the use of software accounted for in private research outputs? How is the use of software accounted for in public research outputs? Which tools and options within CAQDAS are adopted, and how are they used? Specific sub-questions then guide the methods and analysis: How do social scientists studying science, technology and mobility in their research consider, engage with and account for the effects of using CAQDAS on their investigations and analysis? Through exploring the experiences, practices, uses, and the theorisation of the software by researchers working in STS and mobilities research we’re working to explore and intervene in that are. We believe that at their intersection there is substantial potential for exploring, reformulating and better understanding what CAQDAS does, can do, and could potentially do. The methodological concerns of these interdisciplinary research areas also pose significant challenges to conventional CAQDAS approaches – for example the idea of “following the actors” is different from identifying theme, as are explorations and concerns with movement and mobility. Such simplistic positioning is challenged by scholarship in science and technology studies (STS) and practices in mobilities research that explore the mediating effects of software on work practices. Books, training courses and marketing materials for these packages actively position and promote them as being supportive but largely transparent in the qualitative analysis process.

In this context the relative lack of systematic research on CAQDAS use since Fielding, 1998 is striking – there has been a lot of published work, however, the data informing these publications is largely composed of single-person or single-project case-studies.ĬAQDAS is often strongly associated with particular approaches to engaging with qualitative data such as coding data and retrieving the codes, abstracting and reducing data to themes and relating data to fixed locations. Concomitantly the approaches to researching social life have become more complex, digital and mobile. The capabilities of computer assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) have massively increased since the 1990s, usage is far more pervasive, and the costs and pressures for institutional licensing have grown. Myprevious project with Dr Ibrar Bhatt CAQDAS in Science and Technology Studies, sought to explore how software affects, changes and mediates the way qualitative research is done.

Atlasti beta