We wish you a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year 2010!

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University of Florida Anthropology Professor Clarence Gravlee has produced three excellent video clips to introduce new users to MAXQDA. We were so impressed by the quality of the videos that we have decided to stop producing our own tutorials in order to promote the ones he has created. He has been generous enough to share his work. Thank you Professor Gravlee!

There are currently three episodes available at our video tutorials page.

Enjoy the lively and efficient way Professor Gravlee introduces MAXQDA!

Any location in Google Earth™ can be linked with any part of a MAXQDA text or with any code, and that’s not all! A Geo-Link can also be inserted into MAXMaps as a stand-alone-object or even in any graphic in a MAXMap as a hidden hot-spot link, zooming magically from the picture (building, person, etc.) to the connected geographical location.

Interested in how swift and easy you can do it? Read our users guide.

* GOOGLE is a Trademark of Google Inc.

It has been our mission since 1988 to provide qualitative researchers all over the world with an outstanding QDA software in terms of functionality and user-friendliness. Both publications explicitly confirm the outstanding quality of MAXQDA.

Juliet Corbin (2007), Basics of Qualitative Research

Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory – 3rd Edition, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks.

More information and the MAXQDA sample project from the book is here.

Lewins A & Silver C (2007), Using Software in Qualitative Research

A Step-by-Step Guide, Sage Publications, London.

More information and comments are here.

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Text Portrait

• Focusing: A new option “Only for Active Texts” allows you to restrict the visual presentation to selected codes.
• Live connection to the data set: The Text Portrait is now interactive, so (as with the “Codeline” function), clicking on a symbol in the graphic will let you see the concerned text segment in the Text Browser. The function only works for the sequential presentation of overlapping codes and not when the option “Mixed Colors for Overlapping Codes” has been selected.

Crosstabs

• Focusing: When starting with this function, a dialog field “Only for Active Texts” will appear, allowing you to conduct a selection of texts for the cross table.
• Automatic take-over of attribute values: During the selection of an attribute, an option now allows you to automatically take over all values of an attribute in the cross table. If one wants to differentiate the frequencies of a code by different education levels, for exampe, one does not have to select each education level of the attribute “Educational Background”. All of them can be selected at one swoop.
• Choice of reference for percentage calculation: By clicking on the “Crosstabs” button in the dialog field, it can be determined what will be used as a reference figure for the percentage calculation of column and cell percentages: the number of texts or the number of coded segments. Until now the function “Crosstabs”, which was introduced for the first time in MAXQDA 2007, had always based its percentages on the number of coded segments. Theoretically, though, all codings of a specific code could be in the same text.

Code-Relations-Browser

• Focusing selections: This tool, which visually presents the overlapping of codes, now lets you determine the codes on the X-axis and the Y-axis apart from each other. Until now a complete matrix of the overlapping of all codes would be created automatically. Now a segment of this matrix may be selected to be displayed.
• Use of the weight filter: The weighting option now has a similar effect on the Code-Relations-Browser as in the complex retrieval functions. For example, if the weighting filter is turned on, only such coded segments will be displayed that own weightings within the previously-set margins.

Code-Matrix-Browser (C-M-B)

• Aggregation: The CMB represents the amount of codings each text contains for the selected code(s). If the sub-categories in the graphical presentation are turned off, the frequencies will now be aggregated to the next highest level.

Text Comparison Chart (T-C-C)

• Focusing option: The display may now be restricted to the activated codes through a dialog box.

Codeline

• Flexible display: The Codeliner displays the coded segments of a selected text in sequential form. The width of a column in pixels is now freely adjustable, allowing you to create a chart that perfectly suits your wishes. The minimum column width is determined by the required space for the paragraph number.

Texts and Text-Retrieval

• “New text” accessibility: The function “Create Text” now creates a new text in the Document System, opens this text in the Text Browser and switches it into the edit mode.
• New option for importing structured texts: After selecting the function “Import Structured Texts”, a dialog box will appear letting you decide how to handle the code information after the key word “#CODE”. In MAXQDA 2007 the string following behind “#CODE” would be taken as a code name but skipped it in the imported text. Now it is possible to take these code names over into the final text. This could be important for transcribed focus group discussions, for example, because the name of the speaker should not only be coded but also continue to visibly appear in the text.
• New options for importing tables: When importing structured texts from an Excel table you may choose in a dialog field how an empty cell of the table will be dealt with during the import: whether it will be skipped or created as an empty, coded paragraph.
• Extra view of external links: If a text contains external links, they will now be listed in the “Overview of Links”. They have their own symbol (red arrow), which will be listed in the column of the overview. This way the table can be sorted in such a way that all external links will be listed after each other.
• Additional display for memos: The memo column in the “Retrieved Segments Window” now offers a new option “Display Memos” when one right-clicks on it. This way the display of memo symbols can be suppressed, which speeds up MAXQDA if you have written a lot of memos.
• New options for text export: Texts which are displayed in the Text Browser may now be exported as a table with prefixed paragraph numbers. This presentation is primarily useful for the documentation of texts in the appendix of research reports and such. Memos and coded segments will not be taken over in this presentation. It should only contain pure texts without any pictures or other objects.

Code System

• Color-Coding flexibility: The color of a code and all its sub codes may now be changed with just one single command.
• Color-Coding flexibility in the Code System list view: The option “Select Color” has now been integrated into the context menu of the list view in the Code System. So, it is now also possible to set the color for multiple codes simultaneously here.
• New option to “transform code to attribute”: An additional option “Transform into binary attribute” has been inserted. This option will only be differentiated between the values 0 (code does not appear in the text) and 1 (code appears in the text), meaning that the amount of coded segments is of no importance.

Other Innovations

• Default value “0″ for weighted codes: The default value for the weighting attribute of codings after the installation of MAXQDA has been changed to “0″.
• Changing code weight with life connection to the data set: If the default weight is changed during research, all coded segments coded with the default value will automatically be changed to the new default value. So, if one is to change the default value from 0 to 100 all coded segments with the weight “0″ will be switched to “100″.
• Visualized display of different attribute types: The attributes in MAXQDA now contain an additional attribute “Source”, which gives you information on how the concerned attribute has been created. Four different types of attributes are now distinguished in MAXQDA:
  • System attributes: created automatically – color: Red
  • Researcher-designed attributes: they are defined by the user – color: Blue
  • Automatically-generated attributes: created by use of the function “convert to attribute” in the Code system – color: Green.
  • MAXDictio attributes: created optionally in the MAXDictio Coder Result Table – color: Yellow.
• HTML export of lexical search results: The results of a text retrieval may now also be exported as an HTML file and in such a way that the exported context may be determined freely.

Before we present the list of all 22 new features – here are the five most important innovations:

• A clearer arrangement: The categories of a dictionary may now be organized like MAXQDA’s ‘Code System’ with several hierarchical levels and a visual presentation like in Windows Explorer.
• Easier researcher control of the dictionary: Words in the word frequency list may now be inserted into dictionaries as search terms via double-click or drag-and-drop.
• Live connection to the data set: The results table of the Coder is now interactive, which means that you can see text segments that have been coded with the dictionary in the original text with just one click.
• Integrating the category frequencies into MAXQDA’s attribute table: The category frequencies of the Dictio Coder, meaning the data on often a category has been coded in a text, may be saved permanently in MAXQDA’s matrix of attributes. A new attribute type with the source data “MAXDictio” will be available there.
• More options for focused analysis: The function “Word Frequencies” now allows you to conduct analyses differentiated by text sets and single-selected texts.

List of All Innovations

Innovations in the Dictionary Function

• Faster access: The dictionary dialog window has been equipped with a tool bar allowing for quick and easy access to all functions.
• Enhanced options for differentiation: Dictionaries are now organized like MAXQDA’s Code System, so you will have the opportunity to distinguish between different levels (main- and sub-categories). A main category named “Countries” could, for example, have sub-categories like “Europe”, “Asia”, “Africa”, “America”, and “Australia”. Under “Europe”, one could then establish sub-categories, such as “France”, “Italy”, “Germany”, etc.
• Faster creation of categories: A new category or sub-category in the dictionary can now be created with a single click.
• Export of a code book: The entire dictionary can now be exported as an RTF file for documentation purposes. That way you will receive a complete code book.
• New view: In dictionaries you may switch between two views, just like in MAXQDA’s Code System: the hierarchical tree structure, which is arranged like Windows Explorer, and the tabular view which resembles an Excel table.
• Flexible dictionaries: Within dictionaries you can now reorganize categories and move sub-categories in between main categories via drag-and-drop at any time.

New Functions for Search Items

• Wild cards: Search items may now contain, similar to in the search functions of MAXQDA, the wild card symbols “?” and “*”.
• Easy transfer of search items: Search items can be transferred from the word frequency list into the focused category or sub-category of the dictionary via double click or drag-and-drop.
• Flexible dictionary: Search items may be moved from one category to another within a dictionary via drag-and-drop.

New in the Function “Word Frequency“

• More options: When selecting this function, a new dialog box will appear, allowing you to select the following options:
a) Minimal number of characters required for a word to be counted
b) Apply stop-list, yes or no (checkbox)
c) Selection of the stop-list from the recently-used stop-lists in the project
d) Include only activated texts in the word frequency analysis
e) Count out only the words of coded segments (in the Retrieved Segments window)
f) Optional: differentiate the word frequencies list by texts and by text sets
• Flexible selection for coding context: The automatic coding of the finding places of particular words in the word frequency list now offers you more options for a flexible selection: you may separately define how many paragraphs before and how many paragraph after the hit should be coded.
• Enhanced search for words: The function “Word Frequencies for Dictionary Words” has been changed so that the results table will also include search items that consist of several words (e.g. “George Clooney”, “Angela Merkel”, etc.)

New Features of the Coder

• Quicker access: The Coder is now accessible through a button in the MAXDictio symbol bar, which allows for faster dictionary-based content analysis.
• More options: As soon as the “Coder” has been selected, a dialog box with the following options will appear:
a) “only for active texts” and b) “Level” (0 bis 9)
„Level = 0“ means – just like in the current MAXdictio version – that the entire text will be defined as the unit of analysis. Choosing a level greater than “0″ includes only the coded segments of selected codes into the coding process; that means only these segments are subject to being searched for the indicated search items. At levels greater than “0″ the faded-out light-grey codes listed in the dialog box become accessible, and any of them may be selected to be included into the analysis.
• Interactive maxtrix of results: The results matrix of the Coder is now interactive in a similar way to the MAXQDA search functions, listing the coded segments in a table from where you may jump directly to the context of the segment.
• Convert into attribute: If the option “Level 0“ has been choosen, it is possible to convert the frequency of categories into attributes of the MAXQDA matrix of attributes.
• The frequency of categories becomes an attribute type: The category frequencies have been introduced as a new type of attribute in the attribute function of MAXQDA. For faster recognition they have been equipped with their own color: yellow. After having been transformated into an attribute, the category frequencies will still keep their name. If, for example, a category of the dictionary is named “Legal Aspects” this will also become the attribute name. The column “Legal Aspects” will then list, for every text in the Document System, how often this category occurs in the respective text. The transformation process is started by clicking the corresponding icon in the toolbar of the table “Results of MAXDictio Coder”. This attribute type can not be updated by importing a matrix of attributes.

Click on the pictures for a detailed view or or Download the PDF

Text Comparison Chart (TCC)
Presents with a single mouse click a striking picture, comparing different texts at a glance. The researcher is completely free to decide which codes and texts should be included in the comparison.

Text Portrait (TP)
The Text Portrait is a graphic, displaying a selected text as a „painting“ of either all or specific, selected codes assigned throughout the text. The screenshot shows that Cathy has a lot to say about financial issues (orange), but very little about family background (red). You may change the assignement of colors at any time throughout your analytical process.

Codeline (CL)
The Codeline picture offers a fast and comprehensive view of the codes assigned to a text. The diagram is interactive; as soon as you click on a symbol in a cell of the matrix, the text passage shows up in MAXQDA’s TEXT BROWSER.

Color-Coding
Stay with your proven routines: the MAXQDA Color-Coding allows for recording text segements just like using a textmarker on paper work for the first non-interpretative reading.

Control of Colors and Coding Stripe Colors
MAXQDA now offers more than 1,000,000 colors, which can be assigned to codes, subcodes, and texts. Color assignments are user-controlled and can be used functionally, not just merely an aesthetic accessory. All color stripes can be set to invisible (e.g. you can hide codings from another team member or from a specific code).

Code-Matrix-Browser (C-M-B)
The matrix enables a completely new way of visualizing the distribution of codes throughout a researcher-driven selection of texts. You will appreciate the easy and intuitive handling of the Code-Matrix-Browser. The matrix provides an overview of how many text segments from each text have been assigned a specific code.

10 Different Memo Types
A range of memo symbols allow for defining different types of memos (e.g. theoretical memos, literature memos, etc.). All memos are accessible at any time in the MAXQDA Memo Manager. Every memo is displayed in your MAXQDA project like a “Post-It”. Just double-click to open it.

MAXMaps – The Graphics Add-On

Get a new perspective on your data and on the results of your analysis! MAXMaps, the multi-functional graphics tool of MAXQDA, allows for displaying your analytical process and its results in constant “live” connection to your data. Moreover, you may use the tool completely independently of your database in order to illustrate any given process, hypothesis or pattern in a graphic or diagram while allowing the reseracher an outstanding level of free creativity. Similar to MAXQDA and the content analysis add-on MAXDictio, MAXMaps is outstanding in its user-friendliness in terms of flexibility and intuitive handling.

Click to enlarge images or Download the PDF

Step 1-5

1. Record your single, group or focus interview(s) with a digital recorder (e.g. Olympus DS-30) and transfer them on to your computer.

2. Install the free transcription software F4 from www.audiotranscription.us and upload your interview file. Automatic rewind function and time stamps can be set by the researcher.

3. Start your transcription. Control it with the F4 key, or or use the USB-Footswitch, and begin typing.

4. Save your transcript as an .rtf file (rich text format).

5. Open MAXQDA and import your text file(s) by choosing “Import Text(s)”. All time stamps will be visible througout the text.

Step 6-10

6. Now you can open one of the texts (double-click) and start working on it.

7. You want to get back into the original audio file? Just click on a time stamp in the MAXQDA Text Browser, and the audio file starts playing the very same segment. (Note: You need to keep the F4 software open in the background.)

8. If you want to code a text segment, just highlight it, press CTRL+W to create a new code, choose the code color, and type in a definition as the “Code Memo”. Assigning colors opens up unique options to visualize your analysis, using the MAXQDA Visual Tools.

9. All coded phrases are visualized by color bars, using the color assigned by the researcher. If an interesting idea comes up while coding, you can create a memo and put it right next to the text.

10. If you like to read through a specific selection of your coded phrases just activate (right mouseclick) the specific codes and texts (e.g. to see what “Jill” says about “Sport activities”). The result is shown in the “Retrieved Segments” window.