MAXQDA - The Art of Text Analysis


9.10. 2007

MAXDictio 2007 - new Version & more Features

MAXDictio has undergone a major revision and now comes with a range of new and improved functions. They will not only enhance your options to perform a quantitative content analysis, but will also be a strong heuristic tool at your hand helping you to explore your data, revealing what language your interviewees are using, thus opening up new insights into your data set.

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 the 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 may directly 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 of how 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 analysis’s 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 a quick & swift 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). For the main category “Countries”, for example, sub-categories like “Europe”, “Asia”, “Africa”, “America”, and “Australia” could be created. Beneath this level the sub-categories “France”, “Italy”, “Germany”, etc. could be defined for the category “Europe”.
• Faster creation of categories: A new category or sub-category in the dictionary will now be created with just one click.
• Export of a code book: The entire dictionary can 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, namely the hierarchical tree structure which is arranged like the Windows Explorer and the tabular view which resembles an Excel-table.
• Flexible dictionaries: Within dictionaries you may now re-organize categories and move sub-categories in between main categories via drag-and-drop any time.

New functions for search items

• Wild cards: Search items may now contain, similar as 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 to another category 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 a swifter performance of a 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 as 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.