The discourse of QDAS: reporting practices of ATLAS.ti and NVivo users with implications for best practices

Abstract

We still know relatively little about how researchers use qualitative data analysis software (QDAS) such as ATLAS.ti and NVivo. We conducted a discourse analysis of 763 empirical articles published from 1994 to 2013 that explored the language used by researchers when reporting QDAS use. We found that most researchers provided few details of their QDAS use beyond naming the program, but the detailed accounts provided by some authors provided valuable insights into the ways that QDAS programs can be used to support data analysis and the reporting of research outcomes. We conclude with suggestions for best practices in reporting QDAS use. We encourage researchers to provide more detail about their program usage, e.g. by choosing active rather than passive voice to avoid attributing agency to the software, defining specialized QDAS terminology to prevent confusion, and avoiding unsubstantiated claims of a relationship between QDAS use and improved quality.

Keywords:

• Qualitative data analysis software
• QDAS
• ATLAS.ti
• NVivo
• qualitative research
• transparency
• software
• research methods

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the University of Tennessee and the University of Tasmania for providing funding for this study. Woods received study leave funding to visit Paulus and Atkins at the University of Tennessee to undertake the first stage of data analysis. Both institutions provided visiting scholar funding for both Paulus and Atkins to travel to the the University of Tasmania to complete data analysis and develop preliminary findings. The authors worked as a collaborative team throughout the research process and contributed equally to the study. Paulus provided expertise in ATLAS.ti and served as project manager for creation of this manuscript; Woods provided expertise in NVivo, trained the team to use NVivo and oversaw the data analysis. Atkins provided expertise in literature searching and oversaw the creation of the data-set; Macklin provided expertise in qualitative research methods.

Preliminary findings were published as an abstract in the ATLAS.ti User Conference 2013 Proceedings (Berlin, Germany), and presented at the CAQDAS 2014 Conference (Surrey, England) and at the Eleventh International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (Urbana, Illinois) and have been significantly expanded for reporting in this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We did not search for alternate or misspellings of the software. The terms ‘atlas’ and ‘nudist’ retrieved too many false positive results. We did account for earlier names to the extent we could identify them on company websites and Wikipedia.