14 Other information
The qda data folder contains folders for imported documents, images and audio and video. It also contains the sqlite database, named data.qda, to store coding data.
QualCoder creates QualCoder.log and QualCoder_settings.txt files in a .qualcoder folder in your home directory. The settings file contains the name of the current coder, a default working directory and choice of font. The log file records program errors and some user actions.
QualCoder is written in python 3 using the Qt6 for the graphical interface.
Currently QualCoder is developed on Windows 11. Some people have used Qualcoder on Linux Mint, Lubuntu, Fedora, Manjaro/Arch Raspberry Pi, and on MacOS.
Some potential plans for the future are to add functionality:
Look at alternative ways to visualise codes:
- Display code frequency in a comparative way - e.g. compare female versus males for the code frequencies using bar charts or other plots
Look at timeline reporting:
- Maybe add in a way to display coding from documents in a timeline - drawing from a file data attribute that is created by the end user.
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Multi-language support - review of existing translations needed
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Improve REFI-QDA open standard for import and export to other software. Codebook import and export seems OK. Project import and export seems OK but I would still say it is experimental. To review: A/V coded segments, AV sync-points.
The qda data folder contains folders for imported documents, images and audio and video. It also contains the sqlite database, named data.qda, to store coding data. QualCoder creates QualCoder.log and QualCoder_settings.txt files inside a .qualcoder folder in your home directory. The settings file contains the name of the current coder, a default working directory, font, languages and other options. The log file records program errors and some user actions. There maybe several rolling log files. QualCoder is written in python 3 using Qt6 for the graphical interface. A minimum screen resolution of 1024x600 pixels is recommended. Operating systems used QualCoder has been used on Ubuntu 22.04, FEdora, Linux Mint, Lubuntu, Arch Linux, Manjaro Linux, Raspberry Pi, Windows 10, Windows 11 and MacOS. Testing has been performed on Ubuntu 22 and Windows 10.
Future plans Some potential plans for the future are to add the following functionality: Reports:
Possibly look at text mining functionality, word clouds, word visualisations Possibly word counts -some have been enacted Alternative ways to visualise codes - some have been enacted
Hello, my name is Colin Curtain and I am a lecturer from Australia. I have many interests including clinical pharmacy, computer programming, research, statistics and clinical decision support. I completed a PhD evaluating computerised clinical decision support in 2014. When doing my PhD I used R as the statistics program of choice. This is where my interest in qualitative data analysis came from, which ultimately led to this project.
https://www.utas.edu.au/profiles/staff/umore/colin-curtain
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=KTMRMWoAAAAJ&hl=en
I thought I would share QualCoder in the hope that it may help others. Software bugs are possible and functionality could be further extended. I work on the programming for this in my spare time, it is not my full time job for me.
If and when you use QualCoder and publish your results, I would really appreciate it if you let me know the bibliographic information of your work.
