Computer-Aided Qualitative Research Europe

7 & 8 Oct 2010, Lisbon

For more information about our events, please visit:

http://www.merlien.org

Open Source CAQDAS: What is in

The Box and What is Missing

CAQR Europe 2010, Lisboa, PT

Francisco Freitas | Junior Researcher | francisco.freitas@ipleiria.pt

• 1983: Richard Stallman and the announcement of the GNU Project (“GNU’s Not Unix”)

• Aim: [to develop] ‘a sufficient body of free software [...] to get along without any software that is not free.’

• ‘The word free in free software pertains to freedom, not price.’ (freedom to copy, freedom to re-use…)

• GNU: clear social and political objectives since the beginning, not simply a technical ‘apparatus’

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I. The Open Source Movement

• Writing a complete operating system is a vast task that implies a kernel, compilers, editors, text formatters, mail software, etc.

• 1985: Free Software Foundation (FSF) is constituted to help the development of GNU

• 1991/92: all the major components assembled, GNU/Linux kernel unveilled, finally a free Operating System!

• 1998: Open Source Initiative (OSI) is jointly founded by Eric Raymond and Bruce Perens

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I. The Open Source Movement

• The ‘open source’ label is coined is 1998, partly ‘to dump the moralizing and confrontational attitude that had been associated with free software’

• Main priciples: production by peers, through exchange and collaboration, with a final product and source code usually available to all at no cost

• Open Source: more than to ensure the access to the source code

• OS is very succesful in some fields (e.g. server appliances, database management, GIS)

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I. The Open Source Movement

Open Source Definition (by OSI)

– Free Redistribution

– Source Code

– Derived Works

– Integrity of The Author's

Source Code

– No Discrimination

Against Persons or

Groups

– No Discrimination

Against Fields of

Endeavor

– Distribution of License

– License Must Not Be

Specific to a Product

– License Must Not

Restrict Other Software

– License Must Be

Technology-Neutral

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Free Software vs. Open Source

• Synonyms? Not really!

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Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)

• Different philosophies, different cultures, different distribution

methodologies, a similar development models…

• FOSS: Inclusive concept to cover both free software and open

source software

– Free Software and the philosophical freedoms

– Open Source and the advantages of the peer-to-peer

development model (‘Wikinomics’)

• Liberally licensing to grant the right to use, study, change and

improve through the availability of its source code

• Benefits to all the involved players, avoiding biased conceptions

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Licencing under FOSS

• The need to protect users and developers

(regulation)

• Created by the FSF, aproved by OSI

• An economical dimension on its own:

FOSS is not anti-capitalistic!

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Licencing under FOSS

• The most important:

– GPL: GNU Public License

• Copyleft: characteristics of the original software are transposed to every subproduct or every new version

• Protects the authors since every distribution is marked

• Forbids the inclusion of libraries in proprietary software

– LGPL: Lesser GNU Public License

• More appropriated to deal with software libraries (subroutines, coded lines or classes that creat functionalities into programs)

• Libraries are important in terms of sharing funcionalities between applications

• Under LGPL, libraries may be inclueded in proprietary software

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Proprietary Software

• Closed development (Copyright)

• Restricted licencing (no modifications, no further distribution, no

reverse engineering)

• Software usage under certain conditions

• The source code is locked

• The user is not able to adapt the software to his needs

• Restrictions enforced either by legal and/or technical means

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Why FOSS?

• Financial advantages

– Avoids licencing and the required administrative support

– Less hardware needs

– Technical support on demand

– Better technological adaptation to different economical contexts

– Equal opportunities

• Usage advantages

– Licencing flexibility (e.g. number of instalations, users or local clients)

– Can be fully tested for free

– Decisions not influenced by a particular offer, but instead considering the best options to solve any need (e.g. a bundle of applications)

– No comercial monopolys, no chains to a particular brand

– New mentality: peering and cooperation

– Free data access (e.g. corporations and individuals using the same file formats)

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Why FOSS?

• Technological advantages

– Free standards (interoperationality and improved access to

data)

– Adaptability

– Bugs and other issues my be solved faster

– A support community (linking developers and end-users)

– Proved reliability and quality (e.g. mission-critical usages)

– Improved knowledge of the information output

– Local parametrizations and the development of software

tools

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II. CAQDAS (Fielding & Lee, 1995)

• Main features to handle the data (Lewins &

Silver, 2007):

– Content searching tools

– Linking tools

– Coding tools

– Query tools

– Writing and annotation tools

– Mapping or networking tools

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Data | Information [Theory]

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Proprietary CAQDAS Packages

• ‘Theory-building support tools’ (di Gregorio & Davidson, 2008)

• Extremely complete set of features

• User-friendly interfaces

• Substantial differences between the offers available (Lewins & Silver, 2009)

• Specific CAQDAS packages to meet particular methodologies (Koenig, 2004; Weitzman and Miles, 1995)

• A good value for money?!

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III. FOSS CAQDAS Alternatives

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• Runs over Windows and Linux

• Code and retrieve package

• Simple user interface

• Limited functionalities

• Last version: 1.0.1 (2006!)

• Imports plain text and PDF’s

• Memoing

• Tree structure to organize categories

• Searches using boolean queries

• Exports do HTML and CSV formats

• Single project file (*.qdp)

• Simple coding statistics

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• Cloud computing platform

• Efficiently code raw text data sets

• Annotate coding with shared memos

• Manage team coding permissions via the Web

• Create unlimited collaborator sub-accounts

• Assign multiple coders to specific tasks

• Easily measure inter-rater reliability

• Adjudicate valid & invalid coder decisions

• Report validity by dataset, code or coder

• Export coding in RTF, CSV or XML format

• Import Plain Text, HTML, CAT XML, merged ATLAS.TI Coding

• Archive or share completed projects

• No multi-stream support

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• For Windows and MAC OS

• Multi-stream analysis package

• ‘Inexpensive, not cheap’

• Multi-user collaboration

• Data management features

• Reporting

• Data mining and hypothesis testing

• Search tools with boolean operators

• Visual tools

• Complete set of output options

• Advanced analytic analysis options

• Memoing capabilities

• Current version. 2.42 (20100902)

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• For MAC OS and Linux

• Text retriever/content analysis package

• Designed for ethnographic and discourse research

• PDF coding and analysis support

• Image and Video coding and analysis support

• Multi-user support using MySQL as a server

• XML file formats

• Complex search of information

• Multiple coding possibilities

• Last version: 4.00b4 (20100825)

• MAC version has full support for transcription

• Hierarchical coding system

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• R integration (a add-on for qualitative

analysis in a statistical software

package)

• For Windows, Linux, MAC

• Import documents from plain text or

on-the-fly Support non-English

documents

• File Editing after coding

• Memos of documents, codes, coding,

project, files and more

• Single-file (*.rqda) format, which is

basically SQLite database

• Facilitator helps to categorize files and

codes

• File atributes (content analysis)

• Write and organize field work journals

• Boolean operations and, or, not for

codings, files or cases coded by codes

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• Digital Records for e-Social Science (DReSS)

• Work in progress...

• Runs over Windows and MAC platforms

• Digital records:

• Traditional qualitative data

• System logs

• Time

• Concordancer engine (data interrogation across different streams and

time-based synchronization)

• Multi-stream support

• Multiple formats import

• Transcription tools

• Memoing and annotation

• Hierarchical or un-hierarchical coding scheme

• Innovative features

• Heterogeneous data, interactions analysis, non-verbal communication

IV. Thinking Outside The Box…

• The FOSS CAQDAS project is still missing (e.g. a single package, containing a very complete set of features)

• An extensive network to bring together researchers, practitioners, trainees, developers, programmers…

• …and simultaneously to improve the existent linkages

• Not necessarily free, but open source at least!

• Established companies may redesign their businesses models (e.g. to grant access to specific parts of the source code and foster the development of this branch of technology)

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Ethical Concerns

• Does FOSS CAQDAS packages formulate new

ethical issues?

– Probably not: the analysis and the dataset remain

the key-elements, not the piece of software

itself…

– Unless we start thinking about Web 2.0 disposals

(e.g. metadata, paradata)

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• An example of another Academia bound information tool

• Software to index, organize, reference and share research papers

• Both a desktop application and a website

• A fruitful example of a collaborative project

• A step forward through read-only formats (dynamic usage)

• Hosted by a private company (closed-source)

• Multiplatform (Windows, MAC, Linux)

• Web 2.0 device:

– Collective data from users available (Pros & Cons)

– Open API [Application Programming Interface]

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Thank You!

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Computer-Aided Qualitative Research Europe

7 & 8 Oct 2010, Lisbon

For more information about our events, please visit:

http://www.merlien.org