TAMS Analyzer

To analyze the data for my project on online intercultural communication I have decided to use TAMS Analyzer.  TAMS is an open source data analysis tool written for Mac OSX, and it’s free.  Yes, free.  From what I have learned so far it supports complex qualitative coding.  You can also use it to generate different types of reports, such as counts and, of course, lists of sorted codes/coded passages.  The documentation was helpful up to a point, and now I’m simply learning by doing.  I’ll attach a short summary of my notes here, which might be useful to those just picking TAMS up.  The page numbers refer to the “TAMS Analyzer User Guide,” a pdf document which comes bundled with the software itself.  The entire package can be downloaded here.

Using TAMS

1. Material has to be rtf.  Recreate the docs as rtf files and import into TAMS
2. You need to manually save these windows all the time.
3. init file:  create this to tell the program how to code contextual data (p. 35, 95)
   1. Have context codes here for “role” (student, trainer, staff)
   2. Have file types (fieldnotes, interaction, interview, forum etc.)
   3. Have “person” or “name” as contextual data
   4. Have “topic” variable
   5. You can also do “if” coding, like if person = Bob then role = trainer
   6. Each “document” that you import will have a name – be consistent with your naming scheme (best to match it with original documents in your archive)
   7. Use “universal codes” (metatags) to note, for example, what type of document it is (interview, fieldnotes, etc.) (p. 19)
      1. universal codes are generated for every results window record and hold their value through the whole document.
      2. At the top of the document, put {!universal datatype=”Interview”}
      3. This will produce one column in your output called “dataType” and for records from this document it with fill it with “Interview”.
      4. i.     Note that the “horizon” (or scope) of universals is the end of file (eof)
         1. “context codes” mark distinctive attributes for a section of a document (marked by {!end} or {!endsection}).  Typical repeat codes include speaker, time, question – all of which you would want to be attached to a passage of text you have coded. (See also variable tags, p.35)
         2. To make these (for example, to denote speaker) create the “heads up” tag like {!context speaker}at the top of the file.  You’ll then insert the context tags in the file where applicable, like {speaker}John{/speaker}: {food>parsley}I hate parsley.{/food>parsley}{!end}
            1. 1. 1. Where you have more than one speaker it’s a good idea to make the document structured, i.e. to put in “sections” pertaining to the context codes.  To do this:
                     1. put the metatag {!struct} in your init file or on top of each interview if you don’t have an init file.  Now you can show switches in speakers, roles, etc.
                     2. have a context code in the file like the one above.
                     3. At the end of the section (i.e. the end of the speaker’s turn) put in {!endsection}.  With this command, context values get carried forward, but the system knows that particular section has ended.  (There’s another command to wipe clear the context values, if you want.)
                     4. TIPS:  (1) be careful to mark all the speakers, or you will think the wrong people are saying the things you are finding. (2) put in an {!endsection} whenever the value of speaker changes, or you will be misled as to who is speaking.
      5. Data codes are marked with {code}interesting passage{/code}.
         1. Code names consist of numbers, spaces and underscore characters. No spaces permitted.
         2. Passages of text can have multiple codes; codes can be nested and can overlap.
         3. As you create codes you’ll use the “definition” button to define them.
         4. Coding Level 2 – there’s a “reanalysis” phase in which you re-configure codes that you’re working with.  You have to set the software to “reanalysis mode” to preserve original information.  You can then refine your codes.
            1. You can export reports from this level, too
            2. The > symbol shows subtype
            3. {sound>pig}oink, oink{/sound>pig} means that “oink, oink” is an example of sound subtype pig.
               1. i.     You can have multiple levels of subtype
               2. Coding Level 3– you can identify code families (minus the “no spaces” restriction – you can use full sentences here)
                  1. TAMS calls these “code sets”
                  2. There is “no spaces” restriction – you can use full sentences for code set names

Memos/comments can be included with a coded passage – you just do it by hand after the end code, separated by a space but still inside the brackets.  It looks like this: {food>parsley}I hate parsley.{/food>parsley This guy’s crazy!!!}

More qualitative data analysis programs

Here’s an updated list of qualitative data analysis (QDA) programs, courtesy of Leah R:

Freeware:

AnSWR

CDC EZ-Text

ELAN

Ethno 2

RDQA

TAMS Analyzer

The Coding Analysis Toolkit (CAT) (currently free while in beta)

Weft QDA

Not free (but may have free trial versions):

AccuLine
Atlas.ti
BEST
C-I-SAID Version 1.0
Ethnograph version  5.0
Ethnovision 2.3
HyperRESEARCH 2.8.2
HyperTRANSCRIBE 1.5 (transcription to support analysis)
InterClipper Professional v1.1.3
INTERACT
INTEXT 4.1
Kwalitan 5.0
MacSHAPA 1.03
MaxQDA
NVivo 8
OCS Tools 3.5
PolyAnalyst 4.5
QDA Miner
Qualitative Media Analyzer
Qualrus
Sign Stream Version 2.0
Survey Logix
TACT version 2.1
Transana
WordSmith 4.0
WordStat
XSight

Writing ethnographic fieldnotes

Loving to write does not make it any less of an arduous task, and writing good fieldnotes is, I think, a true labor of love.  The best fieldnotes, i.e. the ones that will most help you in your data analysis and write-up, are those that are most thoroughly detailed and descriptive, and it is no easy task to produce these. One of the best guides I’ve found on this process is “Writing ethnographic fieldnotes,” by Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw.

When I first began writing ethnographic fieldnotes I was a student researcher at UCSD’s Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition where I worked on a project about bilingual afterschool education. For that project a group of us tutored local children at an afterschool computer club.  After each session, we spent long hours at our computers, writing up pages and pages of our observations and experiences.  I still remember being amazed at how long it took.

Nowadays I enter the field with better-formed plans and strategies in mind.  One such strategy is “bracketing,” as described by Bruce L. Berg in his excellent book, “Qualitative Research Methods for the Social Sciences.” Bracketing entails selecting “certain subgroups of inhabitants [of a social setting] and observing them during specific times, in certain locations, and during the course of particular events and/or routines.”  (Berg, 2001, p. 153)  In other words, you think strategically about who exactly you need to observe, doing what, where, and when.  It’s also important to carefully consider what your observational procedure will be once you enter the site.

In terms of deciding what to write down, Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw advise that we first take note of and describe our initial impressions of the scene, and then move on to describing “key events or incidents” (1995, p.27). Another key point is that:

“In writing fieldnotes, the field researcher should give special attention to the indigenous meanings and concerns of the people studied.  …fieldnotes should detail the social and interactional processes that make up people’s everyday lives and activities….  Ethnographers should attempt to write fieldnotes in ways that capture and preserve indigenous meanings.”  (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995, p. 12)

In other words, writing fieldnotes is an excellent way understanding your participants’ worlds from their perspectives, including the meanings that they attach to their actions and interactions.

Aside from guides and strategies, the key thing about fieldnotes is to write them up as quickly as possible, since the longer you wait the less you’ll remember.  Ideally, you’re sitting at your computer, typing away, no later than a few hours after each observation session.

Survey use in ethnographic studies

Are you a qualitative or quantitative researcher?  In academia we are typically expected to adopt one or the other of these two camps, and in so doing we get swept up in the contentious debate as to which approach is best.  The practical researcher should become skilled in qualitative and quantitative approaches, recognizing that both have their strengths and weaknesses.  In fact, combining both qualitative and quantitative methods on a project can yield rich results.

My research project on Berlin Starbucks cafes made use of mixed methods.  For that project my goal was to understand how the Starbucks baristas in Berlin, Germany made sense of, utilized, and modified the U.S. American-style customer service protocols that they were required to use.  I carried out the research in three distinct phases. I began with non-participant observation in two of the Berlin Starbucks cafes.  Next, I did in-depth, one-to-one interviews with a selection of the Berlin baristas and managers.  Finally, I created a survey and distributed it to all of the Starbucks baristas in Berlin.  (At the time of this project, there were only seven Starbucks cafes in Berlin, employing about 80 baristas.  Now I believe there are 25 cafes, and I can only guess that they must have at least a couple hundred baristas.)

While I considered my project to be primarily ethnographic in nature, the survey component of the research helped me to test the nature and distribution of the themes and concepts that I had identified in the first two phases.  Specifically, my surveys measured to what extent baristas felt comfortable with the customer service procedures that had been described to me in the interviews as especially difficult, stressful, or American/non-German.

Besides the results of the study, which were very interesting (if I do say so myself), I gleaned some practical knowledge and tips from this experience:

• Because the surveys were filled out by the baristas during their breaks, they had to be short enough to complete in 15 minutes.  (How much time will your respondents realistically have to complete your survey?)

• My original survey draft was written in English, translated into German, and then back-translated by a second party into English.  This was done to check the accuracy of the first translation and to fix any incorrect or ambiguous concepts, grammatical constructions and/or vocabulary. (Do the concepts that you are testing translate into the target language and/or culture?  Do your questions make sense and/or mean what you intend them to mean in the target language and/or culture? )

• I did trial runs of the German survey with 10 baristas, who kindly gave both written and oral feedback on the questions, critiquing clarity, vocabulary, jargon, etc. More modifications to the survey were made based on this feedback. (Do the concepts that you are testing make sense to the target community?  Are you using the correct terms and/or jargon for experts in that community?)

• The Starbucks store managers distributed the surveys to the baristas.  The baristas were asked to fill the surveys out on the premises, as I thought this would increase the likelihood of their being completed.  However, this could undoubtedly have influenced the baristas’ answers, since their privacy at work was limited.  (Ideally, what sort of environment should respondents be in when they are answering the questions?  Will respondents experience greater anonymity and/or privacy with a paper copy of the survey, or an electronic one?)

For more articles on mixed methods work done in the social sciences and other fields see the Journal of Mixed Methods Research.

Qualitative data analysis software

Having finished the data collection for my current project, I’m ready to begin the next phase of focused analysis.  This puts me squarely in the market for qualitative data analysis (QDA) software.  In past projects I used SuperHyperQual, which was a good starter tool, easy to learn and effective for straightforward coding & tagging in a small data set.  Now I’m looking for something a bit more powerful.  I need a tool that accommodates a wide variety of data formats, since my data set includes audio recordings, field notes, interview transcripts, news articles, opinion posts, manuals, and screenshots of online interactions.  The main functionality I need is organizational; the tool should be able to help me archive, code, and link my materials.  It should allow for multiple tags and codes attached to the same piece of data, and if it could generate summaries/reports in multiple formats that would be a big plus.

And if it’s not asking too much, it should be relatively easy to learn, and (here’s the deal-clincher) Mac-compatible.

Given this, what qualitative data analysis software package should I invest in?

This site has a nice overview of  a number of popular QDA programs, some of which can be used on a Mac.  See this site, too.  Once I’ve tested some of them out, I’ll report back here.

In the meantime, what QDA software do you recommend, and why?

Recording Skype interviews on a Mac

For my current research project I used Skype to conduct a series of distal interviews with participants spread all across the United States.  I found Skype to be an excellent platform for this purpose:  it was easy for participants to procure, free for my interviewees to download, inexpensive for me, and user-friendly for everybody.  Happily, with the use of Audio Hijack Pro it was also a simple matter to record the interviews (with participants’ permission, natch).

There are three key reasons why I make it a practice to record interviews whenever possible.  These may be obvious, but (at risk of preaching to the choir) I’ll list them here.  First, although I take copious notes during interviews*, I cannot jot down, verbatim, 100% of what my interviewees say.  Even on my best days I estimate that I lose a good 10% or more of the exact words my interviewees utter.  Having a recording ensures that every valuable word shared by interviewees is saved.  Second, handwritten notes typically do not capture paralinguistic cues such as interviewees’ volume, pitch, inflection, intensity, speed, or silence.  Because such nonverbal cues convey as much meaning as actual words, it’s vital to have an accurate recording of them.  Finally, recordings allow for the possibility of having transcription support.  You can’t very well give someone a sheaf of barely legible scribbled notes and ask them to transcribe them.  You could, however, give a transcriptionist a recording and ask them to prepare a typewritten copy of what has been said.

There are numerous software choices for recording Skype calls, but because I have a Mac, I opted to buy Audio Hijack Pro.  Once AHP is installed, you simply open it up and select the application that you want to record from (in this case, Skype). When you are ready, you click “record.”  That was about as technical as I got with my recordings, but there are plenty more options with AHP for scheduling, tagging, organizing, and modifying your files.

All of my recordings were saved onto my hard drive as mp3 files, and I used VLC to play them back while I was transcribing them.

*Always in a Moleskine, one of the nicest (paper) notebooks out there.

Skype for distal interviews

The case study that I’m currently working on required me to conduct interviews with a dozen people spread all across the United States.  Due to budget and time constraints, it would have been impossible for me do these interviews face-to-face.  Instead, I opted to conduct the interviews using Skype.

The basic Skype service, which is free and easy to download, allows computer-to-computer connection between Skype users.  The connections can be made using IM, voice, and video.  Using Skype was a very cost-effective method of conducting these interviews (an important criterion for a researcher working on a tight budget) and was also extremely convenient in that it allowed me to easily record and archive the interviews.

To use Skype you have to have some sort of device on which the program is loaded (a laptop, PC, Ipod touch, etc.) and you have to have an active Internet connection.  For most of my interviewees this wasn’t a problem, and so we used the free version of Skype to connect computer-to-computer.

Some of my interviewees, however, either wanted me to call them on their cell/home phones or they wanted to call me.  Skype can accommodate both of these scenarios.  What I did was subscribe to two of Skype’s additional services.

First, I purchased a subscription to Skype’s “Unlimited US and Canada” service, which lets you place an unlimited number of calls to phones in the United States and Canada.  At only $2.95/month, this was even cheaper than my landline. (Which I have since canceled, incidentally.  Take that, Qwest.)  With this service I could log in to Skype, select the “call phones” function, and easily call the cell phone or landline number that my interviewees had given me.

For those interviewees who wanted to call me, I set up an online Skype number.  The way this works is that you essentially buy a phone number from Skype.  The phone number can be “in” one of 25 countries.  I bought a US American number, meaning that the international code of my number is “1,” and it has a three-digit area code, just like any phone number in the United States.  If, however, you were doing telephonic interviews with people in Chile, Estonia, or Sweden, it would make sense for you to buy a number associated with those countries, so that your callers would not be incurring any international charges when they placed the call to you.

Of course, to receive calls placed to your online Skype number, you need to have the device which Skype is loaded on switched on, and you need to be connected to the Internet, and you need to have Skype running.  If any one of these conditions is not met and someone tries to call your online number, they won’t be able to connect with you.  Instead, their call will just go to your Skype voice mail account, which comes along with the service.

In my next posts I’ll write about Audio Hijack Pro, which I used to record my Skype interviews (with my interviewees’ informed consent, of course).  I’ll also write about obtaining oral informed consent in the interview scenario I’ve described here.