Open source caqdas what is in the box and what is missing
1. Computer-Aided Qualitative Research Europe
7 & 8 Oct 2010, Lisbon
For more information about our events, please visit:
http://www.merlien.org
2. 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
3. I. The Open Source Movement
• 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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4. 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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5. 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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6. Open Source Definition (by OSI)
– Free Redistribution – No Discrimination
– Source Code Against Fields of
– Derived Works Endeavor
– Integrity of The Author's – Distribution of License
Source Code – License Must Not Be
– No Discrimination Specific to a Product
Against Persons or – License Must Not
Groups Restrict Other Software
– License Must Be
Technology-Neutral
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8. 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 8
9. 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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10. 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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11. 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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12. 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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13. 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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14. 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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16. 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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18. • 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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19. • 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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20. • 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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21. • 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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22. • 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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23. • 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 23
24. 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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25. 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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26. • 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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