Commonalities, differences and limitations of text analysis software: the results of a review

Abstract

Das Arbeitspapier diskutiert einerseits einige Tendenzen in der Technologie der Softwareentwicklung von Textanalysen und zum anderen die Schwerpunkte, wo in diesem Bereich weitere Entwicklung und Forschung erforderlich ist. Die Basis der Diskussion bildet ein Review über 15 Softwareprogramme. Auf die folgenden Programme wird detaillierter eingegangen: AQUAD; Atlas.ti; COAN; code-A-Text; DICTION; Dimap-MCCA, HyperRESEAERCH; Keds; Nud*IST; QED; TATOE; Textpack; TextSmart; WinMAXpro und WordState. Die Autorinnen erörtern die Methodologie und die Auswahlkriterien, warum sie welche Programme für welche Forschungszwecken am tauglichsten halten. (pre)

'This paper discusses on the one hand the tendencies in functionality and technology of software for text analysis and reflects, on the other hand, on the areas where more development is needed. The basis for this discussion forms a comprehensive review (Alexa & Zuell, in press) of fifteen currently available software for text analysis. In the review each software package, i.e. AQUAD, ATLAS.ti, CoAN, Code-A-Text, DICTION, DMIAP-MCCA, HyperRESEARCH, KEDS, NUD-IST, QED, TATOE, TEXTPACK, TextSmart, WinMAXpro, and WordStat, was presented in a detailed and extensive manner. In this paper we shall only delineate our methodology and criteria for selecting which programs to review and concentrate on discussing the types of support the selected programs offer, the commonalities and differences of their functionality, point to some of their shortcomings and put forward suggestions for future development.' (author's abstract)|