Quirkos is a

CAQDAS Computer-assisted (or aided) qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) offers tools that assist with qualitative research such as transcription analysis, coding and text interpretation, recursive abstraction, content analysis, discourse analysi ...

software package for the qualitative analysis of text data, commonly used in

social science Social science (often rendered in the plural as the social sciences) is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among members within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the ...

. It provides a graphical interface in which the nodes or themes of analysis are represented by bubbles. It is designed primarily for new and non-academic users of qualitative data, to allow them to quickly learn the basics of

qualitative data analysis Qualitative research is a type of research that aims to gather and analyse non-numerical (descriptive) data in order to gain an understanding of individuals' social reality, including understanding their attitudes, beliefs, and motivation. This ...

. Although simpler to use, it lacks some of the features present in other commercial

packages such as multimedia support. However, it has been proposed as a useful tool for lay and participant led analysis and is comparatively affordable. It is developed by

Edinburgh Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh ...

, UK based Quirkos Software, and was first released in October 2014. The interface is unique, in that it simultaneously displays visualisations and text data and has identical capabilities on Windows, macOS and Linux. The thematic framework is represented with a series of circles, the size of each indicating the amount of data coded to them. Colors are used extensively to indicate the thematic bubble within the coding stripes on the text sources. There are few features for quantitative or statistical analysis of text data, however project files can be exported for analysis in

statistical software The following is a list of statistical software. Open-source * ADaMSoft – a generalized statistical software with data mining algorithms and methods for data management * ADMB – a software suite for non-linear statistical modeling based on C+ ...

such as

SPSS SPSS Statistics is a statistical software suite developed by IBM for data management, advanced analytics, multivariate analysis, business intelligence, and criminal investigation. Long produced by SPSS Inc., it was acquired by IBM in 2009. Versi ...

or R. Quirkos is extensively used in many different fields which utilise

qualitative research Qualitative research is a type of research that aims to gather and analyse non-numerical (descriptive) data in order to gain an understanding of individuals' social reality, including understanding their attitudes, beliefs, and motivation. This ...

, including

sociology Sociology is the scientific study of human society that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. The term sociol ...

, health,

media studies Media studies is a discipline and field of study that deals with the content, history, and effects of various media; in particular, the mass media. Media studies may draw on traditions from both the social sciences and the humanities, but it mos ...

school of education In the United States and Canada, a school of education (or college of education; ed school) is a division within a university that is devoted to scholarship in the field of education, which is an interdisciplinary branch of the social sciences e ...

and

human geography Human geography or anthropogeography is the branch of geography which studies spatial relationships between human communities, cultures, economies, and their interactions with the environment, examples of which include urban sprawl and urban ...

. The developers claim use in more than 100 universities across the world. It has also been used in research for non-governmental organisations such as the Infection Control Society and

UNICEF UNICEF ( ), originally the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund, officially United Nations Children's Fund since 1953, is an agency of the United Nations responsible for providing Humanitarianism, humanitarian and Development a ...

. However, the text management capabilities also can be used to assist in systematic

literature reviews A literature review is an overview of previously published works on a particular topic. The term can refer to a full scholarly paper or a section of a scholarly work such as books or articles. Either way, a literature review provides the resea ...

Features

* Basic features and simple operation * Import of

Microsoft Word Microsoft Word is a word processor program, word processing program developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platf ...

PDF Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...

, Text and RTF source files * CSV import for tabulated data (such as online surveys) * Integrated synonym database for keyword search *

Cluster analysis Cluster analysis or clustering is the data analyzing technique in which task of grouping a set of objects in such a way that objects in the same group (called a cluster) are more Similarity measure, similar (in some specific sense defined by the ...

, wordclouds and visualisation of concurrent coding * Export coded data to annotated Microsoft Word files * Subset analysis by discrete and quantitative variables * Cloud or local based data storage * Live collaboration and team work on projects * Quirkos also has a web-app version that works directly in the browser and an automated transcription service

References

External links

* * http://www.quirkos.com/web
Review by the University of Surrey CAQDAS network

Software overview (presentation)

Software overview (video)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Quirkos QDA software Science software for macOS Science software for Linux

Features

See also

References

External links