Atlas.ti

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ATLAS.ti
Developer(s) ATLAS.ti Scientific Software Development GmbH
Stable release 7.0 / 2012-06-04
Operating system Windows; Mac OS; iOS; Android[1]
Type Qualitative data analysis
License Proprietary software
Website www.atlasti.com

ATLAS.ti is a computer program used mostly, but not exclusively, in qualitative research or qualitative data analysis.

Description and usage

The purpose of ATLAS.ti is to help researchers uncover and systematically analyze complex phenomena hidden in unstructured data (text, multimedia, geospatial). The program provides tools that let the user locate, code, and annotate findings in primary data material, to weigh and evaluate their importance, and to visualize the often complex relations between them.[2]

ATLAS.ti is used by researchers and practitioners in a wide variety of fields including anthropology, arts, architecture, communication, criminology, economics, educational sciences, engineering, ethnological studies, management studies, market research, quality management and sociology.

ATLAS.ti consolidates large volumes of documents and keeps track of all notes, annotations, codes and memos in all fields that require close study and analysis of primary material consisting of text, images, audio, video, and geo data.

In addition, it provides analytical and visualization tools designed to open new interpretative views on the material.

To support multi-method multi-user projects across space and time (longitudinal studies), project data export using XML is available. With XML, the proprietary nature of most software systems can be mitigated. This is indeed a mandatory requirement in scientific settings.[3][4] ATLAS.ti's XML schema (http://downloads.atlasti.com/atlasti_hu_2.2.xsd) influenced the development of the QuDEX language (http://dext.data-archive.ac.uk/schema/schema.asp) at University of Essex.

Features overview

  • Coding of text, image, audio and video materials (interactive and automated)
  • Rich text and Rich Media support with embedded active objects (MS Excel, images, etc., incl. East Asian and Middle Eastern language)
  • Word documents via “on-the-fly” RTF conversion.
  • Full native PDF Support (original layout) without conversion
  • Google Earth Geodata Integration
  • Text-to-media Synchronization
  • On-Board Transcription Engine
  • Shared editable documents including dynamic update of all projects
  • Interactive margin area with drag & drop linking, coding, merging
  • Full margin support for audio and video data
  • Multi-document view for constant comparisons
  • On-screen coding (drag & drop)
  • Search & retrieve functions (incl. Boolean, semantic, and proximity-based operators)
  • Visual model building and "mind mapping" using the Network Editor
  • Integrated visualizations: frequency bars in entity managers
  • Cloud tag view for codes
  • Creation and navigation of hyperlinks between resources (Hypertext)
  • Searching for textual patterns through documents and model entities (Object Crawler)
  • Automatic coding (search - select - code)
  • Proximity analysis of coded data (Cooccurrency Explorer)
  • Project data export to XML
  • Export to SPSS, HTML, CSV
  • Creation of presentations (XML/XSLT converter including stylesheets)
  • Word frequency export to Excel
  • East Asian and Middle Eastern language support
  • Single file project backup and migration.
  • Survey import

Development history

A prototype of ATLAS.ti was developed by Thomas Muhr at Technical University in Berlin in the context of project ATLAS (1989–1992).[5][6][7][8][9] A first commercial version of ATLAS.ti was released in 1993 to the market by company "Scientific Software Development," later ATLAS.ti Scientific Software Development GmbH. The methodological roots of ATLAS.ti[10] lie in - but are not restricted to grounded theory,[11] content analysis and knowledge elicitation.[12][13]

See also

Literature

  1. Products — Qualitative Data Analysis with ATLAS.ti
  2. Lewins, Ann & Silver, Christina (2007). Using software in qualitative research: A step-by-step guide. London: Sage
  3. Muhr, T. Increasing the Reusability of Qualitative Data with XML. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, North America, 1, dec. 2000. Available at: http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/1037
  4. Carmichael, P. (2002) Extensible Markup Language and Qualitative Data Analysis Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum (FQS) Volume 3, No. 2 – May 2002
  5. Böhm, Andreas & Mengel, Andreas & Muhr, Thomas (Hg.): Texte verstehen. Konzepte - Methoden - Werkzeuge. Universitätsverlag Konstanz 1994.
  6. Muhr, Th. 1990 “Technikgestaltung für den Alltag am Beispiel der Softwareentwicklung für die sozialwissenschaftliche Technikforschung.” In Frey, D. (Ed.)Bericht über den 37. KongreB der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Psychologie in Kiel 1990, Vol. 1, pp. 368–369. Göttingen: Hogrefe.
  7. Muhr, Thomas: ATLAS.ti - A Prototype for the Support of Text Interpretation. In Tesch, Renata (Hg.), Qualitative Sociology (Vol. 14, S.349-371). New York: Human Science Press 1991.
  8. Muhr, Thomas: ATLAS/ti - ein Interpretations-Unterstützungs-System. In Fuhr, Norbert (Hrsg.), Informatik-Fachberichte Information Retrieval (Bd. 289, S. 64-77). Berlin etc.: Springer-Verlag, 1991b.
  9. Konopásek, Zdenek (2007). Making thinking visible with Atlas.ti : Computer assisted qualitative analysis as textual practices Historical Social Research Suppl. 19, pp. 276-298
  10. Dr. Susanne Friese: Qualitative Data Analysis with ATLAS.ti. Sage Publications, 2011
  11. THE DISCOVERY OF GROUNDED THEORY: Strategies for Qualitative Research (1967, 1999) Barney G. Glaser, Anselm L Strauss ISBN 1-884156-13-4
  12. Muhr, Thomas. Methoden der Wissensakquisition unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Wissenselizitation (Diplomarbeit Informatik, TU Berlin), 1988
  13. Muhr, Thomas: Textinterpretation und Theorieentwicklung mit ATLAS/ti. In: Bos & Tarnai (Hg.): Computerunterstützte Inhaltsanalyse in der Empirischen Pädagogik, Psychologie & Soziologie. Münster, New York: Waxmann 1996.

External links