I want to reflect the features of
ATLAS and how they relate to the reflexive nature of qualitative research. ATLAS
supports preliminary coding activities, which is called free codes in ATLAS. This
is an important feature for qualitative researchers. Reflecting my experiences
of composing coding schemes, having a place to record preliminary codes are
important and helpful. This might be especially true for researchers who based
their analysis on grounded theory. Another feature of ATLAS that is supportive
for the coding process is researchers don’t need to have the relationships
among codes ready before they dig into the data. After they take a
look at the data and have codes developed, they could organize relationships among codes by assigning different networks ATLAS provides.
Besides, as I mentioned in my
skill builder, comparing with other qualitative research tools, ATLAS supports juxtaposing
four documents within one project, which support data triangulation for qualitative
researchers.
Another feature I loves ATLAS
most is it connects codes closely with documents. For video coding, it
positions codes with video closely. Although dedoose highlights documents with
different colors based on different codes, dedoose doesn’t position them
closely. This made data tracking back especially difficult.
Really nice observations about the freedoms that ATLAS offers a researcher in relation to coding. This is one of the reasons I prefer ATLAS over other packages. While I have completed several projects that have relied heavily upon a priori coding scheme (using ATLAS), I have also (more commonly) engaged in a more emergent analysis process. I've found that ATLAS can be used to support me across the various analytical approaches that I take up.
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