For our Digital Tools in Qualitative Research class, we were asked to look at a review of various qualitative data analysis software packages and then choose one to look at in more depth.
Of the ones listed, most were available only for Window's. I'm a Mac user, so I chose one that works for Mac OS X.
I chose to look at TAMS - The Text Analysis Markup System. It is a free software package - another plus! - and can be downloaded at http://sourceforge.net/projects/tamsys/. I downloaded it and opened the program. However, I'm not working on a data analysis project yet, so I did not spent a lot of time trying to figure it out. The only way to really know how useful it will be, however, will be to spend a lot of time with it on an actual project.
Glancing through some of the documentation, it appears that the TAMS program will be very useful in coding text files and searching through codes.
It also seems to have a tool for playing QuickTime video within the file, making it work as a transcription tool as well. In the program's Help file, the sotware author describes how this program does not code video files directly, but codes the text transcript that you create from the video file. However, he notes "TA is very smart about this and can use the time codes to leap to the important spot in the video or the other direction (move the scrub bar and leap to the nearest time code in the log)." (Weinstein, TAMS Analyzer version 4.10b5h) I am planning to use video in my dissertation, so this could be very helpful.
From skimming through the help files, I can tell that the software developer was himself a Qualitative researcher, and he created the program to meet his own needs for a software package for the Mac. It seems that he has designed it thoughtfully, considering how "data collection" and "data analysis" are not really separate phases, but need to work seamlessly together.
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