WEFT QDA

For a novice researcher who has not had a detailed research plan, picking up a free CAQDAS seems to be the most economical and reasonable step to take. I downloaded WEFT QDA 1.0.1 to see how data analysis software can help a researcher. Without enough transcript data at hand, I only tried some basic functions of WEFT, including how to import documents, build new projects, create a category, and do a text search. Queries and code reviews are a little bit complicated- I guess they will make sense to me if I have more data ready for another try later. After all, those functions are closely related to key words, which take some time to create from scratch.


Here are my thoughts after partially exploring WEFT QDA and reading the manual.

What I like about WEFT QDA:

1. Free
2. Simple for use (no fancy or advanced functions- good for rookies like me)
3. The marked text can be copied and pasted into other desktop applications. This is helpful for writing and editing text in a Word document.
4. Each cell within the Code Review grid is tinted more or less strongly based on the number of documents in which the coding of the relevant categories coincides. This gives the researcher a good summary of documents distribution based on certain criteria. What is more, one can jump from a cell in a Code Review table to see the text passages that correspond to that cell. A time-saving grouping function.
5. Relatively stable
6. Low CPU usage

What I don’t like about WEFT QDA:

1. The color of the workarea is boring. Gray makes the whole analysis process doomed and dull. It would be great if users can change the background color as they wish (I prefer light green).
2. It only supports the analysis of textual material, leaving out other forms of data such as images and diagrams (I guess NVivo is an alternative).
3. It seems that users cannot do special format such as bold, color, or different-sized type for texts imported. This may increase the number of categories created since key words or some important information highlighted in original documents will look like the rest of the text.
4. Search results do not automatically update themselves when new documents are added to the project.
5. It seems that the researcher are forced to choose nouns or adjective as key words for search, since WEFT QDA cannot find "help", "helped" or "helping" simultaneously.