Welcome to RQDA Project!

What is RQDA and its features?

RDQA is a R package for Qualitative Data Analysis, a free qualitative analysis software application (New BSD style license). It works both on the Windows, Linux/FreeBSD and (probably) MacOS platforms. RQDA is an easy-to-use tool to assist in the analysis of textual data. At the present, it supports only plain text format data. All the information is stored in SQLite database via the R package of RSQLite. The GUI is based on RGtk2, via the aid of gWidgetsRGtk2. It includes a number of standard Computer-Aided Qualitative Data Analysis features. Besides, it seamlessly integrated with R, which means that a) statistical analysis on the coding is possible, and b) functions about data manipulation and analysis can be easily extended by writing R functions. To some extent, RQDA and R makes an integrated platform for both quantitative and qualitative data analysis.

By the GUI, it can:

  • Import documents from plain text or on-the-fly
  • Support non-English documents, Simplified Chinese Character is well-tested under Windows
  • Character-level coding using codes
  • File Editing after coding
  • Memos of documents, codes, coding, project, files and more
  • Retrieval of coding, and easily back to the original file (ease the problem of segmentation). Conditional retrieval is supported as well.
  • Single-file (*.rqda) format, which is basically SQLite database. Data are stored in UTF-8, so it should be portable
  • Facilitator helps to categorize codes,which is key to theory building. I deliberately avoid using tree-like categorization
  • Facilitator helps to categorize files
  • Search files by keywords and can highlight keyword in the open file.
  • Atrributes of file, which is useful for content analysis
  • There is a case category and related attributes of cases, which is crucial feature to bridge qualitative and quantitative research.
  • Search information about selected case from the Internet vis popup menu
  • Temporary delete files and codes
  • Rename the files,code, code category, case and others
  • Write and organize fielwork journals
  • And more...

    By R functions, it can:

  • Manipulate the temporary deletion (list, undo temporary deletion and permanently erase them)
  • Import a batch of files
  • Calculate the relation between two codings, given the coding indexs
  • Gives a summary of coding and inter-code relationship.
  • Export of file/case attributes and show subset of files/cases only in respective widget by ShowSubset function.
  • More flexible way of conditional retrieval.
  • Construct corpus from codings by RQDA2tm function.

    You can use help(package="RQDA") to see more functions in the RQDA package.

    Installation

  • Step one. Because RGtk2 depends on GTK+, you may need to install GTK+ before install RGtk2. For windows user, download GTK+ and install it. For MacOS users, download GTK+ here and install it. For Debian-based Linux users, you may use sudo apt-get install libgtk2.0-dev to install GTK+ develop library. Fedora 10, use yum install -y gtk2-devel to install. For other Linux users, you may have to manually install GTK+, download the source tarball, and follow the instructions of installation.
  • Step two. Go to CRAN, download R and install it. For Linux and BSD users, you can download binary version of R or the sources. For Windows users, you can download the binary version of R from the download page. For MacOS users, download the binary version of R from the download page, More instruction about installing R is in the R Installation and Administration Manual.
  • Step three. Launch R (as usual applications under Windows; or by command $R within shell terminal under Linux and FreeBSD). Then, you can see the prompt “>”,which indicates that R is ready for further commands.
  • Step four. Install relevant packages by R command: install.packages("RQDA",dependencies=c("Depends", "Imports")) . If you want to experience the developing version of RQDA, you can use this command after you have installed RQDA by the last command: install.packages("RQDA",repos=" http://R-Forge.R-project.org").
  • Step five. Launch RQDA by command library(RQDA) from within R. Then you can see the RQDA GUI.

    Documentation

    User Manual
    Tips
    FAQ

    Reference

  • Fisher, M. 1997."Qualitative computing: Using software for qualiative data analysis." Chapter 1. England: Ashgate Publishing Company.
  • Kelle, U. (ed.).1995."Computer-aided qualitative data analysis : theory, methods and practice." Sage Publications.

    How to cite the software

    I have put a lot of efforts on this project. I appreciate if you can cite this software in your research. You can use citation("RQDA") to get this citation.

    HUANG Ronggui (2009). RQDA: R-based Qualitative Data Analysis. R package version 0.1-7. http://rqda.r-forge.r-project.org/

    What's new in the latest version?

    RQDA 0.1-8 is now on CRAN (2009-09-20).

    RQDA 0.1-7 is now on CRAN (2009-04-29).

    RQDA 0.1-6 is now on CRAN (2008-12-26).

    RQDA has been actively developed. You can click here to see the new features. There are few known-bugs, click KnownBugskup for details.

    More Informaiton

  • The project summary page you can find here.
  • Homepage of the author.
  • Weft QDA, a similar project based on Ruby.

    Screenshots

    Main Window
    Reading File
    File Memo
    Code List
    Coding
    Retrieval
    Cases
    Settings