Qualitative Data Analysis Program (QDAP) About CAT

User Reviews from CAT Beta Testers

"CAT is an important tool that furthers the goal of quality improvement in qualitative research. With CAT, social science research no longer stands alone. Instead it openly and transparently measures the quality of its work and makes it possible for others to do so as well. For us, this means easier data management, better analysis by groups of qualitative researchers, and more thorough reporting of our work."

- Antoni Casasempere Satorres, CualSoft

"CAT has enabled us to quickly gather data on which human languages exist in our large dataset of Internet articles. As CAT's capabilities improve, we expect CAT could become an integral part of our strategy for evaluating the quality of our system."

- Paul Ogilvie, mSpoke

"CAT is smooth and easy and being able to work solely from the keyboard is a great time saver."

- David J. Fetterman, Center for Healthy Aging

"I'm a very happy beta tester. I work in the training of young teachers in Suisse and we use the software in the building of competencies in observation techniques working on the inter coder reliability. Is very useful and user friendly. We are using it also in some intercultural works and it has been very useful."

- Alberto Crescentini, Alta Scuola Pedagogica

"I am writing because I love the CAT content analysis system and am very happy to endorse it. It's a great system that goes beyond anything available elsewhere and closes one of the most outstanding loops for content analytic researchers. Those of us that use content analysis for our research have for years struggled with software that fundamentally fails to understand the workflow of its customers. CAT understands that content analysis involves groups of coders working together and gives great agreement analysis tools for those who are using standalone packages. But its real advantage, for me, is in the raw coding system and the xml upload/download they have implemented. This enables me to work the tool into my research workflow, distribute coding tasks to my research team, monitor, validate and analyze the results, all without the messy printouts and face to face meetings that this used to involve. The system has enabled our research to progress more quickly and more traceably; we can see the development of our agreement over time and are sure of where our results are at all times. The team is open to feedback and very responsive; they are a breath of fresh air where the commercial providers are very interested in their licensing fees, but not in their customers. I couldn't have done my dissertation research without this tool (I'd have ended up spending time trying to develop something very similar)."

- James Howison, PhD Candidate, Syracuse University

"I have been using CAT for the last five months to undertake textual analysis for my dissertation in political science. In this phase of the project, I am analyzing the contents of over 150 multilateral environmental treaties. CAT has been enormously helpful in allowing me to analyze, in depth, a large amount of text without being overwhelmed by the amount of information. The process of preparing the data for use in CAT was particularly useful, as it helped me think through what I wanted from the data I was coding, which I believe will facilitate the analysis now that it has been coded. I have found the interface simple and easy to use. The memo function is useful to document my thoughts as I go through the data. From the perspective of the transparency of the process, the memos are extremely helpful to record why I made decisions I did, and ultimately to contribute to the replicability of the study. Finally, the technology has been quite reliable; although CAT is now in a beta version, I have not had any problems with bugs or glitches since my data has been up. The archiving and downloading functions ensure that I can have up-to-date back-ups of my work at all times."
- Jessica Green, PhD Candidate, Princeton University

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QDAP
"the smart way to code text"