I have given a fair amount of space to discussion about NVivo - which I have used for a few years now - but as a dedicated Mac user, I was pleasantly surprised by this news about MAXQDA.
I have been running NVivo version 10 via VM Fusion version 5 (ver 6 of Fusion is also available now) and a Windows 7 OS. On two computers. Needless to say this upped the cost quite a bit although I do have just one NVivo (full educational, not student) license that allowed installation on a second portable (notebook) device. But add up two licenses each for Fusion and Win 7, plus some add ons (I keep my 'virtual machine' separate so also have Office for Windows), plus some RAM and it gets pretty pricey. I took another look at NVivo today - both NVivo and MAXQDA offer student license at a greatly reduced rate - for MAX it is unlimted for NVivo it is 12 month. I think they are about comparable cost for a full (can install either on two units but not use simultaneously) educational license unless, like me, you have to also factor in the virtual machine cost to use NVivo. I want to mention that NVivo has been promising a Mac version for a couple of years now. I cannot say for certain that things would have gone more smoothly had they not turned down my request to be a Beta tester, but here it is 2014 and neither the 2013 Mac version, nor the promised 'free' Mac test version has yet materialized. Atlas.ti, one of the other big dogs, is promising the Mac version in July. I am pleased to see that they have a Spanish language version available, too. On the other hand, both Hyperresearch (has worked with Mac and Win for as long as I have known about it) and Dedoose may be sitting back and laughing about the scramble to become Mac ready. One more plus with MAXQDA - you can download a free reader - that allows you to look at although not access projects. I am increasingly impressed when comparing features to NVivo and I have heard from many people that MAXQDA is a lot easier to master. I am just about ready to take the plunge and purchase a student license, so I will write up some of my impressions later on. At present, I am having pretty good luck with MS Word, admittedly on small data sets and phenomenologically-oriented analyses.
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AuthorI am Sheryl L. Chatfield, Ph.D, C.T.R.S. I am a member of the faculty in the College of Public Health at Kent State University. I also Co-coordinate the Graduate Certificate in Qualitative Research and I am a member of the Design Innovation Team at Kent State. Archives
February 2024
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