Working with Quotations

Video Tutorial: Working with quotations.

Making Use of the Quotation Names and Comments for Analytical Purposes

You can use the quotation name field for paraphrasing or summarizing the content of textual quotations, as a title for video and image quotations, or for entering the location for geo quotations.

The quotation name can also be used for instance for the phase of line-by-line coding in Grounded Theory, or for initial coding in Constructive Grounded Theory, or for other inductive approaches. Instead of generating too many codes on a descriptive level, the quotation name can be used for this type of coding.

Open the Quotation Manager into a new tab group next to the document you are currently working on. See Working with Tabs and Tab Groups.

Create a quotation in the document. This quotation will also be added to the Quotation Manager.

Right-click on a quotation in the Quotation Manager and select Rename, or select F2, or select the rename button in the ribbon of the Quotation Manager.

Adding a name to a text quotation in the Quotation Manager

The example below shows an example where a name was added to add titles for video quotations:

Making use of quotation names

Further interpretations can be written into the comment field of the quotation. Below you see an example where this feature was used extensively for a grounded theory analysis.

Making use of quotation comments

If you are interested to read more about this study, you can read the following paper CAQDAS and Grounded Theory Analysis, or the book chapter: Grounded Theory Analysis and CAQDAS: A Happy Pairing or Remodeling GT to QDA.

See Example Reports for an instruction on how to create reports for named and commented (multimedia) quotations.

Reviewing Coded Quotations and Modify Coding

There are several ways how to review coded quotations:

For further information, see Quotation Reader.

Displaying Quotations in Context

Displaying quotations in context means that you can view a quotation that is listed in a browser or a list in the context of the original data.

  • Double-click on an entry in the Quotation Manager. View quotation in context

  • Click on the quotation bar in the margin area.

  • Double-click on the quotation in the Document sub-branch in the Project Explorer.

  • Once you have coded data, quotations can also be retrieved via their codes. See Quotation Reader.

  • Quotations can be activated in networks. See Working With Networks.

  • Quotations can be activated from a result list of a project search (see Project Search).

Deleting Quotations

To delete a single quotation, right-click on a quotation and select the Delete option from the context menu.

This option is available in all browsers, windows and lists where you see quotations, i.e. the Project Explorer, the Quotation Reader, the Quotation Manager, in a network, or the margin area.

Deleting a quotation does not delete the data itself. Think of quotations like a layer on top of your data. Deleting this layer does therefore not delete the underlying data. However, all other existing links like links to codes, memos or hyperlinks will be removed when deleting a quotation.

Referencing Quotations

It may be useful to reference quotations in your memos or comments, or in documents you write in other apps.

You can do all of that by simply copying a quotation from anywhere, and pasting them into your text. Drag and drop will also work. And in a memo or document, you can also just hover over the paragraph numbers and click the button that appears there to pick quotations to insert.

When inside a text document, ensure you copy the quotation and not just the text by right-clicking the quotation in the margin.

The quotations that you insert in this way include the full text, reference, and a clickable link that will open the quotation in its document, so you can see it in context. This even works from outside ATLAS.ti!

When collaborating in a team, you can also send your colleagues a link to a quotation by pasting it into your messaging app of choice – provided they have a copy of the same project on their computer that contains that quotation.

Changing the Chronological Order of Quotations

The quotation ID numbers quotations in the chronological order when they have been created. For various reasons, at times users want the quotations to be numbered in the sequential order as they occur in the document.

When you delete quotations, the numbering is not automatically adjusted. Instead, they are gaps. Renumbering the quotations also closes those gaps.

To renumber quotations:

Open the Quotation Manager and select the Renumber Quotations option in the ribbon.

Renumber Quotations