Preface

ATLAS.ti 9 Quick Tour

Copyright © by ATLAS.ti Scientific Software Development GmbH, Berlin. All rights reserved.

Document version: 9.0.0.214 (15.12.2021 19:43:22)

Author: Dr. Susanne Friese

Copying or duplicating this document or any part thereof is a violation of applicable law. No part of this manual may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including, but not limited to, photocopying, without written permission from ATLAS.ti Scientific Software Development GmbH.

Trademarks: ATLAS.ti is a registered trademark of ATLAS.ti Scientific Software Development GmbH. Adobe Acrobat is a trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated; Microsoft, Windows, Excel, and other Microsoft products referenced herein are either trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or in other countries. Google Earth is a trademark of Google, Inc. All other product names and any registered and unregistered trademarks mentioned in this document are used for identification purposes only and remain the exclusive property of their respective owners.

About this Quick Tour

This Quick Tour describes the main functions of ATLAS.ti 9, so that you get a quick overview of how to use the software and get started with your analysis. If you need more detail or information about functions that are not described in this manual, you can always use the online help by pressing the F1 key.

It is not required that you read the manual sequentially from the beginning to the end. Feel free to skip sections that describe concepts you are already familiar with, jump directly to sections that describe functions you are interested in, or simply use it as a reference guide to look up information on certain key features.

The sequence of the chapters follows the steps that are necessary to start and work on an ATLAS.ti project. At first, we introduce you to the main concepts and give an overview of the main steps when analysing data with ATLAS.ti. Then we walk you through step-by-step:

• How to create a project and add documents.
• How to code you data.
• How to explore your data and write memos and comments.
• How to analyse your data and build conceptual networks.
• How to create reports.

This is largely a technical document. You should not expect any detailed discussion of methodological aspects of qualitative research. However, you find some recommendations about how to code your data, how to build a coding system for a computer-assisted qualitative data analysis, or how to work with memos including references to academic sources. At the end of some chapter you find longer lists of articles, book chapters or books for further study.

Useful Resources for Getting Started

Video tutorials are available for each main topic. You find links to those tutorials at the beginning of the chapters introducing a new main topic.

To those seeking in-depth instruction on methodological aspects, the ATLAS.ti Training Center offers a full complement of dedicated ATLAS.ti training events worldwide, both through online courses and face-to-face seminars in nearly all parts of the world. Visit the ATLAS.ti Academy for more information.

ATLAS.ti Account and Licence Activation

Requesting a Trial Version

This brings you to the Cleverbridge Website.

If you do not want to download the software immediately, you can always do this later in your ATLAS.ti account. To do so, select My Applications.

You can initiate the purchase of a full licence from your ATLAS.ti account. After activating the licence, and the program can be used again at full capacity. You can also continue to work on your project without any data loss.

Activating a Licence

If you have purchased an individual license from the ATLAS.ti web shop, your license has been added to your account. The next step is to activate it.

Similarly, if you are a member of a team of users under a multi-user license, you have received a license key, an invitation code, or invitation link from the person who manages the license.

The ATLAS.ti License Management System allocates seats of multi-user license dynamically. This means, you are assigned the first free seat under your license. If all seats are occupied, you will be allocated the next seat that opens up.

Your installation is now activated, and you can start using ATLAS.ti.

Accessing Your Account from within ATLAS.ti

Logging Out

There are two ways how to log out to free a seat:

Working Off-Line

When starting ATLAS.ti, it checks whether you have a valid licence. If you know that you won't have online access for a given period, you can set your licence to off-line work for a specified period.

If you have a licence that does not expire, the maximum off-line period is four months. If you have a lease licence, the maximum period is dependent on the expiration date of your lease. This means, if your licence expires in 1 month, you cannot set the offline period to an additional 3 months.

After the period expired, you need to connect to the Internet again to verify your licence.

Limited Version after Licence Expiration

Once the trial period or a time limited licence expire, the program is converted into a limited version. You can open, read and review projects, but you can only save projects that do not exceed a certain limit (see below). Thus, you can still use ATLAS.ti as a read-only version.

Restrictions of the Limited Version

• 10 primary documents
• 50 quotations
• 25 codes
• 2 memos
• 2 network views
• auto backup is disabled

Introduction

ATLAS.ti is a powerful workbench for the qualitative analysis of larger bodies of textual, graphical, audio, and video data. It offers a variety of tools for accomplishing the tasks associated with any systematic approach to unstructured data, i. e., data that cannot be meaningfully analyzed by formal, statistical approaches. In the course of such a qualitative analysis, ATLAS.ti helps you to explore the complex phenomena hidden in your data. For coping with the inherent complexity of the tasks and the data, ATLAS.ti offers a powerful and intuitive environment that keeps you focused on the analyzed materials. It offers tools to manage, extract, compare, explore, and reassemble meaningful pieces from large amounts of data in creative, flexible, yet systematic ways.

The VISE Principle

The main principles of the ATLAS.ti philosophy are best encapsulated by the acronym VISE, which stands for

• Visualization
• Immersion
• Serendipity
• Exploration

Visualization

The visualization component of the program means directly supports the way human beings think, plan, and approach solutions in creative, yet systematic ways.

Tools are available to visualize complex properties and relations between the entities accumulated during the process of eliciting meaning and structure from the analyzed data.

The process is designed to keep the necessary operations close to the data to which they are applied. The visual approach of the interface keeps you focused on the data, and quite often the functions you need are just a few mouse clicks away.

Immersion

Another fundamental design aspect of the software is to offer tools that allow you to become fully immersed in your data. No matter where you are in the software, you always have access to the source data. Reading and re-reading your data, viewing them in different ways and writing down your thoughts and ideas while you are doing it, are important aspects of the analytical process. And, it is through this engagement with the data that you develop creative insights.

Serendipity

Webster's Dictionary defines serendipity as a seeming gift for making fortunate discoveries accidentally. Other meanings are: Fortunate accidents, lucky discoveries. In the context of information systems, one should add: Finding something without having actually searched for it.

The term serendipity can be equated with an intuitive approach to data. A typical operation that relies on the serendipity effect is browsing. This information-seeking method is a genuinely human activity: When you spend a day in the local library (or on the World Wide Web), you often start with searching for particular books (or key words). But after a short while, you typically find yourself increasingly engaged in browsing through books that were not exactly what you originally had in mind - but that lead to interesting discoveries.

Examples of tools and procedures ATLAS.ti offers for exploiting the concept of serendipity are the Search & Code Tools, the Word Clouds and Lists, the Quotation Reader, the interactive margin area, or the hypertext functionality.

Exploration

Exploration is closely related to the above principles. Through an exploratory, yet systematic approach to your data (as opposed to a mere bureaucratic handling), it is assumed that especially constructive activities like theory building will be of great benefit. The entire program's concept, including the process of getting acquainted with its particular idiosyncrasies, is particularly conducive to an exploratory, discovery-oriented approach.

Areas of Application

ATLAS.ti serves as a powerful utility for qualitative analysis of textual, graphical, audio, and video data. The content or subject matter of these materials is in no way limited to any one particular field of scientific or scholarly investigation.

Its emphasis is on qualitative, rather than quantitative, analysis, i. e., determining the elements that comprise the primary data material and interpreting their meaning. A related term would be "knowledge management," which emphasizes the transformation of data into useful knowledge.

ATLAS.ti can be of great help in any field where this kind of soft data analysis is carried out. While ATLAS.ti was originally designed with the social scientist in mind, it is now being put to use in areas that we had not really anticipated. Such areas include psychology, literature, medicine, software engineering, user experience research, quality control, criminology, administration, text linguistics, stylistics, knowledge elicitation, history, geography, theology, and law, to name just some of the more prominent.

Emerging daily are numerous new fields that can also take full advantage of the program's facilities for working with graphical, audio, and video data. A few examples:

• Anthropology: Micro-gestures, mimics, maps, geographical locations, observations, field notes
• Architecture: Annotated floor plans
• Art / Art History: Detailed interpretative descriptions of paintings or educational explanations of style
• Business Administration: Analysis of interviews, reports, web pages
• Criminology: Analysis of letters, finger prints, photographs, surveillance data
• Geography and Cultural Geography: Analysis of maps, locations
• Graphology: Micro comments to handwriting features.
• Industrial Quality Assurance: Analyzing video taped user-system interaction
• Medicine and health care practice: Analysis of X-ray images, CAT scans, microscope samples, video data of patient care, training of health personal using video data
• Media Studies: Analysis of films, TV shows, online communities
• Tourism: Maps, locations, visitor reviews

Many more applications from a host of academic and professional fields are the reality. The fundamental design objective in creating ATLAS.ti was to develop a tool that effectively supports the human interpreter, particularly in handling relatively large amounts of research material, notes, and associated theories.

Although ATLAS.ti facilitates many of the activities involved in qualitative data analysis and interpretation (particularly selecting, tagging data, and annotating), its purpose is not to fully automate these processes. Automatic interpretation of text cannot succeed in grasping the complexity, lack of explicitness, or contextuality of everyday or scientific knowledge. In fact, ATLAS.ti was designed to be more than a single tool - think of it as a professional workbench that provides a broad selection of effective tools for a variety of problems and tasks.

ATLAS.ti - The Knowledge Workbench

The image of ATLAS.ti as a knowledge workbench is more than just a lively analogy. Analytical work involves tangible elements: research material requires piecework, assembly, reworking, complex layouts, and some special tools. A well-stocked workbench provides you with the necessary instruments to thoroughly analyze and evaluate, search and query your data, to capture, visualize and share your findings.

Some Basic Terms

To understand how ATLAS.ti handles data, visualize your entire project as an intelligent container that keeps track of all your data. This container is your ATLAS.ti project.

The project keeps track of the paths to your source data and stores the codes, code groups, networks, etc. that you develop during your work. Your source data files are copied and stored in a repository. The standard option is for ATLAS.ti to manage the documents for you in its internal database. If you work with larger audio or video files, they can be linked to your project to preserve disk space. All files that you assign to the project (except those externally linked) are copied, i.e., a duplicate is made for ATLAS.ti's exclusive use. Your original files remain intact and untouched in their original location.

Your source data can consist of text documents (such as interview or focus group transcripts, reports, observational notes); images (photos, screen shots, diagrams),audio recordings (interviews, broadcasts, music), video clips (audiovisual material),PDF files (papers, brochures, reports, articles or book chapters for a literature review), geo data (locative data using Open Street Map), and tweets from a twitter query.

Once your various documents are added or linked to an ATLAS.ti project, your real work can begin. Most commonly, early project stages involve coding different data sources.

Selecting interesting segments in your data and coding them is the basic activity you engage in when using ATLAS.ti, and it is the basis of everything else you will do. In practical terms, coding refers to the process of assigning codes to segments of information that are of interest to your research objectives. We have modeled this function to correspond with the time-honored practice of marking (underlining or highlighting) and annotating text passages in a book or other documents.

In its central conceptual underpinnings, ATLAS.ti has drawn deliberately from what might be called the paper and pencil paradigm. The user interface is designed accordingly, and many of its processes are based on - and thus can be better understood by - this analogy.

Because of this highly intuitive design principle, you will quickly come to appreciate the margin area as one of your most central and preferred work space - even though ATLAS.ti almost always offers a variety of ways to accomplish any given task.

General Steps when Working with ATLAS.ti

The following sequence of steps is, of course, not mandatory, but describes a common script:

• Create a project, an idea container, meant to enclose your data, all your findings, codes, memos, and structures under a single name. See Creating a New Project.

• Next, add documents, text, graphic, audio and video files, or geo documents to your ATLAS.ti project. See Adding Documents.

• Organize your documents. See Working With Groups.

• Read and select text passages or identify areas in an image or select segments on the time line of an audio or video file that are of further interest, assign key words (codes), and write comments and memos that contain your thinking about the data. Build a coding system. See Working With Comments And Memos and Working With Codes.

• Compare data segments based on the codes you have assigned; possibly add more data files to the project. See for example Retrieving Coded Data.

• Query the data based on your research questions utilizing the different tools ATLAS.ti provides. The key words to look for are: simple retrieval, complex code retrievals using the Query Tool, simple or complex retrievals in combination with variables via the scope button, applying global filters, the Code Co-occurrence Tools (tree explorer and table), the Code Document Table, data export for further statistical analysis (see Querying Data and Data Export For Further Statistical Analysis.

• Conceptualize your data further by building networks from the codes and other entities you have created. These networks, together with your codes and memos, form the framework for emerging theory. See Working With Networks.

• Finally, compile a written report based on the memos you have written throughout the various phases of your project and the networks you have created. See Working With Comments And Memos and Exporting Networks.

For additional reading about working with ATLAS.ti, see The ATLAS.ti Research Blog and The ATLAS.ti conference proceedings.

Main Steps in Working with ATLAS.ti

A first important but often neglected aspect of a project is data and project management. The first step is data preparation. You find more information on supported file formats in the section Supported File Formats.

Apart from analyzing your data, you also manage digital content and it is important to know how the software does it. For detailed information, see the section on Project Management.

If you work in a team, please read the following section: Team Work.

Two Principal Modes of Working

There are two principal modes of working with ATLAS.ti, the data level and the conceptual level. The data level includes activities like segmentation of data files; coding text, image, audio, and video passages; and writing comments and memos. The conceptual level focuses on querying data and model-building activities such as linking codes to networks, in addition to writing some more comments and memos.

The figure below illustrates the main steps, starting with the creation of a project, adding documents, identifying interesting things in the data and coding them. Memos and comments can be written at any stage of the process, whereas there is possibly a shift from writing comments to more extensive memo writing during the later stages of the analysis. Once your data is coded, it is ready to be queried using the various analysis tools provided. The insights gained can then be visualized using the ATLAS.ti network function.

Some steps need to be taken in sequence. For instance, logic dictates that you cannot query anything or look for co-occurrences if your data has not yet been coded. But other than that there are no strict rules.

Data Level Work

Data-level activities include Exploring Data using word clouds and word lists, segmenting the data that you have assigned to a project into quotations, adding comments to respective passages note-making/annotating, linking data segments to each other called hyperlinking in ATLAS.ti, and coding data segments and memos to facilitate their later retrieval. The act of comparing noteworthy segments leads to a creative conceptualization phase that involves higher-level interpretive work and theory-building.

ATLAS.ti assists you in all of these tasks and provides a comprehensive overview of your work as well as rapid search, retrieval, and browsing functions.

Within ATLAS.ti, initial ideas often find expression through their assignment to a code or memo, to which similar ideas or text selections also become assigned. ATLAS.ti provides the researcher with a highly effective means for quickly retrieving all data selections and notes relevant to one idea.

Conceptual Level Work

Beyond coding and simple data retrieval, ATLAS.ti allows you to query your data in lots of different ways, combining complex code queries with variables, exploring relationships between codes and to visualize your findings using the network tool.

ATLAS.ti allows you to visually connect selected passages, memos, and codes into diagrams that graphically outline complex relations. This feature virtually transforms your text-based work space into a graphical playground where you can construct concepts and theories based on relationships between codes, data segments, or memos.

This process sometimes uncovers other relations in the data that were not obvious before and still allows you the ability to instantly revert to your notes or primary data selection. - For more detail, see Querying Data and Working With Networks.

Project Management

Opening a Project

To open a project, click on a project in the list of projects on the Welcome Screen, or if a project is already open, and you want to open another one, select File > Open.

Creating a New Project

If you just started ATLAS.ti,

Saving a Project

To save a project, click on the Save icon in the Quick Access toolbar, or select File > Save. The project is saved as internal ATLAS.ti file in the ATLAS.ti library. The default location for the library is the application folder on your computer. See Where Does ATLAS.ti Store Project Data?

It is possible to either change the default location for the ATLAS.ti library or to create new libraries. See About ATLAS.ti Libraries.

To rename a project:

To delete a project:

Creating a Project Backup

To create a backup of your project, you need to export it and save it as project bundle file on your computer, an external drive, a server or cloud location.

• The project bundle file contains all documents that you have added or linked to a project. In addition, it contains the project file with all codings, codes, memos, comments, networks, and links. Large audio, or video files can be excluded from the bundle.

• Project bundle files are also used to transfer projects between computers. They can be read by both ATLAS.ti Mac and Windows. See Project Transfer.

• If your project contains linked documents, they can be excluded when creating a project bundle file. See "Creating Partial Bundles" below.

Project Transfer

In order to transfer a project to a different computer, e.g., to share it with team members, you need to create a project bundle file. See above.

Supported File Formats

In principle, most textual, graphical, and multimedia formats are supported by ATLAS.ti. For some formats, their suitability depends on the state of your Windows system. Before deciding to use an exotic data format, you should check if this format is available and if it is sufficiently supported by your Windows system.

Textual Documents

The following file formats are supported:

Transcripts

You can prepare your own transcripts in ATLAS.ti, or import transcripts that have been created elsewhere.

This could mean - you or another person transcribing data for you - have used a specialized transcription software like:

• Easytranscript
• f4 & f5 transcript
• Transcribe
• Inqsribe
• Transana
• ExpressSribe, a.o.;

Another source are transcript prepared automatically by services like Microsoft Teams, Zoom or YouTube in SRT or VTT format. Examples of supported services are:

• MS Teams
• Zoom
• YouTube
• Happyscribe
• Trint
• Descript
• Sonix
• Rev.com
• Panopto
• Transcribe by Wreally
• Temi
• Simon Says
• Vimeo
• Amberscript
• Otter.ai
• Vocalmatic
• eStream

For further information on how to import transcripts from these services, see Importing Automated Transcripts in VTT and SRT format

PDF files (Text and Graphic)

PDF files are perfect if you need the original layout. When PDF was invented, its goal was to preserve the same layout for onscreen display and in print.

If the PDF file has annotations, they are displayed in ATLAS.ti. However, they cannot be edited.

When preparing PDFs, you need to pay attention that you prepare a text PDF file and not a graphic PDF. If you do the latter, then ATLAS.ti treats it as a graphic file, and you cannot search it or retrieve text.

When scanning a text from paper, you need to use character recognition software (OCR, frequently provided with your scanner) in order to create a text PDF file. Another option is to apply character recognition in your PDF reader/writer software.

When you retrieve text from a coded PDF segment the output will be rich text. Thus, you may loose the original layout. This is due to the nature of PDF as mentioned above. It is a layout format and not meant for text processing.

Images

Supported graphic file formats are: bmp, gif, jpeg, jpg, png, tif and tiff.

Size recommendation: Digital cameras and scanners often create images with a resolution that significantly exceeds the resolution of your screen. When preparing a graphic file for use with ATLAS.ti, use image-processing software to reduce the size so that the graphics are comfortably displayed on your computer screen. ATLAS.ti does resize the images if they are too big. But this requires additional computer resources and unnecessarily uses space on your computer hard disk.

To resize and image manually, you can use the zoom function via the mouse wheel or the zoom button in ATLAS.ti.

Audio- and Video Documents

Supported audio file formats are: aac, m4a, mp3, mp4, wav. Supported video file formats are; 3g2, 3gp, 3gp2, 3gpp, asf, avi, m4v, mov, mp4, wmv For audio files, our recommendation is to use *.mp3 files with AAC audio, and for video files *.mp4 file with AAC audio and H.264 video. These can be played both in the Windows and in the Mac version. More information is available here. As video files can be quite sizable, we recommend to link video files to an ATLAS.ti projects rather than to import them. See Adding Documents for further information.

Geo Documents

When you want to work with Geo data, you only need to add a new Geo Document to your ATLAS.ti project. This opens an Open Street world map. When you click on the option Query Address, you can navigate to a specific region or location on the map. For more information, see Working With Geo Docs.

Survey Data

The survey import option allows you to import data via an Excel spreadsheet (.xls or .xlsx files). Its main purpose is to support the analysis of open-ended questions. However, this option can also be used for other case-based data that can easily be prepared in form of an Excel table.

In addition to the answers to open-ended questions, data attributes (variables) can also be imported. These will be turned into document groups in ATLAS.ti. For more information, see Working With Survey Data.

Reference Manager Data

In order to support doing a Literature Review with ATLAS.ti, you can import articles from reference managers. The requirement is that you are using a reference manager that can export data as Endnote XML file like Endnote, Mendeley, Zotero, or Reference Manager.

If your reference manager cannot export data in Endnote xml format, you can export data in RIS or BIB format and use the free version of Mendeley or Zotero to produce the xml output for ATLAS.ti.

See Working With Reference Manager Data.

Twitter

You can collect data from Twitter searching for keywords, hashtags, users, etc. ATLAS.ti can collect tweets that are not older than one week !

You need to sign in with your own twitter account to import twitter data to ATLAS.ti. See Working With Twitter Data.

Evernote

If you collect and store you data using Evernote, you can directly import files and folders from Evernote. See Bring out the best in Evernote with ATLAS.ti 8 Windows.

Supported formats are:

Adding Documents

When you add documents to a project, they are stamped with a unique ID. This ID allows ATLAS.ti to detect if documents are the same when merging different projects.

Important note for team projects

When you work in a team and want to work on the same documents, it is important that one person is setting up the project and adds all documents that should be shared. The consequence of not doing is that documents of the same content are duplicated or multiplied during the process of merging projects. See Team Work for further information.

How to add documents

If you click on "Add Documents", you can select individual files. If you want to add entire folders or link larger multimedia files (audio / video) to your project, click on the dialog box launcher and select the appropriate option.

All added or linked documents are numbered consecutively starting with D1, D2, D3 and so on.

Linking Video Files

As video files can be quite sizable, you have the option to link them to a project instead of adding them. This means they remain at their original location and are accessed from there. Preferably, these files should not be moved to a different location.

If the files need to be moved, you need to re-link the files to your project. ATLAS.ti will alert you, if there is an issue, and a file can no longer be accessed. You find a Repair Link option in the Document Manager under the Document Manager > Tools Tab.

Sort Order of Documents

The default sort order is by name in alphabetical order. You cannot change the order of the documents by dragging them to a different position. However, it is possible to change the order of the documents by renaming and then renumbering them. See User-defined document sort order.

What happens when you add documents to a project

All documents that you add to a project are copied, and the copies become internal ATLAS.ti files. This means, strictly speaking, that ATLAS.ti no longer needs the original files. However, we strongly recommend that you keep a backup copy of your original source files.

When you add documents to a project, they are stamped with a unique ID. This ID allows ATLAS.ti to detect if documents are the same when merging different projects.

Theoretically, size restrictions do not play a major role due to the way ATLAS.ti handles documents. However, you should bear in mind that your computer's processing speed and storage capacity may affect the performance.

Excessively large documents can be uncomfortable to work with, even when you have an excellently equipped computer. The crucial issue is not always the file size, but rather, in the case of multimedia files, the length of playing time.

For textual documents, the number and size of embedded objects may cause extraordinarily long load times. There is a high likelihood that if a textual document loads slowly in ATLAS.ti, it would also load slowly in WORD or WordPad.

For very long texts or multimedia files, scrolling to exact positions can be cumbersome.

Please keep those issues in mind when preparing your files.

A Word about "Big Data"

Please keep in mind that the focus of ATLAS.ti is to support qualitative data analysis and to a lesser extent the analysis of qualitative data.

Big data is a buzz word nowadays, and a lot of big data often comes as text or images, hence could be considered qualitative. ATLAS.ti, however, is not suited for true big data analysis, which is not the same as qualitative data analysis.

As point of orientation, coding can be supported using the auto coding feature. However, you still need to read and correct the coding, and most coding in ATLAS.ti is done while the researcher reads the data and creates or selects and applies a code that fits.

A project is too large if you have so much data that you need to rely on a machine to do all the coding for you and you cannot read what has been coded yourself. If this is the case, ATLAS.ti might not be the right tool for you.

Working With Groups

Groups in ATLAS.ti help you to sort, organize and filter the various entities. Groups are available for documents, codes, memos, and networks.

Common to all groups are:

• An entity can be sorted into multiple groups. For example if you sort a document into the group gender::female, it can also be sorted into other groups like location::urban, or family status::single.
• If you click on a group in a manager, you activate a filter (see below). Then only the items that are in the selected groups are displayed.
• You can combine groups using Boolean operators. See for example Exploring Coded Data.
• You can save a combination of groups for further re-use in form of a smart group.
• You can set groups as global filter.

Often data come from different sources, locations, respondents with various demographic backgrounds etc. To facilitate the handling of the different types of data, or to compare respondents based on socio-demografic characteristics, they can be organized into document groups. You can also use document groups for administrative purposes in team projects if different coders should code different documents. You can then create a group containing all documents for coder 1, another group containing the documents for coder 2 and so on.

Another application is the use of document groups for analytic comparisons in the Code Document Table.

Document Groups are also useful as global filters for instance for Code Co-occurrence Analysis.

Document groups can also be added to Networks and you can show which codes have been applied to which group.

Application of Code Groups

Code groups can be used to sort and organize codes in the Code Manager. Code groups facilitate the navigation of codes in the Code Manager as local filter. Code groups can be used as global filters in analysis.

Code groups can also be used in the Code Document Table for case comparisons.

Application of Memo Groups

Memo groups come in handy if you have written lots of memos. You could for example group memos by function: methodological notes, team memos, research diaries, analysis.

If you have multiple memos that contain answers to one research question, you can group all those memos.

If you have multiple memos that contain input for a particular section in the research report, you may want to create a memo group for those.

You find more information on working with memos here: Memos and Comments.

Groups as Filters

Groups are listed in the filter area of the document, code, memo and network manager.

As soon as you select more than one group, you see the word any in blue in the filter bar. This means the default operation is to combine the items of the selected groups with OR.

An example would be to filter by all female respondents who live in an urban region. This requires that you have grouped the documents by these two criteria:

• education::some college
• Gender::female The same options are available for all entity types.

Importing & Exporting Document Groups

You can export and import the list of documents and their groups to and from Excel.

Exporting the data gives you an overview of all your document groups and their members. It can also be used as a starting point to prepare an Excel file for import.

You may want to import a Document Group table, if you already have an Excel file with information about each document like gender, education levels, location, etc.

The content of the Document Group Table consists of the following:

• First column: document name.
• Second and subsequent columns: document groups or document attributes

As document groups in ATLAS.ti are dichotomous, the document groups are listed in the columns, and the cells contain a 0 if the document is not in the group, and a 1 if the document is in the group.

If you do not follow the ATLAS.ti naming conventions (see below), the table will look as follows:

If you use the ATLAS.ti naming convention for document groups: attribute name::attribute label or value, then ATLAS.ti uses the attribute name as column header and the attribute label or value for each cell. For instance, if you have the following groups:

• education::highschool
• education::some college
• education::University degree
• gender::male
• gender::female
• has childre::yes
• has childre::no
• marital status: single
• marital status: married
• marital status: divorced
• number of children:1
• number of children:2

....the Excel table looks as follows:

Exporting Document Groups to Excel

Importing Document Groups from Excel

If you want to prepare a table for import, the easiest way is to export a table first. This way you generate a table that already contains all document names in the order as they occur in ATLAS.ti

• if there is no entry in a cell, the document is not assigned to a group.

• if two or more values of the same attribute apply to the document, then enter the values separated by a coma.

In the following you see two examples:

Example Excel table ready for import to ATLAS.ti:

Import Document Groups Table

Working with Quotations

Interview with Christine Silver, expert in Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software).

The ATLAS.ti Quotation Level

The ATLAS.ti quotation level gives you an extra layer of analysis. In ATLAS.ti you are not required to immediately code your data as in most other QDA software. You can first go through your data and set quotations, summarize the quotations in the quotation name and write an interpretation in the comment field. This is useful for many interpretive analysis approach for the process of developing concepts. Once you have ideas for concepts you can begin to code your idea. This also prevents you from falling into the coding trap, i.e. generating too many codes. Codes that can be applied to only one or two segments in your data are not very useful. Code names should be sufficiently abstract so that you can apply them to more than just a few quotations.

Creating Quotations in Text Documents

When you code data, quotations are created automatically. See Coding Data.You can however also create quotations without coding. To do so:

Quotation ID

Each quotation has an ID, which consists of two numbers:

• The ID 8:1 means that the quotation was created in document 8, and it is the first quotation that was created in this document.
• The ID 3:10 means that the quotation was created in document 3, and it is the 10th quotation that was created in this document.

Quotations are numbered in chronological and not in sequential order. If you want to change this order, see the next section:

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:

• It allows you to quickly glance through your quotations in list view.
• You can use the name field to paraphrase a quotation as required by some content analysis approaches, or to write a short summary.
• You can use the name field for fine-grained coding (line-by-line Grounded Theory coding; initial coding in Constructive Grounded Theory, or as required by other interpretative approaches) instead of applying codes. If you already apply codes during this phase, you will end up with too many codes that are useless for further analysis. See Building a Code System.
• Adding titles to multimedia quotations. Seee Working with Multimedia Data.

Resizing a Quotation

Modifying the length of a quotation is easy.

Coding Data

Creating New Codes without Coding

You can create codes that have not (yet) been used for coding. Such codes are called "free" codes. This can for example be useful when ideas for codes come to mind during normal coding work and that cannot be applied to the current segment but will be useful later. Sometimes you also need free codes for expression conceptual connections in networks. If you already have a list of codes, possibly including code descriptions and groupings elsewhere, you can use the option: Importing A List Of Codes.

Coding with a New Code

You can continue to add more codes, or simply continue to select another data segment. The dialogue closes automatically.

Display of Coded Data Segments in the Margin Area

The coded segment is displayed in the margin area. A blue bar marks the size of the coded segment (= quotation), and the code name appears next to it. When coding data in this way, a new quotation is created automatically, and the code is linked to this quotation.

Applying Existing Codes

Existing codes can be applied using the Coding Dialogue or via Drag & Drop.

Using the Coding Dialogue

Drag-and-Drop Coding

Drag-and-Drop Coding is possible from the following locations:

• the Codes branch from the Project Explorer
• the Code Browser in the navigation panel.
• the Code Manager Below you find more Drag-and-Drop options.

Code Browser in the navigation panel: To open the Code Browser, go to the Home ribbon and select Codes from the Navigator section. The search field in the Code Browser facilitates handling a longer code list. Rather than scrolling the list, you enter the first letters of a code. Code Manager: When using the Code Manager, it is recommend to place it next to the text you are coding into a new tab group. See Working With Docked And Floated Windows. You can quickly access codes using code groups to filter the list, or by using the search field. In the Code Manager you can see and edit code comments.

Code In-Vivo

Use in-vivo coding when the text itself contains a useful and meaningful name for a code. In-vivo coding creates a quotation from the selected text AND uses the selected text as the code name. If the selected text's boundaries are not exactly what you want for the quotation, modifying the quotation's "spread" is often the next step after creating the in-vivo code. See Working with Codes > Modifying the length of a coded segment.

Quick Coding

Quick Coding assigns the last used code to the current data segment. This is an efficient method for the consecutive coding of segments using the most recently used code.

Working with Codes

Modifying the Length of a Coded Segment

Removing a Coding

This option is the reverse function of coding. It removes the links between codes and quotations. Unlike the delete function, neither codes nor quotations are removed; only the association between the code and the quotation is removed.

Removing a Coding in the Margin Area

Removing a Coding in the Coding Dialogue

Replacing a Code via Drag & Drop

Adding, Changing and Removing Code Color

Code color can also be modified in a network. See Further Options in Networks.

Renaming a Code

Other places where you can rename a code are:

Deleting One or Multiple Code(s)

About Renaming, Deleting and Unlinking Codes

Renaming and deleting codes are operations that seem trivial, but let's take a closer look. For both operations, you need to understand that there is only ONE code, e.g. "Happiness Source: Children" in a given project, even if you have used this code many times.

As you scroll through your document, you may see this code many times. In fact, what you see is the coding for this code. Technically, these are links between the citation (represented by the blue bar) and the code represented by its name and symbol.

Removing a code in the margin (i.e. unlinking it) is like erasing a word in the margin of a paper document with an eraser. It only affects one encoding, i.e. one particular occurrence of the code. All other occurrences of the same code remain untouched. The effect of the operation is local.

If you rename or remove a code from a project, you affect every occurrence of the code in the entire project. The effect is global. If you rename the code, all code links in the margin are changed immediately. If you delete it, all occurrences in the margin and from all other contexts where the code is used, such as networks, groups, etc., are removed.

Duplicate a code

It is also possible to duplicate codes with all their links. The duplicated code is a perfect clone of the original code including colour, comment, code-quote links, code-memo links and code-code links. Duplicating a code can be a useful option to clean up or change a code system.

This option is also available in the network editor. See Further Options in Networks

Writing Code Comments

Code comments can be used for various types of purposes. The most common usage is to use them for a code definition. If you work in teams, you may also want to add a coding rule, or an example quote. If you work inductively, you can use code comments to write down first ideas of how you want to apply this code. You can also use it to write up summaries of all segments coded with this code and your interpretation about it. There are several ways to write a code comment.

• In the Code Manager is open, you can use the comment field at the bottom of the window.

• In the margin area, you can double-click on a code to open the comment editor. Another option is to right-click on a code and select the Edit Comment option from the context menu, or to click on the Edit Comment button in the ribbon of the contextual Code tab.

Creating a Code Book

The recommended option to create a code book is to use the Excel export:

Example Outcome:

Viewing Codes in Cloud View or as Bar Chart

Code Cloud

If you right-click on a code, the same context menu opens as in 'Details' view. Thus, in the cloud view you can start the same actions as in the regular view. You can for instance rename codes, split or merge codes, or open a network on one or multiple codes.

Code List as Bar Chart

The codes in the bar chart view also have a context menu. Thus, also from here, you can start the same actions as in standard view. Select multiple codes if you want to merge codes.

Printing the Code-Cloud or the Bar Chart View

You can print both the 'Cloud' view and the 'Bar Chart'. In order to do so:

The image will be saved as jpg file in HD resolution 1920 x 1080 and 96 dpi.

Merging Codes

You may begin your coding very close to the data generating lots of codes. In order not to drown in a long list of codes, you need to aggregate those codes from time to time, which means merging and renaming them to reflect the higher abstract level. Another reason for merging is that you realize that two codes have the same meaning, but you have used different labels.

A comment is automatically inserted into the target code that provides an audit trail of which codes have been merged. If the codes that are merged had a comment, these comments are also added to the target code.

Splitting a Code

Splitting a code is necessary if you have been lumping together many quotations under a broad theme. This is a suitable approach for a first run through to get an idea about your data. At some point, however, those codes need to be split up into smaller sub codes.

It is not required that you assign all quotations to sub codes. If you are not sure what to do with a quotation, you can leave it coded with the main code and split it later.

Mutually Exclusive Coding

If you do not want to allow that a quotation is coded with two of the sub codes, activate the option Mutually Exclusive. This is a requirement for some content analysis approaches and for calculating inter-coder agreement. See Requirements for Coding.

Options

• Copy Comments: Select if you want all sub codes to have the same comment as the code you split.

• Copy links: Select if you want all sub codes to inherit existing links to other codes or memos.

• Mutually exclusive: If activated, you can assign a quotation to only one sub code. This is a requirement for some content analysis approaches and for calculating inter-coder agreement.

Building a Code System

A well-structured code list is important for further analysis, where you look for relationships and patterns in the data, with the goal of integrating all results to tell a coherent story. If, as in a survey, you only have questions with the answer categories "yes" and "no" in your questionnaire, your data will only consist of nominal variables. This means that the analysis is limited and does not go beyond the descriptive level. This is like a code list that consists of a set of codes whose analysis level remains indefinite.

See also: Creating a coding scheme with ATLAS.ti.

Benefits of a well-structured code list

• it creates order
• it brings conceptual clarity for yourself and others
• it provides a prompt to code additional aspects as you continue to code
• it will assist you in identifying patterns

Characteristics of a well-structured code list

• Each code is distinct, its meaning is different from the meaning of any other code.
• The meaning of each code is described in the code comment.
• Each category can be clearly distinguished from other categories.
• All sub codes that belong to a category are similar as they represent the same kind of thing. Nonetheless, each sub code within a category is distinct.
• Each code appears only once in the code system.
• The code system is a-theoretical. This means the code system itself does not represent a model nor a theory. The codes merely describe the data, so that the data can easily be accessed through them.
• The code system should be logical, so you can find what you are looking for.
• The code system contains between 10 and 25 top-level categories.
• The code system has no more than two to three levels. Thus, it consists of categories and sub codes, and possible a dimension like positive / negative, or a time indicator like before / during / after. If dimensions apply to many codes in the code system, it is better to create separate codes and double-code the data with the content code plus the dimension.

You start by creating codes to catch ideas, the list of code grows. You then begin to sort and order codes into categories and sub codes making use of the merge and split functions. It is recommended to develop categories that contain only one level of sub codes (two if necessary). This allows you to flexibly combine different aspects when querying the data, and to avoid unnecessary long code lists and code labels.

You will find that you have different types and levels of codes:

• Structural codes that code speaker units in focus groups
• Attribute codes that code sociodemographic attributes of speakers or persons within a document
• Codes that indicate a category and codes that are sub codes of a category, and so on.

As there is only one entity for all of these different things - the code - you can indicate different types and levels using the code label. The table below proposes a syntax that you can use as guideline:

Syntax for Different Types and Levels of Codes

Example

# gender: female

# gender: male

@Tom

@Maria

@Clara

/time: before

/time: during

/time: after

*single code 1

*single code 2

*single code 3

CATEGORY A

category A: sub 1

category A: sub 2

category A: sub 3

CATEGORY B

category B: sub 1

category B: sub 2

category B: sub 3

You see that the prefixes divide your code system into different sections. This helps you to keep organized and to quickly find what you are looking for. It also allows you to flexibly combine the codes of the different categories or categories with speakers, attributes and dimensions when querying the data.

Below you see a screenshot showing a structured code list in ATLAS.ti:

The first two codes are abstract codes (= 0 frequency) that are used as modifier codes in networks. By the high density you can see that they have lot of links to other codes. Combatants and non-combatants are actually document groups in the analysis project. As you however cannot link groups to --> codes, these codes have been introduced to show the difference between the two respondent groups in networks.

If you want to read more about the project and how this code list was developed, you can read the following paper: CAQDAS and Grounded Theory Analysis.

The Role of Code Groups in Building a Code System

Users are often tempted to use code groups as higher order categories. This defeats the purpose somehow. Code groups are filters and codes can be assigned to multiple code groups. A code of one category can however only belong to one and not to multiple categories. This is why code groups do not serve well as higher order codes. If you want to build categories and sub codes, the recommendation is using the above suggested syntax instead. Indicate a category by using capital letters.

If you have a lot of low frequency code that you want or need to merge, then code groups are a good way to collect them. After you have added all low level codes that belong to the same theme / topic / idea, you can set this code group as filter. This makes it easier to merge the codes. You can then add prefixes, and the category code in capital letters.

Once you have developed categories with sub codes, you can create a code group for each category for the purpose of using it as filter. Code groups will allow you to filter by categories, and for further analysis, you can use the code groups to analyse on the category level rather than the sub code level. See Friese, S. (2019). Qualitative Data Analysis with ATLAS.ti. London: SAGE Publications.

Moving on

Once the data is coded, you have a good overview of your material and can describe it. You can then take the analysis a step further by querying the data. The tools that can be used include the code co-occurrence table, the code document table, the query tool, and the networks.

The goal is to delve deeper into the data and find relationships and patterns. Writing memos is very important at this stage as much of the analysis does not just happen because you apply a tool. The insights come when reading the data resulting from a query, and when writing summaries and interpretations.

Literature

The recommendations in this section are based on the following authors:

Bazeley, Pat (2013). Qualitative Data Analysis: Practical Strategies. London: SAGE Publications. Bernard, Russel H. and Ryan, Gery W. (2010). Analysing Qualitative Data: Systematic Approaches. London: SAGE Publications. Charmaz, Kathy (2006/2014). Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide Through Qualitative Analysis. London: SAGE Publications. Corbin, Juliet and Strauss, Anselm (2008/2015). Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory (3rd and 4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

Freeman, Melissa (2017). Modes of Thinking for Qualitative Data Analysis. NY: Routledge.

Gibbs, G. (2008). Analysing Qualitative Data. London: SAGE. Guest, G., MacQueen, K.M., and Namey, E.E. (2012). Applied Thematic Analysis. Los Angeles: SAGE Publications.

Hammersley M, Atkinson P (2007) Ethnography: Principles in Practice. Third edition. London: Routledge.

Johnston, L. (2006). Software and method: Reflections on teaching and using QSR NVivo in doctoral research. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 9(5), 379–391.

Miles, Matthew B., Huberman, Michael, Saldaña, Jhonny (2014). Qualitative Data Analysis (3rd ed.) Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

Morse, J.M. and Richards, L. (2002, 2013). Readme First for a User’s Guide to Qualitative Methods (3rd ed). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

Richards, Lyn (2009, 2021, 4ed). Handling qualitative data: A practical guide. London: SAGE Publications.

Saldaña, Jonny (2021). The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers. London: SAGE Publications. Spradley, James P. (2016). The Ethnographic Interview. Waveland Press. Strauss, A. (1987). Qualitative analysis for social scientists. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Weston, C., Gandell, T., Beauchamp, J., Beauchamp, C., McApline, L. and Wiseman, C. (2001). Analyzing Interview Data: The Development and Evolution of a Coding System, Qualitative Sociology 24(3): 381-400.

Retrieving Coded Data

From the Project Explorer, Code Manager or Code Browser

If you prefer to read the data in context, you can dock the Quotation Reader to the right or left-hand side of your screen in single line format. To do so:

Simple Retrieval in the Margin Area

Simple AND and OR Queries in The Quotation Manager

The list of quotations only shows the quotations of the selected code. If you click on a quotation, it will be shown in the preview area. If you double-click, the quotation will be shown in the context of the document.

The yellow bar on top shows the code(s) you are using as filter.

When selecting two or more codes in the side panel, the filter is extended to an OR query: Show quotations coded with of ANY of the codes.....

• ANY: Show all quotations linked to any of the selected codes.

• ALL Show quotations where all the selected codes apply. This means that two or more codes have been applied to the exact same quotation.

If you want to export the results, click on either the Report or Excel Export button in the ribbon. Find more detail see Creating Reports.

Working with Memos and Comments

The ideas captured in memos are often the pieces of a puzzle that are later put together in the phase of report writing.

Theory-building, often associated with building networks, also involves writing memos.

Memos in ATLAS.ti can be just a text on its own, or can be linked to other entities like quotations, codes, or other memos.

Differences between Memos and Comments

From a methodological point of view comments are also memos in the sense that comments are also places for thinking and writing.

In technical terms, in ATLAS.ti there is a distinction between comments and memos, as comments exclusively belong to one entity. For example, the document comment is part of the document; a code comment belongs to a particular code and is usually a definition for this code. A quotation comment contains notes or interpretations about the quotation it belongs to.

Comments are not displayed in browsers separately from the entity to which they are attached.

Quotation comment

Code comment

Memos

ATLAS.ti memos in comparison can be free-standing.

• You can write a comment for a memo, for example: use this memo for section 2 in chapter 4 in my thesis.

• They have a type attribute. This means you can label them as methodological memo, as theoretical memo, organizational memo, and the like.

• Memos can be linked to quotations, codes and other memos (see Grounded and Density column in the Memo Manager).

• Memos can be grouped.

Creating Memos

Memos can be created from the Home tab, or in the Memo Manager.

To create a memo from the Home tab

Depending on your last settings, the memo editor may open as floating or docked window. If you want to change between floated and docked windows, see Interface Navigation,

To create a memo in the Memo Manager

Linking Memos

Memos can be linked to quotations, codes and other memos. You can link memos per drag & drop basically anywhere in the program, or visually in networks. See Linking Nodes. Below a few examples are given.

Reviewing Quotations Linked to a Memo

Opening an Existing Memo

You can access memos from everywhere: the Project Explorer, the Memo Manager, in the margin area if you linked a memo to a quotation, or from within a network.

Writing a Comment

You find a field for writing comments in every Entity Manager.

All items that have a comment display a yellow post-it within their icon.

If you want to add formatting,

References

Corbin, Juliet and Strauss, Anselm (2008). Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory (3rd and 4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Gibbs, Graham (2005). Writing as analysis. Online QDA.

Querying Data

ATLAS.ti offers several tools that support you in querying your data:

Simple Boolean Retrieval.

See Retrieving Coded Data.

Code Document Table

The Code Document Table is a cross-tabulation of codes or code groups by documents or document groups. It shows how often a code (codes of a code group) has (have) been applied to a document or document group. See Code Document Table.

Co-occurrence Analysis

Use the Code Co-occurrence Explorer to explore coded data to get a quick overview where there might be interesting overlaps. If you are looking for specific co-occurrences and for accessing the quotations of co-occurring codes, the Code Co-occurrence Table is the better choice. See Code Co-Occurrence Table.

The Query Tool

The Query Tool finds quotations based on a combination of codes using Boolean, Proximity or Semantic operators. Example: Show me all quotations where both Code A and Code B have been applied.

Such queries can also be combined with variables in form of documents or document groups. This means that you can restrict a query to parts of your data like: Show me all quotations where both Code A and Code B have been applied, but only for female respondents between the age of 21 and 30. See the chapters on the Query Tool in the full manual.

Smart Codes

Smart Codes are stored queries. They can be reused and always reflect the current state of coding, e.g. after more coding has been done or after coding has been modified. They can also be used as part of other query, thus, you can build complex queries step by step. See the chapter "Working With Smart Codes" in the full manual.

Smart Groups

Like smart codes, smart groups are stored queries based on groups. The purpose is to create groups on an aggregate level. For instance, if you have groups for gender, age and location, you can create smart groups that reflect a combination of these like all females from age group 1 living in city X. See the chapter "Working With Smart Groups" in the full manual.

Global Filters

Global filters allow you to restrict searches across the entire project. If you set a document group as global filter, the results in the Codes-Document or Code Co-occurrence Table will be calculated based on the data in the filter and not for the entire project. Global filters effect all tools, windows, and networks. See the chapter "Applying Global Filters For Data Analysis" on the full manual.

Code-Document Table

You can use the Code Document Table for within and across documents or group comparisons by relating codes or code groups and documents or document groups to each other.

Running an Analysis in the Code Document Table

By default, the codes / code groups are displayed in the first column, and the documents / document groups in the first row. First column

• Next to each code, the number indicates how often the code is applied in the entire project.

• Next to a code group, you see two numbers: The first one tells you how many codes are in the group, the second numbers gives you the number of codings. This is different from the number of quotations, as multiple codes from the same code group could be linked to the same quotation.

First row

• Below a document, you see the total number of quotations in each document.

• Below a document group, you see two numbers: the first one tells you how many documents are in the document group, and the second number gives you the number of quotations for all documents in the group.

Table cells

• The results in the table cells show how often each selected code was (or the codes of a code group were) applied in each document or document group. Counted are the number of codings, unless you select to count words (see options).

• If you click on a cell in the table, the quotation content is shown in the Quotation Reader on the left-hand side.

Sankey Diagram

As soon as you create a table, a Sankey diagram will be shown in the area below the table. The Sankey diagram ist an alternative view complementing the original table view.

The basic table data model of rows and column entities is represented in the Sankey model as nodes and edges, the strength of co-occurrence between pairs of nodes. The Code Document table uses codes, code groups, documents and document groups. For each table cell containing a value, an edge is displayed between the diagram nodes. The thickness of the edges resemble the cell values of the table. Cells with value 0 are not displayed in a Sankey view.

You can also view just the Sankey Diagram by deactivating the table in the ribbon.

You find further information on how to work with Sankey diagrams here: Visualization of the Code-Document Tabel.

The Code Co-Occurrence Table

The co-occurrence tools search for codes that have been applied either to the same quotation or to overlapping quotations. Using these tools you can find out which topics are mentioned together or are in proximity to each other.

The results depend on how you have coded the data. If you want to examine the proximity of certain issues, then you have to code overlapping segments, or create one quotation and apply multiple codes.

Next you need to select the codes that you want to relate to each other:

To select an item, you need to click the check-box in front of it. It is also possible to select multiple items via the standard selection techniques using the Ctrl or Shift-key. After highlighting multiple items, push the space bar to activate the check boxes of all selected items, or right click and chose Check Selected from the context menu.

The context menu in each of the selection list also allows you to uncheck all selected code, to select all codes, to unselect all codes, to invert the selection, or to invert the checked codes.

How to Read the Table

• First column / first row: The number below and behind each code shows how often the code is applied the entire project. This helps you to better evaluate the number of co-occurrences in the table cells.

• The number in the cell indicates the number of hits, how often the two code co-occur. This means that the number of co-occurring „events" and not the number of quotations are counted. If a single quotation is coded by two codes or if two overlapping quotations are coded by two codes, this counts in both cases as a single co-occurrence.

• If you click on a cell, the quotations of the corresponding row and column codes are displayed next to the table in the Quotation Reader.

• Below the table, the Sankey Diagram is shown. You can view both at the same time or deselect either the table or the Sankey Diagram in the ribbon.

Sankey Diagram

As soon as you create a table, a Sankey diagram will be shown in the area below the table. The Sankey diagram ist an alternative view complementing the original table view.

The basic table data model of rows and column entities is represented in the Sankey model as nodes and edges, the strength of co-occurrence between pairs of nodes. For each table cell containing a value, an edge is displayed between the diagram nodes. The thickness of the edges resemble the cell values of the table. Cells with value 0 are not displayed in a Sankey view.

You find further information on how to work with Sankey diagrams here: Visualization of the Code Co-occurrence Tabel.

ATLAS.ti Networks

Visualization can be a key element in discovering connections between concepts, interpreting your findings, and effectively communicating your results. Networks in ATLAS.ti allow you to accomplish all three of these important objectives. These small segments of your larger web of analysis are modeled using the network editor, an intuitive work space we also like to think is easy on the eye.

The word network is a ubiquitous and powerful metaphor found in many fields of research and application. Flow charts in project planning, text graphs in hypertext systems, cognitive models of memory and knowledge representation (semantic networks) are all networks that serve to represent complex information by intuitively accessible graphic means. One of the most attractive properties of graphs is their intuitive graphical presentation, mostly in form of two-dimensional layouts of labeled nodes and links.

In contrast with linear, sequential representations (e.g., text), presentations of knowledge in networks resemble more closely the way human memory and thought is structured. Cognitive "load" in handling complex relationships is reduced with the aid of spatial representation techniques. ATLAS.ti uses networks to help represent and explore conceptual structures. Networks add a heuristic "right brain" approach to qualitative analysis.

The user can manipulate and display almost all entities of a project as nodes in a network: quotations, codes, code group, memos, memo groups, other networks, documents, document groups and all smart entities.

If you are interested in learning more about network theory and how it is applied in ATLAS.ti, you can watch the following video: Did you ever wonder what's behind the ATLAS.ti network function.

Basic Network Procedures

Two methods for creating networks are available. The first one creates an empty network, and you begin to add entities as sequential steps. The other method creates a network from a selected entity and its neighbors.

Creating a New Network

You can add nodes via the option Add Nodes or via drag-and-drop.

Adding Nodes Using the Selection List

You can add nodes by dragging entities into the network editor from entity managers, group managers, the margin, the project explorer, or any of the browsers.

Selecting Nodes

Selecting nodes is an important first step for all subsequent operations targeted at individual entities within a network.

Selecting a Single Node

All previously selected nodes are deselected.

Selecting Multiple Nodes

Method 1

Linking Nodes and Entities

There are several ways to link nodes:

Linking via Drag & Drop

The two nodes are now linked to each other. In case you linked two codes or two quotations to each other, the relation name is displayed above the line.

Linking Two Nodes Using the Ribbon Icon

You need to use the method for linking if you want to link more than two nodes at a time.

Linking Three or More Nodes

Editing a Link

• Open Network: opens a new network for the two nodes linked by this link.

• Edit Comment: Use the comment field to explain why these two nodes are linked-

• Flip Link: Use this option if you want to change the direction of a transitive or asymmetric link.

• Cut Link: removes the link between the two nodes

• Change Relation: Select a different relation from the list of available relations or create a new one and apply it.

Cutting Multiple Links

Linking Codes to Codes, Quotations to Quotations, Memos to Memos in Managers and Browsers

Quotations, codes and memos can also be linked to each other in the Manager, the Project Explorer, or the respective entity browsers.

Linking Entities of Different Types

When you code your data reading through a document, listening to audio data, viewing an image or video file, you are linking codes to quotations. This can also be done via drag & drop from the Project Explorer or any of the entity browsers to the list of codes or quotations in a manager.

This also applies to linking memos to codes, or memos to quotations.

Creating Reports

You can export data in spreadsheet format or as text reports (Word or PDF format).

Export as Spreadsheet

In every manager, you find a button (the rectangular icon with an up arrow) to export the content as spreadsheet. The export is a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) type of report. All columns currently displayed are exported.

From Managers

From the Quotation Reader

From the Query Tool

Export as Report

When using this option, you get a report in text or PDF format. It is available form all managers and the query tool. The report is configurable, this means you can select what it should contain. Before you create the report, you see a preview.

On the left-hand side you see how the report looks like given the current selections. On the right-hand side, you can select further options:

• Filter: If you selected items before clicking on the report button, you can switch between creating a report for only the selected or all items.

• Grouping: Depending on the entity type you have different grouping options, e.g. by code, code group or document. Select a grouping option if appropriate.

• Report options: In this field, you can select which content should be displayed in the report. As soon as you select an option, you see in the preview how it will look like in the report. See below for further detail.

• Save: This saves the report as Word document. Select a name for the report and a location.

• Print: You can send the report directly to a printer and print it, or you can save it as PDF file. Other options are:

  • Save as PostScript
  • Send in Mail
  • Send via Messages
  • Save to iCloud Drive
  • Save to Web Receipts

Appendix

The following information has been compiled for the appendix:

• System Requirements

• Useful Resources: Here you find links to the ATLAS.ti website, the Helpdesk, video tutorials, manuals in PDF format to download, the research blog and publications on the use of ATLAs.ti, including an article by Prof. Krippendorff about the implementation of inter-coder agreement in ATLAS.ti.

• Get In Touch

System Requirements

The system requirements are:

• macOS 10.13 High Sierra or higher

• min. 8 GB RAM

• 10 GB space on the hard drive

Useful Resources

The ATLAS.ti Welcome Screen contains links to manuals, sample projects and video tutorials. The News sections informs you about current developments, updates that are released, interesting papers we have come across, use cases, and our newsletter.

The ATLAS.ti Website

https://atlasti.com/

The ATLAS.ti website should be a regular place to visit. Here you will find important information such as video tutorials, additional documentation of various software features, workshop announcements, special service providers, and announcements of recent service packs and patches.

Getting Support

https://support.atlasti.com

From within ATLAS.ti, select Help > Online Resources / Contact Support. Or access the Support Center directly via the above URL.

ATLAS.ti 9 - What's New

What's New in ATLAS.ti 9

This document is intended specifically for users who already have experience using the previous version.

Video Tutorials

If you like to learn via video tutorials, we offer a range of videos covering technical as well as methodological issues.

ATLAS.ti 9 Video Tutorials

Sample Projects

You can download a number of different sample projects from our website. Currently English and Spanish language projects are available. The projects feature different types of data sources:

• text
• PDF
• image
• video
• geo data

.... and different data types:

• interview transcripts
• reports
• online data
• evaluation data
• survey
• literature review

You can use them for yourself to get to know ATLAS.ti, or you can use them for teaching purposes. If available, also the raw data are provided.

PDF Manuals

ATLAS.ti 9 Full Manual and other documentations.

Research Blog

The ATLAS.ti Research Blog plays a very important role in the development and consolidation of the international community of users. Consultants, academics, and researchers publish short and practical articles highlighting functions and procedures with the software, and recommending strategies to successfully incorporate ATLAS.ti into a qualitative data analysis process. We invite you to submit short articles explaining interesting ways of making the best use of ATLAS.ti, as well as describing how you are using it in your own research. To do so, please contact us.

Inter-coder Agreement in ATLAS.ti by Prof. Krippendorff

We have been closely working with Prof. Krippendorff on the implementation to make the original Krippendorff alpha coefficient useful for qualitative data analysis. This for instance required an extension and modification of the underlying mathematical calculation to account for multi-valued coding.. You can download an article written by Prof. Krippendorff about the implementation of the alpha family of coefficients in ATLAS.ti.

Publications

• Friese, Susanne (2019). Qualitative Data Analysis with ATLAS.ti. London: Sage. 3. edition.

• Friese, Susanne (2019). Grounded Theory Analysis and CAQDAS: A happy pairing or remodelling GT to QDA? In: Antony Bryant and Kathy Charmaz (Eds.). The SAGE Handbook of Current Developments in Grounded Theory, 282-313. London: Sage.

• Friese, Susanne (2018). Computergestütztes Kodieren am Beispiel narrativer Interviews. In: Pentzold, Christian; Bischof, Andreas & Heise, Nele (Hrsg.) Praxis Grounded Theory. Theoriegenerierendes empirisches Forschen in medienbezogenen Lebenswelten. Ein Lehr- und Arbeitsbuch, S. 277-309. Wiesbaden: Springer VS.

• Friese, Susanne, Soratto, Jacks and Denise Pires (2018). Carrying out a computer-aided thematic content analysis with ATLAS.ti. MMG Working Paper 18-0.

• Friese, Susanne (2016). Grounded Theory computergestützt und umgesetzt mit ATLAS.ti. In Claudia Equit & Christoph Hohage (Hrsg.), Handbuch Grounded Theory – Von der Methodologie zur Forschungspraxis (S.483-507). Weinheim: Beltz Juventa.

• Friese, Susanne (2016). Qualitative data analysis software: The state of the art. Special Issue: Qualitative Research in the Digital Humanities, Bosch, Reinoud (Ed.), KWALON, 61, 21(1), 34-45.

• Friese, Susanne (2016). CAQDAS and Grounded Theory Analysis. Working Papers WP 16-07

• McKether, Will L. and Friese, Susanne (2016). Qualitative Social Network Analysis with ATLAS.ti: Increasing power in a blackcommunity.

• Friese, Susanne & Ringmayr, Thomas, Hrsg (2016). ATLAS.ti User Conference proceedings: Qualitative Data Analysis and Beyond. Universitätsverlag TU Berlin. https://depositonce.tu-berlin.de/bitstream/11303/5404/3/ATLASti_proceedings_2015.pdf

• Paulus, Trena M. and Lester, Jessica. N. (2021). Doing Qualitative Research in a Digital World. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

• Paulus, Trena M., Lester, Jessica. N. and Dempster, Paul (2013).Digital Tools for Qualitative Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

• Silver, Christina and Lewins, Ann (2014). Using Software in Qualitative Research. London: Sage.

• Konopásek, Zdenék (2007). [Making thinking visible with ATALS.ti: computer assisted qualitative analysis as textual practices 62 paragraphs. (http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0802124)

• Woolf,Nicholas H. and Silver, Christina (2018). Qualitative Analysis Using ATLAS.ti: The Five Level QDA Method. New York: Routledge.

Get In Touch

Social Media

Stay updated with the latest news on product updates, special offers, new training materials, or interesting articles and links we find. We are also happy to hear from users via these channels. Stop by and let us know about your projects and experience with ATLAS.ti!

• Twitter

• Facebook

• Instagram

• LinkedIn

Stop by and let us know about your projects and experience with ATLAS.ti!

The ATLAS.ti YouTube channel offers a variety of video materials:

• Overview of the software functionality
• Recorded webinars
• Video tutorials that help you to learn the software.

Videos are available in English and Spanish.