Software-Technique in Support of Qualitative Analyses

There are many categories of software that can cooperate with the work of the researcher who develops qualitative research. In this chapter we will discuss software for two major fronts of qualitative research work: (i) obtaining inputs in the field; and (ii) the analysis of these inputs. In the first part we will discuss the software for obtaining input considering two distinct challenges: the actions of identification, selection and collection of existing documents; and the actions of harvesting opinions, observations and speeches, in order to constitute the documents. In the second part, we will discuss the software in support of analysis activities, covering four categories of information systems: computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDASComputer-Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software (CAQDAS)), latent semantic analysis (LSA)Latent semantic analysis (LSA), displayDisplay generating software and artificial intelligence resources.