Weft QDA is an open-source free software package for qualitative research. Although I’ve doing qualitative research for a number of years this is the first time I have used software for analysing qualitative data. The expense of commercial analysis packages (£500+) has always been a deterrent for me and Weft QDA is first such package I’ve used. In this sense, I am not able to compare Weft QDA to better known commercial packages such as NVivo. In fact the Weft QDA website does outline the limitations of the package and when a commercial alternative will be necessary (e.g. when formatting is important).
I’ve been using the package to analyse the qualitative open answer data from this year’s non-specialist language learner survey. I found the programme very intuitive and easy to use. It did crash a couple of times so I quickly learnt the importance of regular saving! However, if like me you are new to using software for qualitative analysis then it is worth checking this out.
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Check also QDA Miner Lite. It's a free computer assisted qualitative data analysis software. This new freeware provides an easy-to-use tool for coding, annotating and analyzing collections of documents and images such as interview or focus-group transcripts, journal articles, web pages, or customer feedback.
QDA Miner Lite has been designed to meet the basic needs of researchers and analysts performing qualitative data analysis. This CAQDAS tool is ideal for those on tiny budgets (or no budget) or those who wish to teach qualitative research in classes.
For more information go to: http://provalisresearch.com/products/qualitative-data-analysis-software/freeware/
A new free software for qualitative research has just been released. QDA Miner Lite.
http://provalisresearch.com/products/qualitative-data-analysis-software/freeware/
This is a scaled down version of their commercial product QDA Miner.