New Patterns in the Adoption and Use of Qualitative Software

Abstract

The article examines patterns in adopting and using qualitative data analysis software. It draws on research on users' experiences and analyses of participation in software training courses to suggest the emergence of a new pattern of adoption and use. Qualitative software (generically, “CAQDAS”) is often seen as a new, distinctive kind of analytic procedure. This both confuses a technical resource with an analytic approach and assigns undue coherence to a field marked by a variety of approaches to providing computer support for qualitative data analysis. This issue is considered in conjunction with an emergent pattern in which qualitative software increasingly attracts users with a limited social science background but whose work presents them with a requirement to automate the analysis of a body of qualitative data. The patterns of adopting and using qualitative software are best understood by an approach based on the social organization of intellectual work.