Meredith - I would argue that it is down to personal preference. NVivo is probably the market leader software-wise - and so the most accessible with more people likely to have experienced it to assist you and the more refined tools for different formats. A question that I have for you is 'why would you not transcribe all your videos'? Your qualitative dataset may well not be 'complete' if you do not include all your data.

Thanks for your input. I agree that transcribing video is important, but it can be very time consuming to transcribe the entire video. Transana really requires transcription, while Atlas.ti allows for video coding without transcription as a necessity.

MAXQDA also allows for direct coding of the video, plus that coding can be linked to text. The typical use for that is to match a transcript to its video (or audio) source, but there is no reason why the linked text would need to be a full transcript.

I've used MAXQDA on both the Mac and PC and can thus testify that they are equivalent. Right now, the same cannot be said of ATLAS.ti since the Mac version lacks the more advanced search features in the PC version (my understanding is that the two will be equivalent sometime in the next few months), I don't use NVivo on either platform,so I can't say personally say anything about that. I do notice, however, that their webpage comparing the two lists them as nonequivalent with regard audio/video.

https://www.qsrinternational.com/product-comparison/nvivo10-nvivo-for-mac.html

In general, I would second Dean's summary that it mostly comes down to personal preference. In particular, I strongly suspect that they all have video tutorials on the specific topic of working with and coding video, so I would check those out see which one feels most comfortable for you.

Thanks David! I have looked at (and used) Nvivo and Atlas.ti in the past. The Mac versions of those two software packages are very limited at the moment, though I bet they will improved. I have also used HyperRESEARCH, which has had a Mac version for a while now, and is very straight forward.  I will look into MaxQDA - I have heard good things about it.

I agree that it's probably personal preference and part just committing to one of the programs and learning it well. They are all expensive, thus I figured I'd gather some online feedback. Thank you!

I have found a nice and thorough set of comparisons between different QDA programs here (see below) and thought I would share it.  http://www.surrey.ac.uk/sociology/research/researchcentres/caqdas/support/choosing/index.htm

Hello Meredith: We've been using NVIVO for several recent projects (for both text and video data analysis) and it's working well for our needs.

Meredith, I have used Nvivo, but have found it works best for textual data.  I have converted video or audio recordings to transcripts, and then coded them in Nvivo.  If I need to code video (actions without a verbal component) I have used StudioCode.  This app was initially designed for analysis of sports, but it works quite well for education as well.  Yes; they are all expensive, especially StudioCode.

Here's a new tool: https://v-note.org

You don't have to transcribe everything first.  Also, you can share your codes with others (students or colleagues).  There's even a free version.

It is easy and affordable and was made by researcher for researchers. 

I recommend downloading the trials and seeing which package handles your data formats most appropriately. When comparing Atlas.ti and MAXQDA, I find that Atlas preserves my notes and highlights in the PDF files, which is important since much of my workflow is in PDF format and I have already reviewed a lot of literature and done preliminary document analysis. This is not true in MAXQDA. 

Hi Meridith,

I know I'm joining this discussion late, but you are incorrect about Transana's capabilities.

First, Transana can be used to analyze media data without doing any transcription.  See the ScreenCast on the Transana web site called "Creating Clips without Transcripts."

Second, you can use Transana to create partial transcripts, choosing which parts of the media file to transcribe and which to skip.  Such selective transcription can provide many of the analytic benefits provided by transcription without taking the time for full, detailed transcription.

So I would say that transcription is recommended in many cases in Transana, but it's not required.  There are some analytic approaches that work well without transcription or with only partial transcription.

David Woods, Ph.D.

Transana's Lead Developer

Sharing my experience (November 2017) with comparing Atlas.ti 8, MaxQDA 12, and NVivo 11.4.2 for Mac. They all provide full versions for trial. Both MaxQDA and NVivo appear to have the same functionality on Mac vs PC; however Atlas.ti was missing a number of features on Mac vs the PC version. This was disappointing to me because there were aspects in the coding capability that I prefered on Atlas.ti (the ability to use keyboard shortcuts to duplicate a code or to select a code via the keyboard rather than using a mouse). If perhaps the trial version of Atlas.ti is NOT the full version for Mac and the PC-only capabilities are really included in the Mac version, then I might reconsider them!

MaxQDA and Atlas.ti both have example projects to import so that you can see how a project can be set up, how coded text look, and how codes are organized, etc. This was incredibly useful as a way to experience the applications. For me, at this point I was more focused on the document management capabilities (docs, pdfs, audio files), process of coding, memo creation at different levels, creating codes, auto-coding (to identify the participant text).

From a feature standpoint, both MaxQDA and NVivo were very similar, except that MaxQDA has an quantitative analytic package for mixed methods and NVivo seems to have more robust data visualization features. So it depends on what one needs and from a usability perspective, it came down to personal preference for qualitative analysis. For myself, I liked MaxQDA better - it seemed more intuitive to my way of thinking. That said, I highly recommend trying them before buying, importing sample data, and watching some of the videos.

My choices are NVIVO and Transana. I like Transana's multi-layered image coding and screencasting.

I have recently researched Transana and I liked the fact that it follows the Jeffersonian Transcription system.