QCAmap: a new interactive software program for Qualitative Content An...

Qualitative Content Analysis became a standardprocedure of text analysis in social and behavioral sciences (Titscher et al.,2000), standing between qualitative and quantitative approaches. It combines qualitativesteps of analysis (assignment of categories to text portions) and quantitativesteps (analysis of frequencies and contingencies of category occurrences) andthus can be labeled as mixed methods approach (Mayring et al., 2007). QualitativeContent Analysis had been developed thirty years ago on the basis ofQuantitative Content Analysis with the aim of providing a method, which allowsto analyze large amounts of textual material rule-guided, economically andinter-subjectively, with the central process of the assignment of categories totext passages being a qualitative, interpretive procedure. For this purposeclear content analytical rules and step-by-step models had been developed basedon theoretical considerations for several content analytical techniquesincluding summarization, inductive category development and deductive categoryapplication (Mayring, 2002; 2014).

Available software programs for qualitativelyoriented text analysis (CAQDAS tools) like MAXQDA, Atlas.ti and others are oftenbased on the philosophy of Grounded Theory. Hence, several problems arise whentrying to use such tools to implement the procedures involved in the varioustechniques of Qualitative Content Analysis. For example workarounds using thememo-function are needed to implement the content analytical rules.

Hence, within aresearch project an open access web-based software tool was developed which isdirectly based on the techniques of Qualitative Content Analysis (Mayring, 2002;2014). During software development content analytical rules as well as step-by-stepmodels and procedures were refined and updated to the latest findings inqualitative methods research. The workflow-guided program presentspre-structured templates following the several steps of analysis and producesoutput files, which allow for further quantitative analysis of frequencies andcontingencies of categories in the category system. In the web-application theuser is guided interactively through the content analytical procedures of thevarious techniques of Qualitative Content Analysis and strictly has to followthe specific step-by-step models developed for these techniques.