Kodieren von Bildern
An attractive feature of ATLAS.ti for Windows is the capability to use graphic, audio and video files as primary documents. This feature is already a valuable instrument not only for those traditionally engaged in text-based qualitative data analysis, but will also improve other fields of research.
Handling of graphics is almost identical to working with primary texts. Dragging the mouse while pressing the left mouse button creates a region, which is registered as a "quotation". This quotation appears in the same list that displays the normal text segments. It can be commented, coded, imported into a network, hyperlinked to other graphic or textual selections. An interpretation (e.g., a comment attched to a selection) can be displayed by double-clicking on a graphic selection.
An interesting building close to Central Park ....
Analyzing a video clip
Because of its great flexibilty and its capability to work productively with a great variety of media, ATLAS.ti is used in many professional and academic areas--including domains that are not traditionally thought of as devoted to qualitative data analysis:
- Medicine: X-ray images, computer tomograms, microscoped samples
- Anthropology: gestures, mimics
- Architecture: annotated floorplans
- Engineering: "exploded" part lists with descriptions
- Psychotherapy: graphical add-ons (Rohrschach patterns?) to reports
- Graphology: micro comments to handwriting features
- Criminology: letters, finger prints, photographs
- Arts: detailed interpretative descriptions of paintings
- Publishing: Archiving images
- Tourism: commented city maps
- Add your own field of research!
Although computer-readable text is still a very important type of document--it lets you apply search functions, it is easily segmented automatically to character, word, sentence or paragraph level--the iconic representation of a handwriting still encodes plenty of important knowledge (about the writer, about the situation) which is usually lost in its textual representation:
This is where most software packages concerned with grasping the meaning of text come to their limits. We are not talking about automatic recognition of what has been written with a "sloppy" handwriting.
Wouldn't it be sufficient for many situations to at least mark up interesting areas in a handwriting and attach codes and memos to it just as you do with computer readable text?
ATLAS.ti lets you do exactly this: Mark areas as you would mark text segments for further processing using a variety of coding and memoing techniques:
