Winning Exposé 1

By Ani Munirah Mohamad
PhD Researcher, Cyber Law and Policy Centre, Law Faculty
Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia

Background

The literature review stage is inevitable in the research journey of a research student, regardless whether it is at the undergraduate or postgraduate level. The literatures which need to be reviewed range from academic journal articles, textbooks, newspaper clips, articles obtained from online databases, information retrieved from the library to statistics, documents, and the list is neverending. Research students are instructed by their teachers or supervisors to ‘review the literatures’ but not many are guided as to the step-by-step guides on how to actually review the literatures. In the end, they become frustrated and the literature review process takes forever to be completed.

As any research student with no research background, I also felt at lost when it comes to reviewing the literatures for my PhD research. At this point, I was introduced to ATLAS.ti by my supervisor. I quickly learned the ATLAS.ti basics and I was confident that it could help me. It did! I managed ALL my literatures by using ATLAS.ti, and its simple yet powerful features (especially the Code, Quotation and Output) helped me to review my literatures as simple as A-B-Cs.)

Objectives

To create rich analysis of literature review on just about any subject. ‘Rich analysis’ does not mean a review thick in size, but a review thick in discussion i.e. a lot of references/footnotes.

To expose the potential of ATLAS.ti to all research students out there that ATLAS.ti does not only help to analyse the primary data (interview transcripts, recordings, etc.) but could also potentially help all the way of the research journey, comprising of both primary and secondary data, beginning from the literature review chapter, to the contents chapters, the findings chapter, and finally the conclusion and recommendation chapters.

To disseminate that although ATLAS.ti is better known as ‘qualitative data analysis software’, it does not only help qualitative researchers, but also quantitative researchers. This is because the literature review process is inevitable for both qualitative and quantitative researchers.

Methodology

To review literatures using ATLAS.ti, one does not need special skills. Suffice to understand the basics of assigning primary documents, coding, and output. The rest will come naturally. For this, I have worked on a blog to explain how to work around with ATLAS.ti for novice researchers. The blog is available at atlasmalaysia.wordpress.com.

Work Schedule

Not specified. Depending on the timeframe set the research student. As for myself, 1 month at most to download literatures on a specific topic, analyse by using ATLAS.ti and writing the review based on the output.

Requirements

Valid ATLAS.ti license readily installed on the PC

Softcopy of literatures

Printer, if necessary

Estimated costs

$99 for a valid ATLAS.ti student license

Incidental costs depending on the necessity of the research student

Future plans

I will continue to disseminate information about the potential of using ATLAS.ti for doing research works, and post more information on the blog http://atlasmalaysia.wordpress.com.