What Users Say About ATLAS.ti

Ricardo B. Contreras, Department of Anthropology/Florida Prevention Research Center (COPH), University of South Florida

I switched to ATLAS.ti from a product of the competition because a very pragmatic reason: I found it very easy to learn. Since then (1999) I have used it in several research projects and have taught it to audiences in several countries. Based on this experience I can say that ATLAS.ti provides the flexibility necessary when the user is not committed to a particular methodological approach (such as grounded theory), but at the same time it provides the tools to be consistent and rigorous if the user wants to follow a grounded theory (or type of) approach.
This is specially welcomed by users who are transiting from quantitative and hypothesis-driven research to the "new" field of qualitative research and, as a result, are still coping with the tentation of pre-defining books of codes.
In addition to this methodological commentary, I would like to add that students find it easy to learn because the system is very logically organized, it is integrated (all tools are in the same screen, no need to learn complicated routes), and it can triangulate data from different types of sources of information.
Students can rapidly find the usefulness of the software and can quickly make sense of their data even by using some of the basic tools of ATLAS.ti (no need to use the more complicated tools in order to complete an analysis project adequately).
Finally, I would add that students and current users enjoy the software's advanced capacity for team research, the possibility of publishing the state of the project in the Internet, and the seamless integration of interpretation into the description of data (through memos).

Raymond C. Maietta, Ph.D., President ResearchTalk Inc.

ResearchTalk consultants have worked with users of qualitative software for over ten years. At a recent conference we were asked a question no one had ever asked us: "Can you summarize the benefit of ATLAS.ti in one word." I was surprised at how easy it was to answer--Versatility." ATLAS.ti is designed to accommodate quick turn-around projects and/or deeper, more abstract explorations of data. Most qualitative software can make this claim. However, presently ATLAS.ti is uniquely positioned for this type of versatility. In large part this strength derives from the power of the quotation. ATLAS.ti is the only program that currently treats text segments marked by users, and/or coded, as computer objects. As a result they can be named, adjusted, written about and included in network diagrams. We look forward to ten more years of witnessing clever ways users take advantage of the powerful options available from this elegant, yet simple, feature of ATLAS.ti. Oh, there are also a couple of other features people do clever things with too!

Nicholas Woolf, Woolf Consulting, Santa Barbara

ATLAS.ti never pushes you to take one analytic path over another, so every project turns out quite differently, which is just as it should be. I love how you stay so close to the data at every little analytic step, and how you can work and analyze directly from the visual networks - which is the only tool I have ever found to actually speed up qualitative analysis.
If the analytic strategy calls for it, you can build up conceptual frameworks and reconnect data at the same time as you are breaking it down through coding. And for other types of projects you don't have to do this, you can work direct from straightforward code lists. It is so flexible and powerful at the same time as being unintrusive, I really think it offers the best of all worlds.

Victoria C Rowe, MA, GRSM, Roehampton University

As a PhD student, I have been very pleased with the way ATLAS.ti has helped me to organise and navigate my data. I have transcripts of 16 videos and 24 interviews as well as 24 reports, adding up to a huge volume of work. It is great to have it all in one place and to be able to call it up quickly. I did go on a training course, which taught me more about saving my work properly, but apart from that, I found that I got started straight from the tutorial.

Donnie S. Coleman, PhD student, Virginia Tech

This term I evaluated three current CAQDAS packages and elected ATLAS.ti over NVivo and MaxQDA as far and away the best tool for my research. I experimented deeply with all three [leading QDA software packages] and found that ATLAS.ti ideally supports the way my mind works and how I like to do qualitative research. Beautiful software - nicely done.

John Rautenbach, Dept. Social Work & Social Development, University of Fort Hare, South Africa

As an academic and researcher, it is hard to imagine data analysis without the aid of ATLAS.ti. The program helped me easily organise, mine, code and analyse mountains of data and ultimately I could extract very meaningful reports. I found the interface user-friendly and the tutorial and help functions very clear. The mailing list, newsletter and online forum are invaluable sources of support and collaboration. The ATLAS.ti staff and support team are the definition of excellence when it comes to customer service and they expertly reply to technical queries with a short turnaround time. I can't wait to be benefit from the new features in the latest update when I start my next research project.

Mary P. Martinasek, Research Associate, Florida Prevention Research Center, University of South Florida

Thank you soooo much. I really appreciate your prompt assistance. Yet another reason why I like using ATLAS.ti!

Carole A. George, Carnegie Mellon University Libraries

As the library researcher at the Carnegie Mellon University Libraries, I've had many opportunities to analyze qualitative
data, but never with the help of specially designed software. I can't imagine the difficulty of the task for our last study (in-depth interviews of 100 graduate students) had we not used
ATLAS.ti. Using the software to code and analyze the data greatly simplified a difficult task, provided the means to compare among disciplines, and to draw conclusions based on trends and themes in the data. I still have a lot to learn about using ATLAS.ti, but even as a novice user, the software was of enormous help.

Angela Aubertin, London School of Economics and Political Science

Being the member of the IT Services department at LSE who supports ATLAS.ti and is involved with giving training in it to staff and students, I can certainly say that ATLAS.ti is well liked here at the London School of Economics and Political Science and is heavily used. Those starting off with using software to assist them with their qualitative research find this package the most straight forward and quickest to learn. Equally those staff and students who are well into their research project find that it certainly meets their requirements for the majority of things. We have a large number of very enthusiastic users here at LSE! From my own point of view, I also find it ok supporting this package with the additional support of your excellent help-desk staff and the useful information you provide on your web pages!

Monica Malta, Oswaldo Cruz Foundation / Brazilian Health Ministry

In 2001 we started using ATLAS.ti in our research team on suggestion from a colleague and co-PI from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. Since then we've been using ATLAS.ti in all our qualitative studies in the field of HIV/AIDS and drug abuse here in Brazil - it is an amazing and highly recommendable software! ATLAS.ti combines the necessary tools social scientists need to analyze and present their data in a user friendly and easy to learn software - Outstanding! Also, it facilitates team-based analysis, helping our group to keep connected even when we're out of office - in a conference, meeting or at home. The online and e-list support is also excellent!

Tadashi Kimura, School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia

In contrast to other commercially available packages, two advantages of ATLAS.ti are its handling of graphics and digital audio recordings as primary data, and its features for generating conceptual diagrams. Its flexible structure allows users to choose their individual approach. More importantly, I am glad that I could share the aspiration of technological innovations with its developers by joining the beta test for ATLAS.ti 5, particularly in regard to the handling of double-byte [e.g. East Asian] characters. Based on this experience, I believe that [the developers'] willingness to learn and perpetual drive for further development of the programme will continue to keep ATLAS.ti way ahead of the pack.

Paul Humphreys, Founder & Managing Director, Oxford Continuity Group

We like this software. We use it. It helps us to think about what we do. We are delighted to recommend ATLAS.ti to our clients.

Douglas Fernald, University of Colorado

Five years ago I took a leap and told our small research team that we should switch to ATLAS.ti. I still have my job and ATLAS.ti has not let us down! It has kept pace with the advancing complexity of our analytical needs. New users can get started with minimal software training. When using a team-based approach, ATLAS.ti ably facilitates data management and analysis. A great product and unsurpassed support.

Zeno Franco, Research and Technology Coordinator, RIMS, University of California

I think that this community knows that it is a really good product in and of itself, but more than that the responsiveness of the designers is incredible, and the community built around this software package is something that is very rare indeed. I am only on one other list serve that comes anywhere close to the dedicated support and truly engaging commentary found here.

Lois MacNamara, Assistant Dean for Student Affairs, Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania

I used ATLAS.ti to code and analyze the data for my dissertation. I collected my data from March through July, transcribing 25 interviews and 15 observation periods as I went along. I never attended a training and am pretty clueless when it comes to technology, but the tutorial and user guidebook were enough to get me started. Suffice it to say that I completed my findings chapter by Thanksgiving. People ask me how I got done so fast, and I tell them, ATLAS.ti. I wrote my finding in Word while looking at all examples of a given code in ATLAS.ti, so I never had to wade through reams of paper." Doing the outline for the findings chapter was also a snap.
In my role as Assistant Dean for Student Affairs at the Grad School of Education at Penn, I've brought consultants in to do training sessions for our doctoral students. I cannot speak highly enough about it. And I know that I've only scratched the surface of what it can do.

Catharine Payze, Department of Psychology, University of South Africa

I have taught qualitative research methodology for quite a few years now and consequently I have shopped around for QAQDAS software quite a bit. I have probably tried most packages on the market and after all is said and done there is only one I would use or recommend - ATLAS.ti. Thanks for a great package that really does move beyond what can be done through analysing data by hand.

Cesar A. Cisneros Puebla, International Institute for Qualitative Methodology, University of Alberta

Outside of any kind of conceptual discussion about the glib association between Grounded Theory and ATLAS.ti or other software,
I like to use ATLAS.ti since I take in its freedom to build up links involving codes, memos and quotation. Beyond of any data complexity the epistemological primitives relations drive me to improve my creativity skills to analyze them. Its interactive potentiality with other useful software is constantly increasing the scope of my questions.

Hiroki Fukahori MS, RN, Mie Prefectural College of Nursing

As a nursing researcher, I recommend ATLAS.ti as a powerful tool to support qualitative data analysis. My colleagues and I have conducted nursing research using Grounded Theory. ATLAS.ti, with its broad functionality, can be used for many research purposes by researchers from a wide variety of theoretical backgrounds.

Donnie S. Coleman, PhD student, Virginia Tech

This term I evaluated three current CAQDAS packages and elected ATLAS.ti over NVivo and MaxQDA as far and away the best tool for my research. I experimented deeply with all three [leading QDA software packages] and found that ATLAS.ti ideally supports the way my mind works and how I like to do qualitative research. Beautiful software - nicely done.

Kyu Kyu Than, Department of Medical Research, Myanmar

My best wishes and sincere thanks because ATLAS.ti has helped me make my work so fast and because it works with any language. It really saves me time from translating the whole transcript.

Ani Munirah Mohamad, Young Lecturer / PhD Researcher, Law Faculty, Malaysia

My research involves a lot of qualitative data analysis, and I have been
doing it manually all this time. After being introduced to several software packages, I chose ATLAS.ti over all the others, mainly because it is straightforward and easy to use, and even a novice user can master it within a few days and get impressive results.

Now my research activities have entered a whole new paradigm, thanks to ATLAS.ti. I am happy to recommend this software to all fellow researchers.

ATLAS.ti is so easy to learn, the interface is simple and the functions are not complicated compared to other qualitative analysis software packages on the market. I myself only took two days to learn from an introductory workshop, and managed to navigate around the software to the point that I am able to run ATLAS.ti classes for my colleagues who are also benefiting from the software. If you are looking for a program that can help you collect, connect, manage, analyze, and share your qualitative data - both primary and secondary - and at the same time takes only little of your time to learn how to use it, then ATLAS.ti is your answer.

Joanne Salay, Outreach Coordinator, Kent State University Stark

Without the use of your product I would still be hand-coding and manually organizing many, many, many pages of transcripts for my thesis. As it stands, my thesis was successfully defended and accepted. ATLAS.ti is truly a "mighty mite!"

Christina Herkommer

A loud "yipppiiieeeh"! I just updated and am in heaven: Viewing complete PDFs without clicking between pages--it's like a dream! And all the other new features as well: So incredibly smooth and user-friendly!

Steffen Hück, Project Manager, Innovation Research, HYVE AG: The Innovation Company

During my career as a qualitative and quantitative market researcher in the field of social media research and co-creation for the food, media, automotive and cosmetics industries, I have had the opportunity to work with diverse software products for qualitative data analysis. My experience was that none of these software facilitated the creativity work in which I have been involved for the last years better than ATLAS.ti. It supports my data analysis and interpretation, without losing the principal objective of “humane” qualitative research (e.g. listening to the consumer rather than asking, understanding rather than measuring).

Vita Poštuvan, University of Primorska, Koper, Slovenia

When working on a complex subject like our "suicide" project, it is important that we are able to grasp every detail people are telling us about. For this reason we use a qualitative research design. A good research tool, like ATLAS.ti, is an essential part of conducting reliable research.

If you want to do good qualitative research, you need a reliable tool to help you. ATLAS.ti does that.

Melissa R. Poe, Ph.D., Environmental Anthropologist, Institute for Culture and Ecology

I am grateful for the generous discount you provided to enable our non-profit organization to buy a license for ATLAS.ti. I've been coding and memoing a set of interviews about Urban Plant and Mushroom Gathering and Foraging Practices and ATLAS.ti has been extraordinarily helpful in organizing and recording my analysis. I'm not even half way through the analysis and I already have over 1000 significant quotations associated with one or more of the 98 codes. Without ATLAS.ti support, I could not have tracked these data in a meaningful and systematic way. As an applied organization, we will use the findings from our coded analytical data in two key ways to support urban sustainability: (1) to help build a community of practitioners who share common interests and concerns regarding urban ecosystem stewardship and benefits, and (2) to develop policy suggestions for local municipalities to help improve ecosystem services and sustainability. In addition to these applied uses, we are also writing draft academic papers to help advance knowledge on topics related to urban sustainability and ethnoecology.

Gerben Moerman

In my research I used ATLAS.ti extensively, to code a massive amount of quotation (about 106000). ATLAS.ti is the only software around that makes truly mixed quantitative and qualitative analysis possible. In my thesis I describe rather detailed how I used the software. So this publication might be interesting for more ATLAS.ti users.

Joan Aliobe, Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development

Thank you for making research more interesting by simplifying data analysis further. I have used ATLAS.ti and it made my work very simple. I am a researcher and my work is always around research and data analysis. I simply can't do without this software and have recommended it to many projects handling research.