Qualitative Data Analysis Program (QDAP) About CAT

The Coding Analysis Toolkit: Data Preparation

In CAT, you can upload a raw, un-coded datafile and an optional code file. For the datafile, you can upload a .zip file, an xml-based file or a plain-text file. If you upload a .zip file, the system will assume that it contains a number of plain-text files within, and process each of the text files within the .zip file as individual code-able units. You can, however, use macros or find and replace in Microsoft Word to insert a special delimiter ==--endcodeableunit--== in your raw data so that you can upload a zip archive and still code at the paragraph rather than whole document level. The delimiter has to be on a line all by itself - that is, you need to have:

<the text><hard return>
==--endcodeableunit--==<hard return>
<next text...>

If you upload a single plain-text file instead, the system will assume that there is one annotation separated by a blank line each and process the file as such.

If you upload an xml file (with a .xml extension), the system will verify that it conforms to the correct schema definition (which can be downloaded here) and process the file as such. A sample XML document and tips on using the XML upload functionality can be found here.

For the code file, you can choose to upload a plain-text file here with one code per line (up to a maxiumum of 24 codes) in the format of "code|description" (without the quotes) that will define one code per line. You can also add an additional optional "|keycode" parameter to the end to define the keystroke to use for that code (note that this should only be one character in length - if the keycode field is larger than one character, only the first character will be assigned). Also note that if you assign the same keycode to multiple items, only the first item assigned will retain that keycode. If you do not upload a code file, you will have to opportunity to define the codes on the next screen as well as assign the keyboard keys associated with each code.

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"the smart way to code text"