Abstract
In the past two decades, the IS research community underwent an intensive debate and fought hard to legitimise interpretive and qualitative research paradigms. Now that the war is over it is ironic that despite a knowledge of technology the IS literature has been slow to embrace software in order to support qualitative data analysis. In the broader social science field, a range of software support tools have emerged offering diverse functionality and a developing critical mass of appropriate literature. This paper sets out to consider how IS research can embrace QAS. Qualitative research has three distinct phases, namely data collection, data reduction and data display, with the later pair being most suitable for enhancement by QAS. Coding is central to QAS, but the IS field has been slow to develop rigourous coding schemas. Are there any frameworks within the IS literature that could by applied to such a task? The Qualitative Analysis Software must not be used without consideration for the research philosophy context, as a ‘package-led’ orthodoxy would regress the attempts to encourage quality research. Finally, the logical tests for measuring the quality of research (Yin, 1994) are reviewed and alternative tactics enabled by QAS are proposed.
Recommended Citation
O'Flaherty, Brian and Whalley, Jason, "Qualitative Analysis Software Applied to IS Research - Developing a Coding Strategy" (2004). ECIS 2004 Proceedings. 123.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/ecis2004/123