Researchware

The April 2007 issue of the Qualitative Research Journal 2007 (vol. 6, no. 2,  pp. 191-201) contains a "Review of HyperRESEARCH 2.7 for Qualitative Data Analysis and HyperTRANSCRIBE 1.0 for Transcribing Audio and Video Files" by Rosalind Hurworth and Bradley Shrimpton. Among the observations made in the independent review are:

• …can deal with text, graphics, audio and video sources making it an invaluable multimedia research tool…
• …allows researchers from several projects, or the same project, to merge their Data…
• …But most important of all was that it has been designed for ease of use. So we have found it to be much more straightforward to learn and use than some other software available. We found it to be intuitive, so that training, beyond some tutorials in the manual, was not required (and the manual was dispensed with very quickly!). This means that it was possible to focus more on the research rather than on trying to fathom the program…

The informative review also notes HyperRESEARCH's unique and extremely flexible case-based structure, noting:

"One of the interesting aspects of the software is the unusual database structure. Each project is a 'study'. The researcher determines what a case will represent- so it could be an individual, a site, a community, a classroom, a time period or a focus group. Consequently, it is especially suited to cross-case analysis."

ResearchWare's long standing commitment to power and simplicity is recognized in the review comments on the ease of use of the software:

"What HyperRESEARCH has that other programs don't offer is organization by cases and the Hypothesis Tester. Both these features make it worth thinking about as a program to use. It is extremely user-friendly. Even in an earlier version, Weitzman and Miles (1994) noted that, The program was extremely easy to use and get working in. Also the help system actually helps a lot."

Downloadable PDF copies of the full journal article can be obtained through here for a modest fee.