5.3. Reports
- Coding reports (the main reporting function)
- Coding comparison - for text files (compares 2 coders)
- Coding comparison by file - for text files (compares 2 coders)
- Code counts by file/case
- Code frequencies (totals of applied codes)
- File summary (details of a file and it coded segments)
- Code summary (details of a code and associated files)
- Code relations - for text files (shows proximity, exact match, overlaps, distance between selected codes)
- Code Co-occurrence - for text files (Shows counts where a code abuts/overlaps/exact-matches another code)
- Code text exact matches - for text files (Shows counts of exact matches between codes)
- Codes by text segments (Shows table of file names (rows), coded text, and codes assigned - denoted by 1).
- View graph (Create or show a graph (map) of objects and their linkages)
- Charts (Display statistical and other charts in web browser)
- Database Queries (Database querying, including default queries)
This report gives a list, or matrix, of coded data based on your selections. One or more codes need to be selected. If a category is selected all codes in that category are also selected. Multiple categories can be selected using the mouse and the ‘ctrl’ button.
The Search button (Play Button) will present the results.
Coding results can be narrowed down by using the File selection, Case selection or Attribute selection buttons. Only codings within the selected files or cases will be presented. When case selections are used, file selections are ignored. Also when file selections are used, case selections are ignored.
If text is entered into the Search text field, only codings which contain the matching text will be presented. The search text also looks for matching text in memos for coded image areas and coded audio/video segments. The search text function must be used in combination with File selection, Case selection or Attribute selection.
** Important coded text, images, segments There is a tick box to select only the Important codings. This is useful for quickly finding those important exemplars that you may use in a written report.
The Attribute selection button opens a window where you can select attributes for files and cases, for example: only interview files for people aged > 60. Additionally, attribute settings can be saved, loaded and deleted.
If you are creating a report and selecting one of the matrix options, then the results pane will be split into two panes. The left pane shows the coded data in a list, and the right pane shows a matrix of rows and columns. The column types can be codes, categories, or top-level categories.
Matrix options: have codes/categories by file or by case. The matrix can be transposed, using the check box.
The panes can be widened or narrowed by dragging with the mouse on the bar that splits each section.
Reports can be exported to text, open document (ODT), html or csv files.
When cases are selected, another pane is displayed showing a table of cases (in rows) and categories or codes in columns
- Check box to show only coded segments that have been marked important.
- Check box to add summary statistics to the report.
- Check box for text context for coded text segments. This shows the surrounding 100 to 300 characters of text (set in Settings) to help put the coded section in context in the results. The coded text segment is shown in bold.
- Check box to add a reference to the coded result. This is if a reference has been imported and linked to the specific file.
- Shortcut H. Pressing h will hide and unhide the top controls section of the window.
- Memo display. A drop-down box gives options to include no memos, various memo option, or to display text file annotations for selected text files.
Right-click on a code heading in the generated report for more menu options: View in context, unmark, change the code.
Reports can be exported as html, odt, txt, csv, xlsx.
txt is a plain text file
csv is a plain text spreadsheet format
xlsx is a Microsoft Word spreadsheet, containing only text.
odt is Open Document Text. This is a format that can be opened with Microsoft Word or LibreOffice Writer. It will contain text, colours and images. For example, if you have images coded.
Html is a web browser format. For plain text there will only be an html file, e.g. coding_report.html. If your coding contains images, audio or video, there will be a supplementary folder, e.g. coding_report folder. This folder contains the audio, video and image files needed for html display. To transfer the html to another person, or relocating within your folder structure, you must move BOTH the html and the associated folder, shown below.
This option shows the overall similarities and differences between two coders across all text files. Select two coders and click the run comparisons button. The statistics created here are only for coded text, not coded image nor media files.
For each code:
Agreement % shows agreement for a combination of coded and non-coded text characters.
A and B % shows agreement for the only the coded text characters divided by the total characters in the text.
Not A and Not B % shows the total of the uncoded text divided by the total characters in the text.
Disagree % shows the percentage of all the coded and non-coded text that did not match between coders. It is the same as 100 – the Agree %.
Agree coded only % shows the percentage of all the dual coded text divided by single plus dual coded text.
Cohen’s Kappa is calculated based on the information in Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cohen%27s_kappa
Buttons to run the comparisons, to clear the coders selected, to export to Excel, and to open a statistics help window.
This option shows the overall similarities and differences between two coders in ONE selected file. Select one file, one code and two coders. Then click the run comparisons button. The statistics and comparisons for audio/video coded segments are in development. Overall agreement, disagreement and Cohens Kappa are calculated for text and images. An image file is displayed in a separate window showing the two coders selections in yellow or blue boxed areas. Green text indicates where both coders coded the same section of text. Mouse hover provides additional information.
This window shows all the codes and categories and the frequency of use for each coder. Code frequencies can be selected for specific files.
This dialog shows the relations between two or more codes. This can only be applied to text files. Select two or more codes, and press the Calculate button. his report may be useful to show proximity or overlaps between codes. Note, other reports such as Code Co-occurrence and Code Text Exact Matches also do this. This report give a lot of fine details, such as the coding character positions for each code. A csv file can be exported.
The relations are:
- Proximity – Two codes do not overlap. The distance in number of characters is shown.
- Overlap – Two codes partially overlap. The lowest and highest character positions of the combination are shown. The union of the overlapping section is shown in character positions.
- Inclusion – One code is included within another code. The lowest and highest character positions of the combination are shown. The union of the overlapping section is shown in character positions.
- Exact – Both codes match in their start and end positions. The lowest and highest character positions of the combination are shown. The union of the overlapping section is shown in character positions.
Summary statistics and box plots can be produced.
This report shows a table of code names along the x and y axes. The table cells show the count of coding co-occurrences. This is where two codes overlap or are directly abutting. Click on the cell to show the text coding details.
Options include: selecting specific text files, selecting files by attributes. Selecting specific codes, or selecting categories. There is an export to Excel option.
Clicking on a cell shows the text details.
Click on a file to get a summary of that file. It describes media metadata, characters and word frequency. Attributes. It summarises the count of codes for that file. For text codings is summarises the average text length. For image codings it summarises the average pixel area. For audio/video codings it summarises the average segment length.
The top 100 words has stopwords applied - so common filler words such as 'a', 'the' etc are excluded. See the list in the Examples folder. You can over-ride this list by providing your own stopwords text file and placing this in the .qualcoder folder.
Click on a code to get a summary of that code. The coders who have used the code. The number of codings in text, image and audio/video media. For text codings is summarises the average text length and the most common words. For image codings it summarises the average pixel area. For audio/video codings it summarises the average segment length.
The top 100 words has stopwords applied - so common filler words such as 'a', 'the' etc are excluded. See the list in the Examples folder. You can over-ride this list by providing your own stopwords text file and placing this in the .qualcoder folder.
This report details all the exact matching coded text segments, where different codes are applied to the exact same text. Select text documents, and two or more codes.
This report shows rows of coded text segments and columns of which code has been applied. For some users, e.g. legal area, it is convenient to see which codes have been applied to the same text segment. A Excel file can be exported.
Various chart types and filter options are available.
Pie, Bar, Sunburst and Treemap charts can be created.
Charts, except for the WordCloud, are displayed in the default web browser. If the browser is not displaying your chart, first change your default web browser to another recent browser, e.g. Chrome or Edge or Safari. If you have javascript switched off the charts will not display.
Heatmaps of files or cases against codes can be created. These are limited to 40 rows and columns for quicker rendering and better visibility.
Chart selections
Bar chart
Sunburst chart
Word cloud
A word cloud is available with different options for background colour, foreground colour or colour range, rectangle size, number of words (n-grams) from 1 to 4, and maximum number of words to include. The maximum words is determined by the most frequent to the least frequent and changing this option will change how crowded or sparse the word cloud appears.
There are a list of stop words that are used to exclude common words from the word cloud display (e.g. an, a, the). This can be overridden by creating your own stopwords.txt file with one word on each line. This file should be put inside the .qualcoder folder. e.g. on Windows:
"C:\Users\yourname.qualcoder"
The stopwords currently used are in stopwords.txt in the Examples folder.
Apply SQL Statements to query the data.
This window contains three panes. The top pane is where SQL statements are entered and the bottom pane contains the results of queries. The left pane contains tables and field names. Double-clicking on a field name adds it to the SQL statement. Results can be exported to a delimited file. If you are not familiar with SQL take care as you will be able to update and delete the data as well as select data. Note: Some Unicode symbols are not converted to plain text and are ignored.
There are several prepared statements listed:
- Case text
- Coded text using a case attribute selection (v3.6+)
- Codes fileid and coded text
- Get coding table - an implementation of an RQDA function that returns the code name, table, text length and text start and end positions.
- Coded text with each case
Most table fields are text. The following fields are integer: anid, avid, attrid, caseid,catid, cid, fid, id, imid, jid, pos0,pos1, x1, y1, width, height.
Right-click in the results table for filtering options.
Right click in the SQL window give you various options such as select all, copy, paste.
At the bottom of the left hand side list, you can see: stored sql and Default queries
Stored sql are you own created and stored sql statements. To store a sql statement, right-click on the sql and choose 'save query'.
Default queries, such as the one shown in the image, are ready made sql to do additional extracts from your data. They are commented '-- a comment' to describe what each statement does.
