Dedoose is software that functions the same way as CAQDAS. It helps in creating codes from the imported documents and those of higher-level conceptual themes. The main advantage of using Dedoose is that the program combines the themes when the user codes the data, making it easy to understand where the themes exist, how they are related to each other, and the related implications of the themes (Dedoose.com, 2021). Furthermore, the program helps keep insights into the data analyzed by using the pull-out and save feature. This feature helps in highlighting quotes such as “helpful” during the analysis for further insights into the keyword. The disadvantage of Dedoose is generated from its nature of the operation; that is, it is based on web-based services, which require internet connection leading to ups and downs during the operation period (“Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis,” 2013).
When using Excel for thematic analysis, it requires text transfer from the Microsoft Word application to Excel using certain functions. The data needs to be sorted and then returned to Word for analysis and interpretation. The researcher decides how detailed the code should be before analysis, and the process requires copying rows and renaming them (Ose, 2016). There is an advantage of using Excel as the method provides the researcher with good documentation of the data. It is cheap as it only requires the usage of Excel applications and Word. Excel also helps maintain the closeness of the data, easy to amend the data, and copy-pasting of the data from one source to another is fast. The disadvantages of this method are: that one has to master the Excel analysis as it requires good usage of filters and pivot tables (Ose, 2016). Due to copy-pasting procedure, making mistakes during analysis is easy.
References
Bayhem, L. (2018). Qualitative Data Analysis with Dedoose [Ebook]. Web.
Computer-Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis: An Alternative Tool for Less | Commons Knowledge – the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2013). Commons Knowledge. Web.
Dedoose.com. (2021). Research Basics Userguide | Dedoose. Dedoose.com. Web.
Ose, S. (2016). Using Excel and Word to structure qualitative data. Journal of Applied Social Science, 10(2), 147-162.