Below are the specs and PR the company sent me before I bought it. May be a
new version by now.
Date: Mon, 23 Sep 96 09:37:45 PST
From: "REGINA_PETERSON" <REGINA_PETERSON who-is-at SMTPLINK.SAGEPUB.COM>
To: "David R. Russell" <drrussel who-is-at iastate.edu>
Subject: Re: Nudist Info request
Q.S.R. NUD*IST: THE ALL-PURPOSE QUALITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS SYSTEM
A quick summary
Q.S.R. NUD.IST 3.0 (Non-numerical Unstructured Data
Indexing Searching and Theory-building) is a
multi-functional software system for the development,
support and management of qualitative data analysis
(QDA) projects. It was developed by Qualitative
Solutions & Research Pty Ltd in Australia and is
distributed world-wide by Scolari Sage Publications
Software.
NUD.IST projects involve the analysis of unstructured
data such as text from interviews, historical or legal
documents, or non-textual documentary material such as
videotapes in order to develop an analysis or
understanding of the documentary material. QDA
techniques are used in many forms by social scientists,
historians, literary critics, health researchers,
business and market analysts, legal researchers, and
others.
A QSR NUD.IST project contains:
- A Document System to hold the documents used in your
study. Documents can be on-line plain text files (with
no format restrictions), or off-line documents of any
sort;
- Tools for document system management, including
search and display;
- An Index System to hold the categories of data and
analysis you develop in your study (concepts, facts,
classifications);
- Tools for index system management, including search
and display.
- At the core of the Index System is the Index System
Search engine, a large interlocking set of search tools
that can be used for extremely powerful and complex
analyses, and for the expression and testing of
theories and hypotheses.
- NUD.IST 3.0 is particularly noted for its
methodologically powerful "system closure" feature,
whereby the results of searches and analyses, whether
in documents or in the Index System, can be returned
to the project database as more data available for
further analysis by NUD.IST.
In your NUD.IST project you can:
- Store ideas in memos attached to documents or index
categories;
- Index (code) your documents as finely as you like
using index categories;
- Text-search your documents and store the finds in
appropriate index categories;
- Edit and explore your documents;
- Organize your index categories into hierarchies, to
reflect and exploit category/subcategory relationships;
- Search your index system to study relationships of
codes in different categories, and store the finds in
appropriate index categories;
- Create editable reports on any aspect of your
documents or indexing.
- Write and run Command Files to automate almost any
aspect of NUD.IST work, without your attendance.
A NUD.IST project contains two databases:
- The Document System
- The Index System
Explaining these is a good way of introducing NUD.IST.
The Document System
- You can index and analyze any number and type of
"document" at all: text files, newspaper clippings,
books, photographs, maps, music, videotapes...
- There is no limit to the number and size of documents
a project can handle (except those memory limits
imposed by your computer).
- Documents consisting of text can be kept online, and
retrievals for these will display the text passages.
- Retrievals of "offline" documents (all the rest) list
references to the parts retrieved.
- Videotapes can be handled online by NUD.IST, using
the CVideo(TM) software.
- On-line text can be searched with a powerful
pattern-based text search facility.
- Text search can be done context-sensitively, to
restrict it to documents or passages with any chosen
characteristics.
- The powerful and elegant "system closure" facility
allows the finds from text searches to be stored in the
Index System at an index category. This makes them
available for later analysis within NUD.IST.
- All data documents, whether online or offline, can
have editable "Memos" attached to record your notes and
comments about the document.
- Online data documents can be edited freely, even
after they are indexed (see below).
The Index System
- NUD.IST allows you to construct and modify a
tree-structured "Index System" for a project. It is a
repository for holding the indexing (coding) you make
of your documents, for the facts ideas and concepts you
want to use in organizing your data, and for commentary
about your index categories.
- All categories in the index system can have editable
"Memos" attached to them, and also definitions.
- Being tree-structured, the Index System acts as a
powerful but simple taxonomic organizer of your ideas
and your data indexing.
- There is no limit to the size or capacity of a
project's Index System data (except those memory limits
imposed by your computer).
- The index trees can be rearranged easily and flexibly
as your ideas and understanding of your research
project grow and change.
- Because of their tree-structuring, index categories
can be used to handle demographic variables and their
values, structured questions and their multiple-choice
responses, and cases, such as interviewees and other
information sources or even complex groupings such as
cases in the police/legal sense.
- A set of 18 "Index System Search" operators allow you
to compare, relate, contrast and in general explore,
the index nodes; two, three, or more at a time. These
ISS operators cover boolean and non-boolean
co-occurrences of nodes in the text, lexical and
conceptual context relations, tree-structured
relationships of nodes, and construction of
n-dimensional Miles/Huberman qualitative matrices.
- The powerful and elegant "system closure" facility
allows the finds from index system searches to be
stored in the Index System at an index category. This
makes them available for later analysis within NUD.IST.
A consequence of this is that just about any
question that one wishes to ask about the data,
provided its substantial concepts are represented as
categories in the index system, can be expressed using
ISS; and NUD.IST will find the text, in lexical context
if desired, evidencing the answer to the question.
Looked at another way, ISS with system closure
amounts to an extremely powerful hypothesis-testing
facility, allowing hypotheses of the classical "if A
then B" or more complex and realistic formats, to be
expressed and automatically tested for confirming and
disconfirming instances.
Tools for the User
- NUD.IST is fully graphics-based, using multiple
windows to turn the screen into a rich desktop
displaying all the different data you want.
- The index trees and the information in them can be
displayed in multiple graphics windows, providing a
plurality of perspectives onto your material.
- The tree displays can be printed.
- Simple dialog boxes guide users through the most
powerful of operations.
- Mouse point-and-click features help you to
move around the index trees, and explore and modify
their contents.
- Document coding can be done on-screen directly in
the document, or in a data-keying manner if you marked
up your documents beforehand, or by using a "command
file" to enter the data automatically, or by storing
the results of a text or index system search.
- Clipboard-type cut-and-past operations allow data to
be shifted around the index system easily. All
retrievals come up as editable, printable "reports" in
their own windows in the multiple-window interface.
- Where it is meaningful, reports provide statistical
data on their contents.
- Statistics about the project as a whole are always on
display.
Command Files
- Almost all of NUD.IST's operations can be carried
out using "command files" written by the user, rather
than interactively. This provides enormous time
savings, as well as the ability to automate routine or
complex procedures.
- A command file editor and command checker help the
user to write and verify the commands; a logfile
facility provides analysis of a command file's
execution.
- Imaginative use of command files provides enormous
power. A user can for example write a command file to
introduce new data documents into a NUD.IST project,
index each automatically according to contained
keywords, search each for various strings or patterns
and as it finds them, index the passages in the
appropriate way, then carry out index system searches
on the resulting index categories to study
relationships in the data, and save references to the
resulting finds in the index system. All of this
analysis can occur without the user in attendance.
- To learn how to use NUD.IST, the on-line Tutorial
Manager steps you through the development of an entire
sample project, facilitating fast learning of NUD.IST's
techniques. This is also available on the
demonstration/tutorial diskettes.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
MACINTOSH
NUD.IST 3.0 for Macintosh was originally released in
November 1993. The current revision (3.0.5) will run on
any Mac (24-bit or 32-bit or PowerPC-based), with a
hard drive and 4 MB free disk space, 8 MB RAM,
System 6.0.4+ or System 7.x.
WINDOWS
NUD.IST 3.0 for Windows was released in May 1994 for
IBM-PC compatibles (386 machines or better) running
under Windows(R) 3.1+, 9 5, or NT. It looks and feels
identical to the Mac 3.0 version. As with the Mac,
existing Release 2.2 and 2.3 projects can be upgraded
to 3.0 projects. Moreover 3.0 projects are
cross-platform compatible. You can transfer projects
between Mac and PC environments (using Apple File
Exchange or similar) and run them in either
environment.
System Requirements: IBM-PC or fully compatible machine
with 386 or better cpu, Windows 3.1 or later running in
386 enhanced mode or alternatively Windows NT, a hard
disk with at least 10 MB free space for the Windows
swap files, 8MB RAM, a mouse and a VGA or better
monitor.
SELECT REFERENCES
Weitzman, E.A. & Miles, M.B. (1995). Computer programs
for qualitative data analysis: A software source book.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Detailed account of the
functions and uses of QDA software, and extended
analyses and comparisons of many available QDA software
packages.
Miles, M. and Huberman, M., (1994) Qualitative Data
Analysis: a source book of new methods, Thousand Oaks,
Sage Publications. New edition with a superbly
detailed objective review of software and account of
its uses.
Richards, Tom & Lyn Richards. "Using computers in
qualitative analysis". In Denzin, N. & Lincoln, Y.
(eds), Handbook of Qualitative Analysis, Thousand Oaks,
Sage, 1993. Detailed theoretical and functional account
of major QDA software types.
Richards, Lyn & Tom Richards. "From Filing Cabinet to
Computer." In Burgess, R.W. & Bryman, A. (eds)
Analyzing Qualitative Data, London, Routledge.
Theoretical considerations about computerization of
QDA.
Richards, Lyn. & T.J. Richards. "Analyzing Unstructured
Information: can Computers Help?" Library Hi-Tech.
10:1-2 pp.95-109 (1992).
Richards, T.J. & Lyn Richards. "The NUD.IST Qualitative
Data Analysis System" Qualitative Sociology 14:4 (1991)
307-324. A description and explanation of NUD.IST and
how to use it, using rev. 2 of Q.S.R NUD.IST.
Richards, Lyn & Richards, T.J. "The Transformation of
Qualitative Method: Computational Paradigms and
Research Processes" in N. Fielding & R. Lee (eds)
Using Computers in Qualitative Research. Thousand Oaks,
Sage pp.38-53. Discussion of virtues and vices of
computerization of QDA.
Richards, T.J. & Richards, M.G. "A description of the
NUD.IST system." in N. Fielding & R. Lee (eds) Using
Computers in Qualitative Research. Thousand Oaks, Sage
pp.187-198. A brief account (rev. 2).
Richards, M.G. & T.J. Richards. "Computing in
Qualitative Analysis: a Healthy Development?"
Qualitative Health Research 1:2. (May) pp.234-262.
Discussion of the issues, aimed at nursing and related
researchers.
Fielding, R. & Lee, R. (Eds.). (1991). Using Computers
in Qualitative Analysis. Thousand Oaks, Sage. The
"classic" collection of papers on the subject, many
quite timeless.
Tesch, R. (1990). Qualitative Research: Analysis Types
and Software Tools. Basingstoke, Falmer. The "classic"
overview of qualitative computing and software.
PRICING (in U.S. dollars)
QSR NUD.IST Educational Discount Prices
- Software, manual, single license $339
- License extension 1-9 users $269 (per user)
- License extension 10-24 users $200 (per user)
- License extension 25-49 users $150 (per user)
- Package of 5 software, manuals, licenses $1,350
QSR NUD.IST Commercial Prices
- Software, manual, single license $559
- License extension 1-9 users $449 (per user)
- License extension 10-24 users $339 (per user)
- License extension 25-49 users $259 (per user)
- Package of 5 software, manuals, licenses $2,200
QSR NUD.IST Supplemental Products
- Manual only $30
- Tutorial Video 1 hour (VHS) $40
- Demo disk (includes shipping) $10*
All orders must be PREPAID. (PO's are accepted)
Shipping and handling: $4 U.S, $8 Canada
(please call for rates outside of North America)
* a free demo is available via the World Wide Web at:
http//www.sagepub.com/scolari/qsr/index.html
EXCLUSIVE WORLDWIDE DISTRIBUTORS
In the Americas
Scolari Software
Sage Publications, Inc.
2455 Teller Road
Thousand Oaks, CA 91320 USA
phone: 805.499.1325
fax: 805.499.0871
email: nudist who-is-at sagepub.com
World Wide Web: http://www.sagepub.com
In Europe and the U.K.
Scolari Software
Sage Publications, Ltd.
6 Bonhill Street
London EC2A4PU UK
phone: +44(0)171 330 1222
fax: +44(0)171 374 8741
email: nudist who-is-at sageltd.co.uk
Additional Information
DEMO DISKS
Demo/tutorial diskettes for NUD.IST 3.0 for
PC/Windows and Macintoshes are available from Sage,
Q.S.R., and on Q.S.R.'s ftp, Gopher and WWW sites. The
demos contain a Readme telling you how to install, and
(when installed) a mini-manual on how to use NUD.IST,
plus a "Nosmoke" tutorial project with complete
step-by-step on-screen guide. The demonstration
software is a complete NUD.IST system, except it won't
let you save changes to the database.
QSR FORUM
An email forum on NUD.IST and computational qualitative
data analysis is managed by Q.S.R. To subscribe, email
a request to <mailing-list-request who-is-at qsr.com.au> and
include in the *body* of your message: SUBSCRIBE qsr
forum your-first-name your-last-name
TRAINERS
People who are involved in teaching or training or
otherwise supporting NUD.IST users are invited to apply
to nudist who-is-at qsr.com.au to join the "Guru Group" for
sharing teaching ideas and materials, getting access to
QSR's training materials, etc.
QSR has trainer/consultant networks around the world.
If you are interested in taking on such a role, please
get in touch with QSR. QSR retails the NUD.IST
software only in Australia/NZ but does consultancy and
training worldwide. For information about sales and
training and consultancy in your area please contact:
Qualitative Solutions & Research Pty Ltd
Box 171 La Trobe University Post Office
Victoria 3083, Australia.
Tel 61/3 94 59 16 99
Fax 61/3 94 59 04 35
email: nudist who-is-at qsr.com.au
World Wide Web: http://www.qsr.com.au
David R. Russell
Associate Professor
English Department
Iowa State University
Ames, IA 50011 USA
(515) 294-4724
Fax (515) 294-6814
drrussel who-is-at iastate.edu