Best of the Best: The Top 8 Qualitative Analysis Tools Out Right Now

Qualitative data is the key to transformative business decisions. By collecting true customer sentiment, businesses can develop a consumer-centric strategy that builds long-term trust and brand loyalty.

But with a large influx of information from various sources such as focus groups, interviews, and the like, effectively analyzing your qualitative data may be difficult without the right tools.

Your qualitative data analysis (QDA) software must provide the features needed to organize, process, and extract meaningful insights from raw data. To find out which one is the ideal choice for your study, we’ve broken down eight of the best qualitative research tools out in the market.

• ATLAS.ti

  ATLAS.ti uncovers actionable insights by incorporating AI (Artificial Intelligence) in their software. This QDA tool can import and export various data formats while having data-level analysis that supports interpretative evaluation approaches – even before or without coding.

  Key Strength: This qualitative data analysis tool has a mobile companion app that captures text responses, photos, audio recordings, and videos for on-the-go data collection.

  Pros: Team collaboration is made easier through real-time updates that are instantly visible.

  Cons: If you’re a student or want to buy this software for personal use, it can get quite pricey. Moreover, there have also been users complaining about the coding features' intuitiveness.

  Pricing: ATLAS.ti offers a free trial and different licensing options depending on which industry you belong to.

• QDA Miner

  QDA Miner is a qualitative research tool that specializes in organizing, annotating, coding, and analyzing documents and images. This easy-to-use tool could analyze transcripts, entire books, legal documents, photographs, paintings, and other visual materials.

  Key Strength: If you’re a beginner with qualitative data analysis, QDA Miner has a free version called QDA Miner Lite. Their free tool has limited functionality, but it would be a good option if you want to test the waters.

  Pros: This software is integrated with WordStat (content analysis and mining software) and SimStat (statistical analysis tool) – giving you the flexibility to analyze textual and numerical data.

  Cons: The main disadvantage of this tool is that it doesn’t have a feature for collaboration, which can be a dealbreaker if you’re analyzing data with your research team and need frequent project updates.

  Pricing: QDA Miner offers different pricing options based on industry, quantity, license type, and software package.

• MAXQDA 

  Founded in 1989, MAXQDA is a tool for analyzing diverse qualitative data sets from various sources such as interviews, surveys, and focus groups. This analysis software allows researchers to input and organize their project deliverables in the workspace. Furthermore, it contains features for coding, retrieval, and visualization of raw data.

  Key Strength:  MAXQDA allows you to import and analyze diverse data formats (e.g., Text documents, Excel sheets, PDFs)

  Pros: MAXQDA is relatively easy to use and has a feature for transcribing your recordings.

  Cons: If you want to collaborate with your research team on a project, each user has to save their work individually before merging all the versions.

  Pricing: Has three different pricing options with annual and perpetual subscriptions.

• NVivo

  NVivo’s analysis software lets you store and manage qualitative and mixed methods data from several sources. For better thematic analysis, NVivo allows you to visualize data using different methods, such as frequency charts, diagrams, and word clouds.

  Key Strength: You can integrate NVivo with apps like EndNote, SurveyMonkey, and more to consolidate your gathered data.

  Pros: It has an auto-coding feature that could organize people, places, and core metrics as cases.

  Cons: This qualitative analysis tool doesn’t handle large bodies of graphical, audio, and video data all that well. Manual data analysis is required after coding, which may take some time.

  Pricing: They offer a 14-day free trial with different pricing options depending on factors such as whether you’re an academic user or purchasing additional modules.

• Taguette 

  Taguette is a free, open-source qualitative data management tool that lets you import research data, tag and highlight quotes, as well as export your results.

  Key Strength: Tagutte works locally on your computer or on a server. It’s ideal for researchers looking for a basic and free alternative to more expensive analysis tools.

  Pros: Collaborate on a project with other users if you're self-hosting or using Taguette’s public server.

  Cons: With how simple this software is, it’s no surprise that it lacks key features that you might need for data analysis, such as video or image support.

  Pricing: Free

• Quirkos 

  Quirkos is a visual software tool that helps researchers analyze qualitative data. This tool works primarily with text, wherein you can drag, drop, and categorize content into different ‘bubbles’ when coding your data.

  Key Strength: This software allows you to identify patterns and themes from text, Word, or PDF files through different data visualization features such as word clouds, queries, and color-coded documents.

  Pros: Quirkos is very intuitive to use and budget-friendly. There’s no need for extensive onboarding sessions in order to familiarize yourself with each feature.

  Cons: While relatively straightforward to use, this also comes with limited capabilities. For one, you have fewer import options compared to other QDA software. Furthermore, Quirkos’ manual coding feature may be a drawback for data-heavy research because of how tedious it could be to organize information.

  Pricing: They offer three different packages for academic, commercial, and student research. Pricing also varies depending on whether you want to store your qualitative data in their cloud or on your local computer.

• Dedoose

  Dedoose is a data analytics application that helps you explore the underlying meaning of your qualitative and mixed methods data. This cloud-based application allows you and your research team to access project data whenever needed.

  Key Strength: This team-oriented app has collaboration features such as granular access control groups, real-time chat, and memoing to keep everyone in the loop on project updates.

  Pros: Dedoose allows you to store research data in their cloud with enhanced security measures such as encryption, password protection, and backup.

  Cons: Because they only charge a monthly fee rather than an annual license, this cross-platform app may turn out to be more expensive than other data analytics software.

  Pricing: The monthly fee for Dedoose varies on the number of users and whether you’re a student. If you want to test out the app, the first 30 days of your plan are free.

  

   

• Glide Central

  Civicom Glide Central® is a qualitative data analysis tool that helps extract actionable insights from the overwhelming amount of video and audio generated in interviews and focus groups. It allows you to organize and edit your data in a manner that makes it easier to locate and analyze findings.

  Through Glide’s seamless integration with other Civicom tools, such as CyberFacility® (online interview and focus group solution), CCam® focus (in-person focus group solution), and ThoughtLight®(mobile insights app), researchers can optimize their process and not have to worry about logistics when conducting qualitative studies.

  Glide’s software features let you collaborate with your team, develop tags for keywords, mark key points in your recordings, generate human or automated transcripts, make video clips, and create storyboards. Thus, enabling you to analyze and create a compelling narrative out of your audio and video data.

Generate Actionable Insights With Your Data Using Civicom Glide Central®

With Glide Central as your media curation tool, you can store and organize data, create clips, craft storyboards from your projects, collaborate with your team, and generate transcripts. Learn more about Glide Central’s various curation and collaboration features to maximize your qualitative content.