[BlindResearch] Looking for JAWS User who Uses Nvivo

Fri Aug 19 16:56:26 UTC 2022

Hi,
I generally agree that qualitative analysis can be done quite well using Excel, Word, and other spreadsheet and word processing programs. I did want to point out what I perceived to be some potential benefits of qualitative analysis software, and perhaps other software achieve these goals and I’m just not aware of it. One thing that’s nice is that often the audio clip and timestamp are linked with the annotation. While timestamps are in text documents generated by automated speech to text programs and professionally transcribed files, they still don’t link to the audio itself. It is really nice to be able to jump back into the audio if something doesn’t make sense, if you are incorporating nonverbal information into your analysis,  or once you have honed in on specific chunks you’ll analyze in a large compilation of Audio files or transcripts. I am in interpretivist qualitative researcher so this is not always useful for me, but particularly people doing mixed methods or calculating interrater reliability, quantifying the qualitative tags can become important and while you can sort and sum columns in spreadsheet programs, having this feature in qualitative analysis software is particularly useful as it can often quickly generate not only quantities but depict potential patterns across and between transcripts that I think would be very difficult and time-consuming to do manually. I’m not arguing that a blind person should go out of their way to use rather inaccessible qualitative coding software, but I wanted to point out some of the reasons my sighted colleagues like it, and some of the types of quantifying I have partially shied away from because it was unwieldy with the tools I had available to me at the time. If these features would be useful, it could be an excellent opportunity to mentor a more junior student, hire an intern, etc. There are also probably ways to write your own code and do similar quantitative analysis on the text, but often people are aiming to use qualitative analysis tools to ease analysis overhead. 

Cynthia Bennett
Pronouns: she/her

Web: https://www.bennettc.com/
Twitter: @clb5590

> On Aug 19, 2022, at 12:41 PM, Edward Bell via BlindResearch <blindresearch at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> Justin,
>  
> I wish to agree with Arielle here.
> When most people enter qualitative data  they make spelling errors or use different words to mean the same thing. In a rehab survey respondents may call it cane travel, travel, Orientation and Mobility, mobility, cane walking, or a myriad other titles.
>  
> No  software of which I am aware can account for all the permutations of what people choose to label things. So you really need to pull it down into Excel, create a new column and go through it response by response adding your own codes.
> This is what we call data manipulation, and so far as I am aware, data analysis is the only place where manipulation is justifiable – so long as you are doing it ethically.
>  
> Good luck
>  
> Edward C. Bell, Ph.D., CRC, NOMC, Director,
> Professional Development and Research Institute on Blindness
> Louisiana Tech University
> 600 Mayfield Ave / 210 Woodard Hall
> PO Box 3158
> Ruston LA 71272
> Office: 318.257.4554                      Fax: 318.257.2259
> ebell at latech.edu  www.pdrib.com
> *************
> "I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of  Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal  talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops."
> -- Stephen Jay Gould
>  
> From: BlindResearch <blindresearch-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Arielle Silverman via BlindResearch
> Sent: Thursday, August 18, 2022 4:11 PM
> To: Justin Mark Hideaki Salisbury (he/him) <Justin.Salisbury at uvm.edu>; blindresearch at nfbnet.org
> Subject: Re: [BlindResearch] Looking for JAWS User who Uses Nvivo
>  
> Hi Justin and all,
> Based on conversations I’ve had with blind researchers over the last decade, I suspect the blind people who use NVIVO with JAWS are mythical creatures.
> However, I will also say that I have asked sighted people what purpose qualitative software programs serve, and for the most part I have heard that the only real benefit of programs like NVIVO or Dedoose over programs like Excel is the ease of visualizing qualitative data for sighted users. Regardless of whether you use a fancy qual program like NVIVO or if you use Excel, you still have to do the work of breaking down a qualitative data source into units, reviewing each unit, assigning it one or more codes and then refining codes to identify the most common themes. In other words, while I am disappointed that qualitative software is inaccessible, I don’t think blind researchers are missing much when the main benefit of an expensive software program is mostly related to visual ease for sighted users.
>  
> While I am definitely not a qualitative research expert, I’ve analyzed multiple qualitative data sets using either Word or Excel to enter my codes, and my results were essentially the same as my colleagues who used programs.
>  
> HTH,
> Arielle
>  
> From: BlindResearch <blindresearch-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Justin Mark Hideaki Salisbury (he/him) via BlindResearch
> Sent: Wednesday, August 17, 2022 1:29 PM
> To: blindresearch at nfbnet.org
> Subject: [BlindResearch] Looking for JAWS User who Uses Nvivo
>  
> Hi everyone,
>  
> I read the conversation in the list archives here about accessible software for coding qualitative data. I have read that Nvivo is theoretically accessible with JAWS, but my experience consistently tells me that those websites sponsored by the software developers have no credibility. I want to find someone who actually, personally, uses Nvivo with JAWS so that I can talk with them about how it works. Can anyone here attest to their personal use of Nvivo with JAWS or connect me with a specific person who has?
>  
> Thank you,
>  
> Justin
>  
> Justin MH Salisbury (he/him)
> Graduate Student
> Department of Education
> College of Education and Social Services
> The University of Vermont
> Email: Justin.Salisbury at UVM.edu 
> Website: https://www.uvm.edu/cess/cdci/profiles/justin-mark-hideaki-salisbury-he/him/his
>  
> “We must always take sides.  Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
>  
> Elie Weisel, Acceptance Speech, Nobel Peace Prize, Oslo, 1986
>  
> _______________________________________________
> BlindResearch mailing list
> BlindResearch at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blindresearch_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for BlindResearch:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/blindresearch_nfbnet.org/clb5590%40gmail.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://nfbnet.org/pipermail/blindresearch_nfbnet.org/attachments/20220819/6c1af421/attachment.html>