PREFACE 1

Preface

ATLAS.ti 22 User Manual

Copyright © by ATLAS.ti Scientific Software Development GmbH, Berlin. All rights reserved.

Document version: 22.0.0.215 (03.02.2022 17:01:11)

Author: Dr. Susanne Friese

Copying or duplicating this document or any part thereof is a violation of applicable law. No part of
this manual may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including, but not limited to, photocopying, without written permission from ATLAS.ti
GmbH.

Trademarks: ATLAS.ti is a registered trademark of ATLAS.ti Scientific Software Development GmbH.

Adobe Acrobat is a trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated; Microsoft, Windows, Excel, and
other Microsoft products referenced herein are either trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the
United States and/or in other countries. Google Earth is a trademark of Google, Inc. All other
product names and any registered and unregistered trademarks mentioned in this document are
used for identification purposes only and remain the exclusive property of their respective owners.

Please always update to the latest versions of ATLAS.ti when notified during application
start.

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CONTENTS

Preface 1
ATLAS.ti 22 User Manual 1
About this Manual 2
How to Use this Manual 3
Useful Resources for Getting Started 3
ATLAS.ti Account and Licence Activation 4
Requesting a Trial Version 4
Activating a Licence 5
Limited Version after Licence Expiration 8
Introduction 9
ATLAS.ti - The Knowledge Workbench 13
Some Basic Terms 13
General Steps when Working with ATLAS.ti 14
Main Concepts and Features 15
Documents and Document Groups 16
Quotations 17
Codes 18
From a Methodological Perspective 18
From a Technical Perspective 19
References 19
Memos 20
Comments 23
Groups 24
Networks 25
Nodes, Links and Relations 25
Network Manager 26
Network Editor 26
Link Manager 26
Relation Manager 26
Tools for Exploring Text Data 27
Analysis 28
Cross-Tabulation of Codes (Code Co-occurrence) 28
Code-Document Table 28
Query Tool 28
Global Filters 28
Smart Codes 28
Smart Groups 29
Team Tools 30
Project Merge 30
Clean up Redundant Codings 30
Coder Icons in the Margin Area 30

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Inter-Coder Agreement 30
User Administration 31
Export 32
Word / PDF 32
Excel Export 32
Print Documents with Margin 32
QDPX Exchange Format For Projects 32
SPSS / PSPP Export 32
Generic Statistic Export for R, SAS, STATA, etc. 33
Image Files 33
Main Steps in Working with ATLAS.ti 34
Data and Project Management 34
Two Principal Modes of Working 34
Data Level Work 35
Conceptual Level Work 35
Welcome Screen 37
Welcome Screen (left-hand side) 37
Welcome Screen (middle section) 37
Welcome Screen (right-hand side) 38
Creating a New Project 39
Importing an Existing Project 42
How to Import Projects 42
If the project contains Linked Media Files 43
The ATLAS.ti Interface 45
The ATLAS.ti Ribbon 45
Software Navigation 49
Browsers 51
Context Menus 53
Working with Docked and Floated Windows 55
The Six Main Entity Types 58
Entity Managers 59
Launching an Entity Manager 59
The Split Bar 59
The Status Bar 60
Selecting Items in an Entity Manager 60
Searching 60
Context Menus 61
Sorting and Filtering 61
View Options 61
Search & Filter Options 62
The Document Manager 63
Filter 64

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The Document Manager Ribbon 64

Tools Tab 65
Search & Filter / View Tab 66
Quotation Manager 67
Quotation Reference 67
Position in the Document: Start / End / Extent 68
Adding Quotation Names 68
Selection Behaviour 68
Drag & Drop 68
Filter 69
Quotation Manager Ribbon 69
Search & Filter / View Tab 70
Code Manager 71
Good to know 72
Code Manager Ribbon 73
Tools Tab 75
Search & Filter 75
View Tab 75
Relation Manager 78
Relation Manager Ribbon 79
View Tab 79
Link Manager 80
Link Manager Columns for Code-Code Links 80
Link Manager Columns for Hyperlinks 81
Link Manager Ribbon 82
View Tab 82
Memo Manager 83
Drag & Drop 83
Filter 84
Memo Manager Ribbon 84
Network Manager 86
Network Manager Ribbon 87
Search & Filter / View Tab 87
Supported File Formats 88
Textual Documents 88
Transcripts 88
PDF files (Text and Graphic) 89
PDF files (eBooks, PowerPoint, Visio, Draw) 90
Images 90
Audio- and Video Documents 90
Geo Documents 90
Social Network Comments 91

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Survey Data 91
Reference Manager Data 91
Twitter 91
Evernote 92
Adding Documents 93
What happens when you add documents to a project 93
What happens when you add documents to a project 93
Important for team projects 93
How to add documents 94
Adding transcripts with multimedia file 95
Size Restrictions 95
A Word about "Big Data" 96
Transcription 97
Preparing your Own Transcript 98
Step 1 - Add an Audio or Video File 98
Step 2 - Create a Word file 98
Step 3 - Associate the Word File 98
Step 4 - Begin to transcribe 99
Importing Transcripts in RTF or Word format 100
Step 1 - Add an Audio or Video File 100
Step 2 - Associate a Transcript 100
Synchronized Scrolling 101
Deleting an As 102
Importing Automated Transcripts in VTT and SRT format 103
How to Generate Automated Transcripts - Useful Links 104
How to Import Automated Transcripts 105
Step 1 - Add an Audio or Video File 105
Step 2 - Associate a Transcript 105
Working With Reference Manager Data 108
Importing Reference Manager Data 108
Inspecting the Imported Documents 110
Importing Social Network Comments 111
Working With Survey Data 114
Importing Survey Data 116
Toolbar 117
Inspecting Imported Survey Data 119
Analyzing Survey Data 122
Importing Twitter Data 123
Automatic Coding and Linking for Tweets 124
Adding a Geo Document to a Project 126
Finding a Location 126
Changing the View from Open Street Map to Bing 127

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Working with Geo Documents 128

Change Map Type 128
Creating Geo Quotations 128
Display of Geo Q 128
Activating Geo Quotations 129
Modifying a Geo quotation 129
Coding Geo Quotations 129
Creating a Geo 130
Browsing Geo Locations in Google Map 130
Managing Documents 131
Loading Documents 131
Editing Documents 131
Renaming Documents 132
Deleting Documents 133
Duplicating Documents 133
Renumbering all Documents 133
Project Management 135
Opening a Project 135
Saving a Project 135
Renaming a Project 135
Deleting 135
Password Protection 136
ATLAS.ti Project Data is Saved to a Library 137
Working with the ATLAS.ti Library 137
Creating a Project Backup 140
Exporting a Project 140
Exporting a partial bundle if your project contains multimedia files 143
Project Transfer 144
Creating a Project Snapshot 147
Where Does ATLAS.ti Store Project Data? 148
Default Locations for Files and Text Analysis Models 148
Working With Groups 149
Application of Docume 149
Application of Code Groups 152
Application of Memo Groups 153
Groups as Filters 154
Creating and Renaming Groups 156
Creating Groups in a Manager 156
Creating Groups in the Project Explorer 157
Creating Groups in a Group Manager 158
Creating Document Groups in the Query Tool 160
Renaming a Group 160

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Removing Group Members / Deleting Groups 162

Removing Group Members 162
Deleting Groups 163
Importing & Exporting Document Groups 164
Exporting Document Groups to Excel 165
Importing Document Groups from Excel 165
Import Document Groups Table 166
The ATLAS.ti Quotation Level 168
Creating Quotations in Text Documents 169
Quotation ID 170
Changing the Chronological Order of Quotations 170
Adding Quotation Names 171
Creating Quotations in PDF Documents 173
Creating Quotations in Image Documents 175
Creating Quotations in PDF Documents 177
Working with Multimedia Data 179
Creating Multimedia Quotations 179
Creating Multimedia Quotations while Listening / Watching 180
Coding Multimedia Quotations 181
Activating and Playing Multimedia Quotations 181
Adjusting the Size of Multimedia Quotations 182
Renaming a Multimedia Quotation 182
Capturing Snapshots of Video Frames as Image Documents 182
Working with Quotations 183
Making Use of the Quotation Names and Comments for Analytical Purposes 183
Reviewing Coded Quotations and Modify Coding 187
Displaying Quotations in Context 188
Deleting Quotations 188
Changing the Chronological Order of Quotations 189
Coding Data - Basic Concepts 190
Independent Code / Category Code / Subcode 190
How Groundedness is Counted 192
How Density is Counted 193
Creating and Applying Codes 194
Creating New Codes without Coding 194
Coding with a New Code 194
Code In-Vivo 195
Display of Coded Data Segments in the Margin Area 196
Applying Existing Codes 197
Using the Coding Dialogue 197
Drag-and-Drop Coding 197
Quick Coding 198

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Document Ribbon when Coding 199

Keyboard Shortcuts For Coding 201
More Drag-And-Drop Options 201
Writing Code Comments 202
Working with Codes 204
Modifying the Length of a Coded Segment 204
Removing a Coding 204
Replacing a Code via Drag & Drop 205
Adding, Changing and Removing Code Color 205
Renaming a Code 207
Deleting One or Multiple Code(s) 207
Duplicating a Code 208
Writing Code Comments 208
Retrieving Coded Data 211
From the Project Explorer, Code Manager or Code Browser 211
Simple Retrieval in the Margin Area 212
Simple Boolean Queries in The Quotation Manager 212
Creating Categories and Subcodes 215
Creating Categories with Subcodes 216
Creating category and subcodes in the coding dialog 219
Easy coding with subcodes of a category 220
How to move subcodes out of a category 221
Organizing Codes in Folders 222
Exploring Coded Data 225
Parts of Speech 226
Merging Codes 230
Splitting a Code 234
Splitting a code into independent codes 234
Splitting a code into a category and subcodes 237
Display of Codes in the Project Explorer and Code Browser 239
View Options the Code Manager 239
Display Code List as Code Cloud or Bar Chart 242
Code Cloud 242
Code List as Bar Chart 242
Working With Code Groups 244
Importing and Exporting a List of Codes 247
Exporting the List of Codes 247
Importing the List of Codes 247
Building a Code System 250
How to Begin Building a Code System 250
Characteristics of a well-structured code list 254
Good Practice Tips 254

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The Role of Code Groups in Building a Code System 254

Moving on 255
Literature 255
Creating a Codebook 257
Quotation Reader 259
Exploring Text Data 266
Creating Word Clouds 267
Setting the Scope 268
World Cloud Ribbon 268
Filter 269
Filter Tab 270
Context Menu Options 270
Creating Word Lists 272
Sorting Word Lists 273
Setting the Scope 273
Word List Ribbon 275
Filter Tab 276
Context Menu Options 277
Stop and Go Lists 278
Stop and Go Lists 279
Selecting a Stop List 279
Importing a Stop List 279
Cleaning up a Word Cloud 282
Creating a New Stop or Go Lists 283
Exporting a Stop or Go List 285
Creating a User-Defined Stop or Go List in Excel 286
Automatically Code Data 288
Find Concepts and Auto-Code 289
What makes a concept? 289
Text Search and Auto-Code 293
Carrying out a text search 293
Exact Match Search 296
Expert Search with Regular Expressions (regex) 298
Carrying out a text search with Regex 298
GREP Examples 300
Examples of GREP Searches 302
Named Entity Recognition (NER) 303
Reviewing Search Results 304
The Search Engine Behind NER 308
Sentiment Analysis 309
Application Examples 309
Carrying out a Sentiment Analysis 309

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The Search Engine Behind the Sentiment Analysis 312

Analyzing Focus Groups 314
Guidelines for Preparing Focus Group Data 315
Custom Pattern 316
Example transcripts 317
Example A (pattern 1) 317
Example B (pattern 1) 317
Example C (pattern 1) 317
Example D (pattern 2) 318
Recommendation 319
Auto Coding Focus Group Speakers 320
Multimedia Data (Audio & Video) 323
Adding Multimedia Documents to a Project 323
Display of Multimedia Documents 324
Media Controls 325
Multimedia Toolbar 326
Handling Multimedia Data 328
Zooming the Timeline 328
Media Controls 328
Multimedia View Options 329
Use Arrow Keys to Navigate 329
Keyboard Shortcuts 330
Working with Multimedia Data 331
Creating Multimedia Quotations 331
Creating Multimedia Quotations while Listening / Watching 332
Coding Multimedia Quotations 333
Activating and Playing Multimedia Quotations 333
Adjusting the Size of Multimedia Quotations 334
Renaming a Multimedia Quotation 334
Capturing Snapshots of Video Frames as Image Documents 334
Multimedia Preferences 335
Autopreview 335
The Margin Area 336
Margin Drag & Drop 337
Linking 337
Copying 337
Print with Margin 338
Memos and Comments 340
Memos 340
Differences between Memos and Comments 341
Difference between Memos and Codes 344
Working with Comments and Memos 345

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Writing a Comment 345

Creating Memos 345
Opening an Exis 346
Link 346
Converting a Memo into a Document 348
Hyperlinks 349
Representing the Rhetoric of Data 349
What Codes Can't Do 349
Mapping Hyperlinks in Networks 350
Creating Hyperlinks 351
Terminology 351
Display of Hyperlinks 351
Creating Hyperlinks in a Document 352
Creating Hyperlinks in the Quotation Manager 354
Creating Hyperlinks in the Margin Area 354
Creating Hyperlinks across Documents 354
Working with Hyperlinks 355
Traversing Hyperlinks 355
Modifying Hyperlinks 355
Editing Hyperlink Comments 356
Creating New Relations for H 357
Further Data Analysis 358
Simple Boolean Retrieval. 358
Analysing Code Distributions 359
Code-Document Table 359
Co-occurrence Analysis 359
The Query Tool 359
Smart Codes 360
Smart Groups 360
Global Filters 360
Available Operators for Querying Data 361
Boolean Operators 361
Proximity Operators 362
The Query Tool 366
How to Build a Query Using Boolean Operators 367
Example 1 367
Inspecting the Results of a Query 369
Options of the Result Pane 371
Removing or Modifying a Query 371
Example 2 371
How to Build a Query using Proximity Operators 374
How to Build a Query using a Mix of Operators 380

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Example 1 380
Example 2 382
Restrict a Query to Sub Groups in your Data 384
Opening the Scope Tool 384
Changing the Scope 384
Closing the Scope Tool 384
Storing the Results of a Query 385
Creating Document Groups from Results 386
Query Tool Reports 387
Excel Report 387
Text Report 387
Code-Document Table 388
Running an Analysis in the Code-Document Table 388
How to read the table 389
Code-Document Table: Relative Frequencies 393
Across Group Comparison: Row Relative Frequencies 393
Within Group Comparisons: Column Relative Frequencies 394
Total Relative Frequencies 394
Code-Document Table: Normalization 396
Binarize the Results of a Code-Document Table 397
Visualizing the Code-Document Table 399
Sankey Diagram 399
Layout 401
Interactivity 401
Removing edges 401
Sankey Diagram Ribbon 402
Bar Chart 403
Code Co-Occurrence Tools 406
The Code Co-Occurrence Explorer 407
The Codes Branch 407
The Codes Branch 408
The Documents Branch 408
The Code Co-Occurrence Table 409
How to Read the Table 410
Code Co-Occurrence Table Ribbon 411
Code Co-occurrence Coefficient 413
Distortion due to unequal frequencies 413
Out of Range 414
Summary of Color Indicators 414
Visualizing the Code Co-Occurrence Table 415
Sankey Diagram 415
Layout 417

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Interactivity 417
Removing edges 417
Sankey Diagram Ribbon 418
Bar Chart 419
Smart and Snapshot Entities 422
What are Smart Codes? 423
What you cannot do with Smart Codes 423
Working With Smart Codes 424
Creating an ORed Smart Code in the Code Manager 424
Creating a Smart Code in the Quotation Manager 424
Creating a Smart Code in the Q 425
Editing a S 425
What are Smart Groups 426
Working With Smart Groups 427
Creating a Smart Group 427
Editing a Smart Group 427
What are Snapshot Codes and Groups? 429
Snapshot Codes 429
Snapshot Groups 429
Creating Snapshots 430
Working with Global Filters 431
Creating a Global Filter 431
Code Groups as Global filter 431
Document Groups as Global Filter 435
Memo Groups as Global Filter 436
Network Groups as Global Filter 436
Setting a Global Filter 436
Creating a Global Filter 439
Analysing Code Distributions 440
Code Distribution across Documents 440
Code Distribution by Documents 441
Setting a Global Filter 444
Display Of Globa 444
Activating / Deactivating Global Filters 444
Changing a Global Filter 444
Removing a Global Filter 444
Removing / Changing / Activating / Deactivating a Global Filter 445
Removing a Global Filter 445
Changing a Glob 445
Activating or Deactivating Global Filters 445
Global Filters in the Code Co-occurrence Table 446
Global Filters in the Code Document Table 447

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ATLAS.ti Networks 448

Nodes And Links 449
Directed and Non-Directed Links 449
First-Class Links 449
Second-Class Links 450
Why Groups Cannot be Linked 450
Relations 451
Link vs. Relation 451
ATLAS.ti Default Relations 452
Formal Properties - Some Definitions 452
Relation Manager 454
Relation Manager Ribbon 455
View Tab 455
The Network Editor 456
Node Types 457
Network View Options 459
Style 460
Network Editor - Layout And Routing Options 461
Layout Options 461
Routing 463
Basic Network Procedures 464
Creating a New Network 464
Adding Nodes to a Network 464
Selecting Nodes 466
Opening Ad-hoc Networks 468
Linking Nodes and Entities 470
Linking via Drag & Drop 470
Linking Two Nodes Using the Ribbon Icon 471
Linking Three or More Nodes 471
Editing a Link 472
Cutting Multiple Links 474
Linking Codes to Codes, Quotations to Quotations, Memos to Memos in Managers
474
and Browsers
Linking Entities of Different Types 475
Creating & Modifying Relations 476
Creating New Relations 476
Editing Existing Relations 477
Analytic Functions in Networks 478
Add Neighbors 478
Application: Comparing Cases 479
Add Co-occurring Codes 480
Exporting Networks 482

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Saving a Network as Graphic File 482

Saving a Network in the Microsoft XPS format 482
Saving a Network in PDF format 482
Network Editor - Further Options 483
Changing Code Color 483
Merge Codes 483
Duplicate Codes 484
Create Groups 484
Traversing Hyperlinks in Networks 484
Team Work 485
Workflow 485
User Accounts 487
To check who is currently logged in: 487
Change the Current User 487
Creating a new user account 488
Switching user accounts 488
Merging Users 489
Setting Up a Team Project 490
Tasks of the Project Administrator 490
Team Project: Tasks for Team Members 492
Merging Projects 495
Identical Entities Explained 495
Groups are Additive 495
Entities with and without Comments 496
Handling of Deleted Entities 497
How to Merge 499
Housekeeping 504
Inter-coder Agreement (ICA) 505
Why It Matters 505
ICA - Requirements For Coding 508
Semantic Domains 508
Developing the Code System and Semantic Domains 510
Rules for Applying Codes 510
How Agreement and Disagreement is Measured 513
Example Application 514
Methods For Testing ICA 515
Percent Agreement 515
Holsti Index 516
Cohen's Kappa 516
Krippendorff's Family of Alpha Coefficients 518
Alpha binary 518
cu-alpha 518

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Cu-alpha 519
Calculation of Krippendorff's Alpha 519
References 521
Sample Size and Decision Rules 522
Sample size 522
Acceptable Level of Reliability 523
Setting Up a Project for Inter-coder Agreement Analysis 524
Instructions for the Principal Investigator (PI) 524
Instructions f 525
Continues Workflow 526
Merging Projects For ICA Analysis 527
Running an ICA Analysis 529
Calculating an ICA Co 531
Tools 533
Project Search 534
Searching in Selected Entities 534
Finding Redundant Codings 535
Creating Reports 536
Create Word / PDF Reports 538
Creating Report from the Code Manager 538
Creating Reports from the Quotation Manager 540
Document Reports 542
Memo Reports 545
Quotation Manager Reports 548
Document Manager Reports 549
Memo Manager Reports 550
Network Manager Reports 551
Creating Excel Reports 552
Report: All Quotations for a Code 552
Info Sheet for Excel Reports 554
Example Reports 555
Report: All Quotations for Multiple Codes 555
Report: Code Book 556
Report: Documents and their Codes 558
Report: for Multimedia Data 560
Exporting Documents 562
To export documents: 562
To Print a Text Document / Save it in P 562
Data Export For Further Statistical Analysis 563
SPSS Syntax Export 565
Creating a Syntax File 565
The Syntax File Explained 566

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Generic Export for further Statistical Analysis 570

QDPX - Universal Data & Project Exchange 571
What is QDPX 571
Why is QDPX Great for You? 572
Exporting a Project in QDPX Format 573
Appendix 574
Language Settings 575
Changing the Display Language 575
System Requirements 575
Options 576
Service Packs & Patches - Live Update 577
Useful Resources 578
The ATLAS.ti Website 578
Getting Support 578
ATLAS.ti 22 - What's New 578
Video Tutorials 578
Sample Projects 579
PDF Manuals 579
Research Blog 579
Inter-coder Agreement in ATLAS.ti by Prof. Krippendorff 579
Publications 580
Get In Touch 581
Reporting A Problem 581
Sending Suggestions 581

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ABOUT THIS MANUAL 2

About this Manual

This manual describes the concepts and functions of ATLAS.ti 22.

It is not required that you read the manual sequentially from the beginning to the end. Feel free to
skip sections that describe concepts you are already familiar with, jump directly to sections that
describe functions you are interested in, or simply use it as a reference guide to look up information
on certain key features.

For users with no prior knowledge of ATLAS.ti, we do, however, recommend that you especially
read through the first part of this manual in order to become familiar with the concepts used by
ATLAS.ti and to gain an overview of the available functions. These are the chapters: The VISE
Principle, ATLAS.ti - The Knowledge Workbench, and Main Steps in Working with ATLAS.ti.

Further, to set up a project, we recommended that you read:

• Main Steps in Working with ATLAS.ti

• Starting ATLAS.ti
• The ATLAS.ti Interface
• Adding Documents
• Project Management

For all basic-level work like creating quotations, coding, and writing memos, consult the chapters
under the main heading:

• Entity Managers
• Exploring Data
• Working With Quotations
• Coding Data
• Auto-coding Data
• Working With Comments And Memos
• Working With Groups

Advanced functions are described under:

• Working With Hyperlinks

• Querying Data
• Working With Networks

The sequence of the chapters follows the steps that are necessary to start and work on an
ATLAS.ti project: First, the main concepts that ATLAS.ti utilizes are explained; next, an overview of
all available tools is provided. These introductory and more theoretically-oriented parts are
followed by more practically-oriented chapters providing step-by-step instructions. You will learn
how to manage your data and how to set up and start a project. Once a project is set up, the basic
functions such as coding, text search, auto-coding, writing memos, etc. become relevant.
Conceptual-level functions such as the network editor, the Query Tool and the Co-occurrence
Explorer build on the data-level work (at least in most cases) and are therefore described last.

The section Useful Resources offers some useful advice on how to get support and where to find
further information on the software.

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ABOUT THIS MANUAL 3

Video tutorial: What's New in ATLAS.it 22

How to Use this Manual

This manual is intended for:

• Those who have no prior knowledge of ATLAS.ti

• Those who have worked with a previous version.

Some general familiarity with concepts and procedures relating to the Windows operating system
and computing in general (e.g., files, folders, paths) is assumed.

This is largely a technical document. You should not expect any detailed discussion of
methodological aspects of qualitative research other than cursory statements from this manual.

Useful Resources for Getting Started

To those seeking in-depth instruction on methodological aspects, the ATLAS.ti Training Center
offers a full complement of dedicated ATLAS.ti training events worldwide, both through online
courses and face-to-face seminars in nearly all parts of the world. Visit the Training Center at
https://training.atlasti.com.

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ATLAS.TI ACCOUNT AND LICENCE ACTIVATION 4

ATLAS.ti Account and Licence Activation

For further information on Multi-User License Management, see our Guide for License
Holders & Administrators.

Requesting a Trial Version

Go to https://my.atlasti.com/ to create an account.

Confirm your email address.

Request a trial license by clicking on Trial Desktop.

This brings you to the Cleverbridge Website.

Enter the required information and download the software.

If you do not want to download the software immediately, you can always do this later in your
ATLAS.ti account. To do so, select My Applications.

The trial version can be used for 5 active days by one person on one computer within a
period of 3 months. At the end of the test period, you can continue to use ATLAS.ti with
limited functionality. If your project contains more than 10 documents, 50 quotations or 25
codes, you can no longer save any changes. Thus, ATLAS.ti then becomes a read-only
version.

You can initiate the purchase of a full licence from your ATLAS.ti account. After activating the
licence, and the program can be used again at full capacity. You can also continue to work on your
project without any data loss.

You cannot install a trial version again on the same computer.

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ATLAS.TI ACCOUNT AND LICENCE ACTIVATION 5

Activating a Licence

You need to make an online connection at least once to activate your licence. Once the
account it activated, you can work offline and no further online connection is required.
Please note, if you are using a seat that is part of a multi-user licence, you will blog the seat
if you are offline.

If you have purchased an individual license from the ATLAS.ti web shop, your license has been
added to your account. The next step is to activate it.

Similarly, if you are a member of a team of users under a multi-user license, you have received a
license key, an invitation code, or invitation link from the person who manages the license.

The ATLAS.ti License Management System allocates seats of multi-user license dynamically. This
means, you are assigned the first free seat under your license. If all seats are occupied, you will be
allocated the next seat that opens up.

Log in to your ATLAS.ti account.

Navigate to License Management (the default page) and enter either the
license key, or the invite code that you were given by the license owner/license
manager.

Click Activate License.

Start ATLAS.ti on your computer and click Check For Updated License and
follow the on-screen instructions to complete a few easy steps to activate your
license.

Your installation is now activated, and you can start using ATLAS.ti.

Accessing Your Account from within ATLAS.ti

On the opening screen, click on the user avatar. If you have not added a
picture yet, it will show the first two letters of your account name.

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ATLAS.TI ACCOUNT AND LICENCE ACTIVATION 6

Click on Manage Account. This takes you to the login screen. Enter your log-in
information (email and password) to access your account.

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ATLAS.TI ACCOUNT AND LICENCE ACTIVATION 7

Logging Out

It is important to understand that the installation of ATLAS.ti is independent of the licencing

of the software. You can have ATLAS.ti installed on as many computers as you want. A
single-user licence gives you the right to use it on two computers, e.g. your desktop
computer at the office and your laptop at home; or your Windows computer and your Mac
computer; or the Cloud version and a desktop version. If you want to use ATLAS.ti on a third
computer, or if you get a new computer, make sure you log out at the computer that you do
no longer want to use. If you have been invited to use a multi-user license, you will have one
seat for the time when using ATLAS.ti.

There are two ways how to log out to free a seat:

Click on the user avatar in the welcome screen and click Log Out and Restart.
If you forgot to log out in ATLAS.ti, you can always access your user account
via a web browser:

Go to https://my.atlasti.com/. Enter your email address and password to log in.

Select the Log Out option at the bottom left above your avatar in your ATLAS.ti
account.

Working Off-Line

When starting ATLAS.ti, it checks whether you have a valid licence. If you know that you won't have
online-access for a given period, you can set your licence to off-line work for a specified period.

If you have a licence that does not expire, the maximum off-line period is four months. If you have a
lease licence, the maximum period is dependent on the expiration date of your lease. This means, if
your licence expires in 1 month, you cannot set the offline period to an additional 3 months.

To set your licence to off-line use, select Options on the Welcome Screen.

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ATLAS.TI ACCOUNT AND LICENCE ACTIVATION 8

Click on the ATLAS.ti icon to review your current licence settings and select a
period for offline availability.

After the period expired, you need to connect to the Internet again to verify your licence.

Limited Version after Licence Expiration

Once the trial period or a time limited licence expire, the program is converted into a limited
version. You can open, read and review projects, but you can only save projects that do not exceed
a certain limit (see below). Thus, you can still use ATLAS.ti as a read-only version.

You cannot install a trial version again on the same computer.

Restrictions of the Limited Version

• 10 primary documents
• 50 quotations
• 25 codes
• 2 memos
• 2 network views
• auto backup is disabled

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INTRODUCTION 9

Introduction
ATLAS.ti is a powerful workbench for the qualitative analysis of larger bodies of textual, graphical,
audio, and video data. It offers a variety of tools for accomplishing the tasks associated with any
systematic approach to unstructured data, i.e., data that cannot be meaningfully analyzed by
formal, statistical approaches. In the course of such a qualitative analysis, ATLAS.ti helps you to
explore the complex phenomena hidden in your data. For coping with the inherent complexity of
the tasks and the data, ATLAS.ti offers a powerful and intuitive environment that keeps you
focused on the analyzed materials. It offers tools to manage, extract, compare, explore, and
reassemble meaningful pieces from large amounts of data in creative, flexible, yet systematic ways.

The VISE Principle

The main principles of the ATLAS.ti philosophy are best encapsulated by the acronym VISE, which
stands for

• Visualization
• Immersion
• Serendipity
• Exploration

Visualization

The visualization component of the program means directly supports the way human beings think,
plan, and approach solutions in creative, yet systematic ways.

Tools are available to visualize complex properties and relations between the entities accumulated
during the process of eliciting meaning and structure from the analyzed data.

The process is designed to keep the necessary operations close to the data to which they are
applied. The visual approach of the interface keeps you focused on the data, and quite often the
functions you need are just a few mouse clicks away.

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INTRODUCTION 10

Immersion

Another fundamental design aspect of the software is to offer tools that allow you to become fully
immersed in your data. No matter where you are in the software, you always have access to the
source data. Reading and re-reading your data, viewing them in different ways and writing down
your thoughts and ideas while you are doing it, are important aspects of the analytical process.
And, it is through this engagement with the data that you develop creative insights.

Serendipity

Webster's Dictionary defines serendipity as a seeming gift for making fortunate discoveries
accidentally. Other meanings are: Fortunate accidents, lucky discoveries. In the context of
information systems, one should add: Finding something without having actually searched for it.

The term serendipity can be equated with an intuitive approach to data. A typical operation that
relies on the serendipity effect is browsing. This information-seeking method is a genuinely human
activity: When you spend a day in the local library (or on the World Wide Web), you often start with
searching for particular books (or keywords). But after a short while, you typically find yourself
increasingly engaged in browsing through books that were not exactly what you originally had in
mind - but that lead to interesting discoveries.

Examples of tools and procedures ATLAS.ti offers for exploiting the concept of serendipity are the
Search & Code Tools, the Word Clouds and Lists, the Quotation Reader, the interactive margin area,
or the hypertext functionality.

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INTRODUCTION 11

Exploration

Exploration is closely related to the above principles. Through an exploratory, yet systematic
approach to your data (as opposed to a mere bureaucratic handling), it is assumed that especially
constructive activities like theory building will be of great benefit. The entire program's concept,
including the process of getting acquainted with its particular idiosyncrasies, is particularly
conducive to an exploratory, discovery-oriented approach.

Areas of Application

ATLAS.ti serves as a powerful utility for qualitative analysis of textual, graphical, audio, and video
data. The content of these materials is in no way limited to any one particular field of scientific or
scholarly investigation.

Its emphasis is on qualitative, rather than quantitative, analysis, i.e., determining the elements that
comprise the primary data material and interpreting their meaning. A related term would be
"knowledge management," which emphasizes the transformation of data into useful knowledge.

ATLAS.ti can be of great help in any field where this kind of soft data analysis is carried out. While
ATLAS.ti was originally designed with the social scientist in mind, it is now being put to use in areas
that we had not really anticipated. Such areas include psychology, literature, medicine, software
engineering, user experience research, quality control, criminology, administration, text linguistics,
stylistics, knowledge elicitation, history, geography, theology, and law, to name just some of the
more prominent.

Emerging daily are numerous new fields that can also take full advantage of the program's facilities
for working with graphical, audio, and video data. A few examples:

• Anthropology: Micro-gestures, mimics, maps, geographical locations, observations, field

notes
• Architecture: Annotated floor plans
• Art / Art History: Detailed interpretative descriptions of paintings or educational explanations
of style
• Business Administration: Analysis of interviews, reports, web pages
• Criminology: Analysis of letters, fingerprints, photographs, surveillance data
• Geography and Cultural Geography: Analysis of maps, locations
• Graphology: Micro comments to handwriting features.
• Industrial Quality Assurance: Analyzing video-taped user-system interaction
• Medicine and health care practice: Analysis of X-ray images, CAT scans, microscope
samples, video data of patient care, training of health personal using video data
• Media Studies: Analysis of films, TV shows, online communities
• Tourism: Maps, locations, visitor reviews

Many more applications from a host of academic and professional fields are the reality. The
fundamental design objective in creating ATLAS.ti was to develop a tool that effectively supports
the human interpreter, particularly in handling relatively large amounts of research material, notes,
and associated theories.

Although ATLAS.ti facilitates many of the activities involved in qualitative data analysis and
interpretation (particularly selecting, tagging data, and annotating), its purpose is not to fully

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INTRODUCTION 12

automate these processes. Automatic interpretation of text cannot succeed in grasping the
complexity, lack of explicitness, or contextuality of scientific or everyday knowledge. In fact,
ATLAS.ti was designed to be more than a single tool - think of it as a professional workbench that
provides a broad selection of effective tools for a variety of problems and tasks.

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ATLAS.TI - THE KNOWLEDGE WORKBENCH 13

ATLAS.ti - The Knowledge Workbench

The image of ATLAS.ti as a knowledge workbench is more than just a lively analogy. Analytical
work involves tangible elements: research material requires piecework, assembly, reworking,
complex layouts, and some special tools. A well-stocked workbench provides you with the
necessary instruments to thoroughly analyze and evaluate, search and query your data, to capture,
visualize and share your findings.

Some Basic Terms

To understand how ATLAS.ti handles data, visualize your entire project as an intelligent container
that keeps track of all your data. This container is your ATLAS.ti project.

The project keeps track of the paths to your source data and stores the codes, code groups,
networks, etc. that you develop during your work. Your source data files are copied and stored in a
repository. The standard option is for ATLAS.ti to manage the documents for you in its internal
database. If you work with larger audio or video files, they can be linked to your project to preserve
disk space. All files that you assign to the project (except those externally linked) are copied, i.e., a
duplicate is made for ATLAS.ti's exclusive use. Your original files remain intact and untouched in
their original location.

Your source data can consist of text documents (such as interview or focus group transcripts,
reports, observational notes); images (photos, screenshots, diagrams),audio recordings
(interviews, broadcasts, music), video clips (audiovisual material), PDF files (papers, brochures,
reports, articles or book chapters for a literature review), geo data (locative data using Open Street
Map), tweets from a Twitter query, and social network comments.

Once your various documents are added or linked to an ATLAS.ti project, your real work can begin.
Most commonly, early project stages involve coding different data sources.

Selecting interesting segments in your data and coding them is the basic activity you engage in
when using ATLAS.ti, and it is the basis of everything else you will do. In practical terms, coding
refers to the process of assigning codes to segments of information that are of interest to your
research objectives. We have modeled this function to correspond with the time-honored practice
of marking (underlining or highlighting) and annotating text passages in a book or other
documents.

In its central conceptual underpinnings, ATLAS.ti has drawn deliberately from what might be called
the paper and pencil paradigm. The user interface is designed accordingly, and many of its
processes are based on - and thus can be better understood by - this analogy.

Because of this highly intuitive design principle, you will quickly come to appreciate the margin area
as one of your most central and preferred work space - even though ATLAS.ti almost always offers
a variety of ways to accomplish any given task.

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ATLAS.TI - THE KNOWLEDGE WORKBENCH 14

General Steps when Working with ATLAS.ti

The following sequence of steps is, of course, not mandatory, but describes a common script:

• Create a project, an idea container, meant to enclose your data, all your findings, codes,
memos, and structures under a single name. See Creating a New Project.

• Next, add documents, text, graphic, audio and video files, or geo documents to your ATLAS.ti
project. See Adding Documents.

• Organize your documents. See Working With Groups.

• Read and select text passages or identify areas in an image or select segments on the
timeline of an audio or video file that are of further interest, assign keywords (codes), and
write comments and memos that contain your thinking about the data. Build a coding
system. See Working With Comments And Memos and Coding Data - Basic Concepts.

• Compare data segments based on the codes you have assigned; possibly add more data
files to the project. See for example Retrieving Coded Data.

• Query the data based on your research questions utilizing the different tools ATLAS.ti
provides. The keywords to look for are: simple retrieval, complex code retrievals using the
Query Tool, simple or complex retrievals in combination with variables via the scope button,
applying global filters, the Code Co-occurrence Tools (tree explorer and table), the Code
Document Table, data export for further statistical analysis. See Data Analysis and Data
Export For Further Statistical Analysis.

• Conceptualize your data further by building networks from the codes and other entities you
have created. These networks, together with your codes and memos, form the framework for
emerging theory. See Working With Networks.

• Finally, compile a written report based on the memos you have written throughout the
various phases of your project and the networks you have created. See Working With
Comments And Memos and Exporting Networks.

For additional reading about working with ATLAS.ti, see The ATLAS.ti Research Blog and The
ATLAS.ti conference proceedings.

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MAIN CONCEPTS AND FEATURES 15

Main Concepts and Features

You need to be familiar with the concepts of documents, quotations, codes, and memos as the
overall foundation when working with ATLAS.ti, complemented by a variety of special aspects such
as groups, networks, and the analytical tools.

Everything that is relevant for your analysis will be part of your ATLAS.ti project residing in the
digital domain. For instance, the data you are analyzing, the quotations as your unit of analysis, the
codes, the conceptual linkages, comments and memos, are all part of it. One obvious advantage of
this container concept is that as user you only have to deal with and think of one entity. Activating
the ATLAS.ti project is the straightforward selection of a single file; all associated material is then
activated automatically.

The most basic level of an ATLAS.ti project consists of the documents you are analyzing, followed
closely by the quotations (= selections from these document). On the next level, codes refer to
quotations. And comments and memos - you meet them everywhere. Your ATLAS.ti project can
become a highly connected entity, a dense web of primary data, associated memos and codes,
and interrelations between the codes and the data. To find your way through this web, ATLAS.ti
provides powerful browsing, retrieval and editing tools.

You can access information about each of these tools using the links below:

• Documents

• Document Groups

• Quotations

• Codes

• Memos

• Comments

• Groups

• Networks

• Data Exploration

• Analysis

• Team Tools

• Report

• Data Export

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DOCUMENTS AND DOCUMENT GROUPS 16

Documents and Document Groups

Documents represent the data you have added to an ATLAS.ti project. These can be text, image,
audio, video or geographic materials that you wish to analyze. Working with text data includes
importing survey data, importing data from a reference manager for a literature review, importing
twitter data, using interview or focus group data, reports in text or PDF formats, observational
notes, etc. For more information, see Supported file formats.

Document groups fulfill a special function as they can be regarded as quasi dichotomous variables.
You can group all female interviewees into a document group named "gender::female," all male
interviewees into a group named "gender::male." You can do the same for different professions,
marital status, education levels, etc. See Working with Groups for further information

Document groups can later in the analysis be used to restrict code-based searches like: "Show me
all data segments coded with 'attitude towards the environment' but only for females who live in
London as compared to females who live in the countryside."

You can also use document groups as a filter, for example to reduce other types of output, like a
frequency count for codes across a particular group of documents.

This is explained in more detail in the section Code Document Table.

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QUOTATIONS 17

Quotations
A quotation is a segment from a document that you consider to be interesting or important.

Usually, quotations are created manually by the researcher. However, for repetitive words, phrases
or structural information like speaker units, the Search & Code tools can be used. With any of the
tools you can automatically segment the data and assigns a code to them.

Although the creation of quotations is almost always part of a broader task like coding or writing
memos, quotations can also be created without coding. They are called "free" quotations.

If you for instance are using discourse analysis or an interpretive approach to analysis, or if you
work with video data, free quotations can be your starting point for analysis, rather than to code
the data right away. See Working with Quotations, and the ATLAS.ti Quotation Level.

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Codes
The term code is used in many ways. First, we would like to define what that term means in
qualitative research, and then in ATLAS.ti.

Coding means that we attach labels to data segments that depict what each segment is
about. Through coding, we raise analytic questions about our data from […]. Coding distills
data, sorts them, and gives us an analytic handle for making comparisons with other
segments of data.
Charmaz (2014:4)

Coding is the strategy that moves data from diffuse and messy text to organized ideas about
what is going on.
(Richards and Morse, 2013:167)

From a Methodological Perspective

• Codes capture meaning in the data.

• Codes serve as handles for specific occurrences in the data that cannot be found by simple
text-based search techniques.

• Codes are used as classification devices at different levels of abstraction in order to create
sets of related information units for the purpose of comparison.

The length of a code should be restricted and should not be too verbose. If textual
annotations are what you want, you should use quotation comments instead.

Keep code names brief and succinct. Use the comment pane for longer elaborations.

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CODES 19

From a Technical Perspective

Codes are short pieces of text referencing other pieces of text, graphical, audio, or video data.
Their purpose is to classify data units.

In the realm of information retrieval systems, the terms "tag", "keyword", or "tagging" are often used
for "code" or "coding."

Further information can be found in the sections Coding Data and Working With Codes.

References
Charmaz, Kathy (2014). Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide Through Qualitative
Analysis. London: Sage.

Richards, Lyn and Janice M. Morse (2013, 3ed). Readme first: for a user’s guide to Qualitative
Methods. Los Angeles: Sage.

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MEMOS 20

Memos
Writing is an important part of analysis in qualitative research. When using software, it is easy to fall
into the code trap. Always remember that coding the data is only a means to an end, to think,
retrieve, and query data (Corbin and Strauss, 2015; Richards, 2009; Richards and Morse, 2013).

Memos are a bit more than just a short scribbled note in the margin area:

Memos [...] are working and living documents. When an analyst sits down to write a memo or
do a diagram, a certain degree of analysis occurs. The very act of writing memos and doing
diagrams forces the analyst to think about the data. And it is in thinking that analysis occurs
(Corbin and Strauss, 2008: 118).

Writing is thinking. It is natural to believe that you need to be clear in your mind what you are
trying to express first before you can write it down. However, most of the time, the opposite
is true. You may think you have a clear idea, but it is only when you write it down that you
can be certain that you do (or sadly, sometimes, that you do not) (Gibbs, 2005).

Memos thus represent analytical work in progress, and you can later use them as building blocks
for your research report (see Friese, 2019). It is probably not by accident that Juliet Corbin includes
a lot about memo writing in the third edition of Basics of Qualitative Research; she wants to show
readers how it can be done. In a talk at the CAQD 2008 Conference about the book, she linked the
poor quality of many of today’s qualitative research projects to a failure to use memos. Along the
same lines, Birks et al. (2008) devotes an entire journal article to memo writing, criticizing the
limited exploration of its value in most qualitative methodologies.

Freeman (2017) states that it is one of the challenges facing novice researchers to understand that
writing is inseparable from analysis. We would like to encourage you do it: write a lot already while
you code and later when you query the data. If you do it, you will find out why it is useful - but
you've got to do it. As Freeman put it: The challenge for novice researchers is: “Needing to do
analysis to understand analysis” (2017:3).

When you need more input regarding how to write memos see, for example, the third edition of
Basics of Qualitative Research by Corbin and Strauss (2008/2014), Wolcott (2009), Charmaz (2014)
or Friese (2019).

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MEMOS 21

In technical terms,

• A memo in ATLAS.ti may stand alone, or it may be linked to quotations, codes, and other
memos.

• Memos can be sorted by type (method, theoretical, descriptive, etc.), which is helpful in
organizing and sorting them, or by creating memo groups.

• Memos may also be included in the analysis as secondary data by converting them into a
document. Then they can also be coded.

For more information, see Working with Comments and Memos.

References

Birks, Melanie; Chapman, Ysanne and Francis, Karin (2008). Memoing in qualitative research:
probing data and processes, Journal of Research in Nursing, 13, 68–75.

Charmaz, Kathy (2014). Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide Through Qualitative
Analysis. London: Sage.

Corbin, Juliet and Strauss, Anselm (2008/2015). Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and
Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory (3rd and 4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Freeman, Melissa (2017). Modes of Thinking for Qualitative Data Analysis. NY: Routledge.

Friese, Susanne (2019). Qualitative Data Analysis with ATLAS.ti (3. ed.), London: Sage.

Gibbs, Graham (2005). Writing as analysis. Online QDA.

Richards, Lyn and Morse, Janice M. (2013). Readme First for a User’s Guide to Qualitative Methods.

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MEMOS 22

Richards, Lyn (2009). Handling qualitative data: a practical guide (2. ed), London: Sage.

Wolcott, Harry E. (2009). Writing Up Qualitative Research. London: Sage.

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COMMENTS 23

Comments
You can write comments for all entities in ATLAS.ti. Comments - different from memos - are always
directly connected to the entity you write them for. Memos are independent stand-alone entities
that have a name and a type. Memos can be grouped and can also have comments on their own.

Writing comments is similar to scribbling notes in the margin of a paper, or attaching sticky notes to
things. Comments can be written for documents, quotations, codes, memos, networks, all types of
groups, and for relations.

See Working with Memos and Comments for further detail.

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GROUPS 24

Groups
Groups in ATLAS.ti are filter devices.

Document groups can be regarded as attributes or variables. It is possible to combine them using
logical operators like AND and OR, for instance to retrieve and analyze data from female
respondents living in NYC. This would an AND combination of two document groups.

Code groups serve as a filter for codes. They can for instance be used to filter all codes that need
to be aggregated if you have been coding very detailed and in the process of generated too many
codes.

Code groups are not a kind of higher order code. It is NOT recommended using them as
categories. For further information see Building a Code System.

For more information on groups, see Working with Group.

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NETWORKS 25

Networks
Networks allow you to conceptualize your data by connecting sets of related elements together in
a visual diagram. With the aid of networks you can express relationships between codes and
quotations; and you can link other entities like and memos, documents and groups. Also networks
themselves can be "nodes" in a network.

Nodes, Links and Relations

A node is any entity that is displayed in a network . You can change their look and move them
around in the network editor.

A link is a line that allows you to connect two entities.

Relations allow you to name a links between two codes or between two quotations.

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NETWORKS 26

Network Manager
The Network Manager contains a list of all saved networks that you have crated. It can be used to
access a network, to delete existing networks, or to write and edit comments. See Network
Manager.

Network Editor
The network editor displays and offers all editing capability to construct and refine networks. In
addition, it allows the visual creation and traversal of hypertext structures.

Link Manager
The Link Managers provide an overview of all code-code links and of all hyperlinks you have
created. See Link Manager.

Relation Manager
The Relation Manager allows you to modify existing relations or to create new relations. See
Creating New Relations.

Find more information on the network function see Working with Networks.

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TOOLS FOR EXPLORING TEXT DATA 27

Tools for Exploring Text Data

ATLAS.ti offers a number of tools that you can use to explore your textual data:

• Word clouds and word lists for documents, quotations, and codes. See Creating Word
Clouds and Creating Word Lists.
• the Search & Code Tools. These tools offer a combination of text search and auto coding:
◦ Text search: search for a words, word fragments including synonyms. Logical
combinations using AND and OR operators are also possible. See Text Search.
◦ Expert search: the expert search allows for advances searches using regular
expressions (RegEx). With RegEx you can use pattern matching to search for particular
strings of characters rather than constructing multiple, literal search queries. See
Expert Search.
◦ Named Entity Recognition (NER): seeks to locate and classify named entities in text
into pre-defined categories such as persons, organizations, locations, or
miscellaneous. You can review all hits and code them with the suggested categories.
See Named Entity Recognition.
◦ Sentiment Analysis: is the interpretation and classification of positive, negative and
neutral statements within text data using text analysis techniques. Sentiment analysis
models detect polarity within a text (e.g. a positive or negative opinion),within the
whole document, paragraph, sentence, or clause. It has multiple applications. For
instance, it can be used for customer satisfaction analysis or for all forms of
evaluations, e.g. also student evaluation of courses. See Sentiment Analysis.

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ANALYSIS 28

Analysis
ATLAS.ti contains multiple powerful, dedicated analytical tool to help to make sense of your data.

Cross-Tabulation of Codes (Code Co-occurrence)

The Co-occurrence Explorer and Table show where you have applied codes in an overlapping
manner. Rather than determining the codes yourself, you can ask ATLAS.ti which codes overlap.
The output can be viewed in form of a tree view or a table. The table provides a frequency count of
the number of co-occurrences and a coefficient measuring the strength of the relation. Since a
coefficient is only appropriate for some type of data, its display can be activated or deactivated. It
is also possible to directly access the data of each co-occurrence. See Code Co-Occurrence
Tools.

Code-Document Table
The Code Document Table counts the frequency of codes across documents. Aggregated counts
based on code and document groups are also available. Optionally, the table cells can also contain
the word counts for the quotations per code across documents or document group. The table can
be exported to Excel. See Code Document Table.

Query Tool
For more complex search requests, the Query Tool is at your disposal. Here you can formulate
search requests that are based on combinations of codes using one or a combination of 14
different operators, Boolean, semantic and proximity operators. See The Query Tool.

Global Filters
Global filters are a powerful tool to analyze your data. Global filters have an effect on the entire
project, and you can compare and contrast your data in all kind of different ways. Effects and
connections that were hidden before can now be seen and patterns emerge. For more information,
see Applying Global Filter.

Smart Codes
A Smart Code is a stored query, thus provides an answer to a question (in the best case) and
typically consists of several combined codes. See Working With Smart Codes.

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ANALYSIS 29

Smart Groups
Smart groups are a combination of groups. For instance, if you want to compare answers of female
respondents from rural areas with female respondents from urban areas, you would create two
smart groups that you either use directly in a Code-Document Table, or as filter in a code query.
Smart code groups can be used if you frequently need a combination of certain codes. See
Working With Smart Codes.

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Team Tools
Often researchers work in teams to collect and analyse data. ATLAS.ti is uniquely suited for
collaborative work. A number of special tools and features support efficient work in a team. For
further information see the chapter on Team Work.

For collaborative real time coding, you may want to take a look at the ATLAS.ti Web version.
ATLAS.ti web projects can be imported to the desktop version to make use of the advanced
analysis tools, and the network function.

Project Merge
When you work in teams, you usually split the project into subprojects. In the desktop version you
need to work asynchronously. The project merge tool unites all subprojects again. For more
information see Merging Projects.

Clean up Redundant Codings

Redundant codings are overlapping or embedded quotations that are associated with the same
code. Such codings can result from normal coding but may occur unnoticed during a merge
procedure when working in teams. The Codings Analyzer finds all redundant codings and offers
appropriate procedures to correct it. See Finding Redundant Codings.

Coder Icons in the Margin Area

You can switch the view in the margin area to display an icon for each user instead of the code
icon. This way you can see while browsing through the data who applied which code.

Inter-Coder Agreement
ATLAS.ti allows for a qualitative and quantitative comparison of the codings of various coders. If
you are interested in calculating a coefficient, ATLAS.ti offers the following: percent agreement,
Holsti, and Krippendorff's family of alpha coefficients. See Inter-coder Agreement.

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TEAM TOOLS 31

User Administration
ATLAS.ti automatically creates a username for each user when logging in. Each entity that is
created is stamped with this username. This is a prerequisite for collaborative work, so you can see
and compare who did what. You can rename existing users, create new user accounts, delete users
and switch users. See User Accounts for more information.

Please note that synchronous team work is not supported in the desktop version. Each team
member works in his or her own project file, and these need to be merged from time to time.
Use ATLAS.ti Web if you want to work with your team at the same project at the same time.

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Export

Word / PDF
There are output options for each of the main entities in ATLAS.ti: Documents, quotations, codes,
and memos and within the various tools. All reports are user configurable, and you can decide
which type of content to include. See Creating Reports.

Excel Export
You find an Excel Export option in each Manager and quotation list. In addition, the results of the
Code Co-occurrence Table and the Code Document Table can be exported in Excel format. See
Creating Excel Reports.

Print Documents with Margin

You can print or export coded text documents in PDF format as you see them on the screen
including the paragraph numbering. See Print with Margin.

QDPX Exchange Format For Projects

The QDPX format is a QDA-XML standard for exchanging projects between different CAQDAS
packages. The project exchange format was launched March 18, 2019. You can see all participating
programs on the following website: http://www.qdasoftware.org. See QDPX Universal Data
Exchange.

SPSS / PSPP Export

You can export your coded data as SPSS syntax file. This file can also bes used the in free basic
PSPP version. When executed in SPSS or PSPP, your quotations become cases and your codes and
code groups variables. In addition, further identifying information in form of variables is provided
like the document name and number for each case, start and end position and creation date. These
variables allow you to aggregate your data in SPSS if needed. See SPSS Export.

If you need a less detailed output, see Code Document Table. The table provides an output that is
already aggregated by documents or document groups.

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Generic Statistic Export for R, SAS, STATA, etc.

You can export your coded data as Excel file for further analysis in any statistical package.
Quotations become cases and codes and code groups variables. In addition, further identifying
information in form of variables is provided like the document name and number for each case,
start and end position and creation date. See Generic Export For Further Statistical Analysis.

Image Files
• Networks can be saved in various graphic file formats (jpg, png, tiff, gif, bmp). See Exporting
Networks.
• Word clouds can be exported as jpg files. See Word Clouds and Word Clouds and Word Lists.
• The results of the Code Co-occurrence and the Code Document Table can be visualized in
form of Sankey Diagrams. See Visualization of the Code Co-occurrence Table and
Visualization of the Code Document Table.

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Main Steps in Working with ATLAS.ti

Data and Project Management

A first important but often neglected aspect of a project is data and project management. The first
step is data preparation. You find more information on supported file formats in the section
Supported File Formats.

Apart from analyzing your data, you also manage digital content, and it is important to know how
the software does it. For detailed information, see the section on Project Management.

If you work in a team, please read the following section: Team Work.

Two Principal Modes of Working

There are two principal modes of working with ATLAS.ti, the data level and the conceptual level.
The data level includes activities like segmentation of data files; coding text, image, audio, and
video passages; and writing comments and memos. The conceptual level focuses on querying data
and model-building activities such as linking codes in networks, in addition to writing some more
comments and memos.

The figure below illustrates the main steps, starting with the creation of a project, adding
documents, identifying interesting things in the data and coding them. Memos and comments can
be written at any stage of the process, whereas there is possibly a shift from writing comments to
more extensive memo writing during the latter stages of the analysis. Once your data is coded, it is
ready to be queried using the various analysis tools provided. The insights gained can then be
visualized using the ATLAS.ti network function.

Some steps need to be taken in sequence. For instance, logic dictates that you cannot query
anything or look for co-occurrences if your data has not yet been coded. But other than that there
are no strict rules.

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Data Level Work

Data-level activities include Exploring Data using word clouds and word lists, segmenting the data
that you have assigned to a project into quotations, adding comments to respective passages
note-making/annotating, linking data segments to each other called hyperlinking in ATLAS.ti, and
coding data segments and memos to facilitate their later retrieval. The act of comparing
noteworthy segments leads to a creative conceptualization phase that involves higher-level
interpretive work and theory-building.

ATLAS.ti assists you in all of these tasks and provides a comprehensive overview of your work as
well as rapid search, retrieval, and browsing functions.

Within ATLAS.ti, initial ideas often find expression through their assignment to a code or memo, to
which similar ideas or text selections also become assigned. ATLAS.ti provides the researcher with
a highly effective means for quickly retrieving all data selections and notes relevant to one idea.

Conceptual Level Work

Beyond coding and simple data retrieval, ATLAS.ti allows you to query your data in lots of different
ways, combining complex code queries with variables, exploring relationships between codes and
to visualize your findings using the network tool.

ATLAS.ti allows you to visually connect selected passages, memos, and codes into diagrams that
graphically outline complex relations. This feature virtually transforms your text-based work space
into a graphical playground where you can construct concepts and theories based on relationships
between codes, data segments, or memos.

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This process sometimes uncovers other relations in the data that were not obvious before and still
allows you the ability to instantly revert to your notes or primary data selection. - For more detail,
see Querying Data and Working With Networks.

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Welcome Screen
When you open ATLAS.ti, you see the Welcome Screen. It is divided into three parts:

Welcome Screen (left-hand side)

On the left-hand side, you find licence information, you can create a new project or import an
existing project, and you can access Options.

Welcome Screen (middle section)

In the middle section you can see and access all of your projects. If you have lots of projects, the
search field will help you to locate a project.

You can sort projects by name, created, last modified, and last used.

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Context menu for projects

If you have lots of projects, you can hide those that you do not need at the moment. You can
switch between showing all projects or only those that are currently not hidden. See the Show all
projects option.

Other options in the context menu are to open a project, to pin it to the
favorite list, to rename a project, or to delete a project. A pinned project is
listed in a separate section above the list with all other projects.
If you delete a project, it is deleted permanently. It cannot be recovered. If you
still want to have access to the project at a later time, make sure that you
export it first and store a project bundle file at a secure location.

Welcome Screen (right-hand side)

On the right-hand side of the Welcome Screen, you have access to useful information and
resources:

• News about current workshops, updates, newsletters, interesting articles, etc.

• Resources Quick Tour, User Manual and sample projects
• Video Tutorial: Learn ATLAS.ti quickly by watching our video tutorials that walk you through
the entire process from project creation to analysis and reporting step by step.

If you rather use this space to view the list of your projects, you can click on the button with the
right-arrow.

If you want to see the screen with the news and resources again, click on the button with the left-
arrow.

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Creating a New Project

Video Tutorial: Creating a project and adding data. If you just started ATLAS.ti,

In the opening window on the left-hand side of the screen click on the button:
Create New Project.

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Enter a name for the project, optionally a comment, and click on Create.

If a project is already open,

click on File > New to open the backdrop. From there select Create New
Project. Enter a name for the project, optionally a comment, and click on
Create.

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Importing an Existing Project

The following project types can be imported:

Version File Type

Version 22 Project Bundle
ATLAS.ti Web Project Bundle
Version 9 Project Bundle
Version 8 Project bundle
Version 7 Transfer bundle or copy bundle
Version 6 and older Copy bundle

Project Exchange format | QDPX

Exported projects from the Ipad or Android apps can also be imported. ATLAS.ti Cloud
projects can currently not be imported into the desktop version.

How to Import Projects

If you just started ATLAS.ti,

Select the Import Project option on the right-hand side of the opening screen.

If ATLAS.ti is already open,

Select File > New and from there the Import Project option.

Options

• You have the option to rename the project before importing. This is useful for team project
work and if you do not want to overwrite an existing version.

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• If the project that you are importing already exists in your library, you have the choice to
either overwrite the existing project with the version you are importing, or whether you want
to rename the project that you are importing.

If the project contains Linked Media Files

If the project contains linked media files, and the files have not been included in the bundle, you
can relink them. This requires that you have a copy of the file on your computer, or a file that is
accessible on an external drive or server.

In the example shown below, the source for document 23 is a video that is available in the library.
The source for document 26 is a linked video and needs to be relinked in order for it to be
displayed in ATLAS.ti:

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You can also decide not to relink the files at this stage and proceed with importing the files. The
linked multimedia documents are still listed under Documents, but you cannot load them. They will
appear gray in the Document Manager.

If you double-click on a multimedia file that is not available, ATLAS.ti gives you the option to repair
the link. This means, you point ATLAS.ti to the folder where the multimedia file is stored, so that it
can be relinked to your project.

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The ATLAS.ti Interface

When you open a project, you see the ribbon on top, the project navigator on the left-hand side
and the ATLAS.ti logo in the middle of the working area.

At the top of the screen, you see the title bar where the name of the current project is displayed. It
also includes the Save, Undo and Redo functions on the left-hand side.

You are probably familiar with ribbons from other contemporary Windows software that you use. A
ribbon is a graphical control element in the form of a set of toolbars placed on several tabs. They
are grouped by functionality rather than object types. Ribbons, in comparison, use tabs to expose
different sets of controls, eliminating the need for numerous parallel toolbars. This highly improves
the workflow and makes it easier for users to see which functions are available for a given context.

The ATLAS.ti Ribbon

The six core tabs in ATLAS.ti are:

• Home
• Search & Code
• Analyze

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• Import & Export

• Tools
• Help

Depending on the function you are using, additional contextual tabs will appear. These will be
highlighted by a colored box at the top of the ribbon.

The Home ribbon is the starting point for most projects. You can start here to add documents to a
project, create new codes, memos and networks. You can open various navigators to be displayed
in the navigation area on the left-hand side of the screen and access all entity managers.

The Search & Code tab allows searching through text data by different criteria:

• You can enter search expressions including synonyms

• You can let ATLAS.ti identify entities for you
• You can search for positive, negative, or neutral sentiments.
• You can let ATLAS.ti identify concepts for you.

You can explore data through word cloud and word lists, applying stop and go lists, or reducing
finds to 'parts of speech'.

The Analyze tab offers a number of advanced functions to analyze your data after coding. See
Querying Data.

The Import & Export ribbon offers a number of import option for specific data types:

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• Twitter data. See Working with Twitter Data.

• Data from Evernote. See Support File Types.
• Literature stored in reference managers like EndNotes, Mendeley, etc. ATLAS.ti supports
EndNote XML and BibTex. See Working with Reference Manager Data.
• Survey data from Excel. See Working with Survey Data.
• Social Network Comments

Further you can import and export code books and document list with their groups. See Importing
and Exporting Code Lists and Importing and Exporting Document Groups.

If you are interested in a mixed-method approach, you can generate a SPSS syntax file for further
quantitative analysis of your qualitative coding, or export a generic version in form of an Excel file
for import in R, SAS or STATA. See Data Export for Further Statistical Analysis.

The Tools ribbon holds tools for user management (see User Management) and for cleaning up
your project by finding and removing redundant codings. See Finding Redundant Codings.

Via the Help ribbon you can access our support resources including Live Chat.

File Menu / Backstage

Under File you find all options that concern your project, like creating a new project, open existing
projects, saving and deleting projects, creating a snapshot (=copy) of your project, exporting and
merging projects. See Project Management.

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Software Navigation
In the following it is explained how to work with the various entities and features in the main work
space. If you want to click along, you may want to open the Children & Happiness sample project.

After you downloaded the project bundle file, import it. See Importing An Existing Project .

When you open a project, the Project Navigator opens automatically on the left-hand side. From
the main branches you can access documents, codes, memos, networks and all groups. If you are
looking for something in particular, you can enter a search term into the search field. If you open
the branches of the various entities, they will only show you items that contain the search term.

To open a branch, click on the triangle in front of each entity.

When double-clicking a main branch, the respective manager of the selected

entity type is opened. See Entity Managers.

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• Under the main Documents branch, you see all documents. Below each document, you can
access all quotations of a document.

• Under the main Codes branch, you see the folders, categories, subcodes and independent
codes. For further information see: Basic concepts

• Under the main Memos branch, you see the list of all memos. On the next level, you see all
linked entities, which for memos can be other memos, quotations and codes.

• Under the main Networks branch, you see the list of all networks. On the next level, you see
all entities that are contained in the network.

• Under the Groups branches, you see the list of all groups and below each group, the list of all
members of the selected group.

If an entity has a comment, this is indicated by a yellow dot attached to the entity icon.

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Browsers
In addition to the Project Navigator that contains all project items, you can open browsers that only
contain one entity type. Browsers are available for documents, quotations, memos and networks.

To open one of the browsers, click on the drop-down arrow of the Navigator
button. As the documents and codes browsers are frequently needed, you can
also launch them directly from the navigator group.

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The
single entity browsers open in tabs next to the Project Navigator. Each browser also has a search
field on top. This facilitates working with long lists.

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Context Menus
Each item in the navigation panel has a context menu, which means a context-sensitive menu
opens when you right-click. Depending on the entity that you click, each context-menu will be
slightly different.

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Working with Docked and Floated Windows

When you first open a manager or other windows, they will be opened in floating mode. All
windows can however also be docked. Depending on what you are currently doing, you may prefer
a window to be docked or floated. Once you have docked a window, ATLAS.ti will remember this as
your preferred setting for the current session. This is how you do it:

Open the Code Manager by clicking the Codes button in the Home Tab.

To dock this window, click on the fourth icon from the right (left of the minimize
button).

To float a window , click on the dropdown arrow next to the manager name and
select Float.

Always On Top

A floating window disappears in the background if you click outside the window. If you prefer the
window to stay on top of other windows, right-click on the button at the top left of the window and
select the option Always On Top.

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Working With Tabs and Tab Groups

When you load documents or open managers, networks and memos, they are displayed in tabs
next to each other. Depending on what you do, it is more convenient to see certain items side-by-
side in different tab groups. This is how you do it.

Load for instance two documents. You do this by opening the document tree in
the navigation area on the left-hand side and double-click a document.

When double-clicking on two or more documents, they are loaded into different tabs in the main
work space. The tab of the currently loaded document is colored in white.

To move one of the documents into a new tab group, click on the down arrow
next to the document name in the header and select New Tab Group > Right.

You have the option to move it into a tab group to the right, left, down or up.

This can also be done with any other items you open, be it a list of codes, a memo, or a network.
You can individualize your work space as it suits your needs. An example is shown below.

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The Six Main Entity Types

The six main entity types in ATLAS.ti are:

• Documents
• Quotations
• Codes
• Memos
• Networks
• Links

All entity types have their own manager. See Entity Managers. The Entity Managers allow access to
the entities and provide several options and functions.

To open a manager, double-click on the button in the ribbon.

Entity Managers are child or dependent window of the main editor. Child windows have some
common properties:

• They are closely related to the parent window 'knows' about changes in the child window,
like the selection of an item, and vice vera.

• They can be resized and positioned independently of their parent window.

• They are minimized when the parent window is minimized, and they are restored with their
parent window.

• They are closed when the parent window is closed.

• However, child windows do NOT move with the parent window.

Miscellaneous Goodies

You can copy the content of every entity, be it a document name, a group name, a code, memo or
quotation name, or a node in a network and paste it into an editor or a network.

If you copy an entity name from a list into an editor, the name is pasted.

If you copy a node and paste it into an editor, the name of the node is pasted.

If you copy the name of an entity and paste it into a network, it is pasted as node. If links already
exist, they will be shown immediately.

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Entity Managers
There is a separate manager for each of the six entity types: Documents, Quotations, Codes,
Memos, Networks, and Links. The Entity Managers allow access to the entities and provide several
options and functions. As there are differences among the various entity types, you find a section
on each of the managers.

Launching an Entity Manager

To open for instance the Document Manager, click on the Documents button in the Home tab. To
open the Quotation Manager, click on the Quotations button; to open the Code Manager click on
the Codes button, and so on.

An alternative way is to double-click on Documents, Codes, Memos, etc. in the Project Explorer in
the navigation panel on the left.

The managers open as floating windows, but all windows can be docked as well. See Software
Navigation.

Each manager contains a list of the entities it manages, and some detailed information about them.
At the bottom of the list, you find a comment field in each manager and in some managers, also a
preview field.

In the Document and Quotation Manager you can preview the content of either the selected
document, or the selected quotation. In the Memo Manager, the memo content is shown next to
the comment field.

Another common element is the filter area on the left-hand side, which can be used to quickly
access and filter the elements listed in the managers via groups or codes. They allow immediate
access to fundamental activities like selecting codes, groups, creating groups and smart groups,
and setting local and global filters. This allows a much more effective integration into the work flow
and saves a lot of mouse movements and clicks. It is also possible to run simple Boolean queries in
entity managers.

You can activate or deactivate the filter area by selecting the first option in the View tab, which is
to show or hide entity groups. See View Options below.

The Split Bar

The relative size of the side panel, list, preview and comment pane can be modified by dragging
the split bar between the panes. The cursor changes when the mouse moves over the split bar. You
can re-size the adjacent panes by dragging the split bar to the desired position.

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The Status Bar

You find a status bar at the bottom of the window when the Manager opens in floating mode, or at
the bottom of your screen when the manager is in docked mode. It shows the number of items
listed in the manager.

Selecting Items in an Entity Manager

A single click with the left mouse button selects and highlights an item in each of the Entity
Managers.

Double-clicking an item selects the entity and invokes a procedure depending on the type and
state of the entity.

For multiple selections, you can use the standard Windows selection techniques using the Ctrl or
Shift key.

To jump to a specific entry in the list, first select an item and then click the first, second and
subsequent letters of a word to jump to the entry in the list. For example, suppose a number of
codes begin with the two letters 'em' as in emotions typing 'em' will jump to the first of the EMotion
... codes. Every other character typed advances the focus to the next list entry unless a matching
name cannot be found.

Avoid long delays between entering characters. After a certain system-defined timeout, the
next character starts a new forward search.

Searching
In the filter area and all entity lists, you find a search field.

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Use the search field to search for either documents, quotations, codes or memos in the respective
managers.

If you enter a search term, all objects that include the term somewhere will be shown in the list. For
example, if you enter the term children in the code manager, all codes that include the word
children somewhere in the code name will be shown.

Remember to delete the search term if you want to see all items again.

Incremental Search: This feature is available in the list pane of all Entity Managers. Select any
number of items in the list and type in an arbitrary sequence of characters into the search field to
jump to a subsequent list entry matching this sequence.

Context Menus
The list and text panes offer context-sensitive popup menus. The context menus contains a portion
of the commands that you also find in the ribbon.

Sorting and Filtering

The Entity Managers permit comfortable sorting and filtering. With a click on a column header all
items are sorted in ascending or descending order based on the entries in the selected column.

When creating entity groups, you can also use them to filter the list of items in a manager. When
selecting a group, only the members of the selected group are shown in the list. When selecting
multiple entities, you can combine them with the operators 'AND' or 'OR'. See Simple Boolean
Queries in the Quotation Manager .

In all managers but the Links Manager you find both a View, and a Search & Filter tab. In the
Document and Code Manager, there is an additional Tools tab.

View Options

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In the View tab, you can activate or deactivate the filter area, the preview field (if available) or the
comments. In addition, you can switch between Detail and Single Column view.

The Code Manager offers two additional view options, a cloud and bar chart view of the codes.
See Code Manager for more detail.

Search & Filter Options

The search allows you to search through the entire content of documents, quotations or memos,
through entity names and comments, or entities created or written by a selected author. The
search term can contain regular expression. See Regular Expressions (GREP).

The search option in managers is restricted to the respective entity type.

Further options are to set or remove global filters, and to filter by selected criteria:

• today
• this week
• only mine
• commented

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The Document Manager

The Document Manager helps you to organize your data, to group documents or to filter them.

Further you can access:

• the Search & Code tools if you want to code your data automatically

• the focus group coding tool to auto code speaker units or other structural information on
your data.

• the word clouds or word lists for exploring your documents.

• you can search for concepts.

• You can create reports or view geo locations in Google Maps.

Status Bar: The status bar at the bottom of the screen shows how many documents there are in
the project. ID: The first column shows the blue document icon, and the document number. The
document number is a consecutive number given to the document by ATLAS.ti when it is added to
a project.

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Name: The default name is the file name of the original source file that you added to the ATLAS.ti
project. You can rename each document if you prefer a different name.

Location: Here you see whether a document is stored in the ATLAS.ti library or whether ATLAS.ti
opens it from a linked location. For further information see Adding Documents.

Below the document list you see a Code Distribution across Documents. You can switch between
seeing a document preview or the bar charts.

Filter
Click on one or more document groups in the filter area on the left to set a local filter. This means
only the items in the manager are filtered.

If you want to filter the entire project, right-click on a document group to set a global filter. See
Applying Global Filters For Data Analysis.

The Document Manager Ribbon

From left to right:

Add Document(s): Add a new document to your project. See Adding Documents.

New Group: Create a new document group.See Working With Groups.

New Smart Group: Smart Groups are a combination of existing document groups using Boolean
operators. See Working With Smart Groups for further detail.

Search & Code: Here you can directly access the various search and code functions offered by
ATLAS.ti to automatically code your data. See Search & Code for further information.

Focus Group Coding: You can automatically code all speaker units in a focus group. See Focus
Group Coding for further information. This option can also be used to code data units in other type
of structural data.

Rename: When adding a document to an ATLAS.ti project, the default name is the file name. You
can change this name internally in ATLAS.ti. It does not change the name of data file.

Delete: Remove selected document(s) from a project. This is a permanent deletion. It also means
that all coding done on the document(s) is deleted. You can revert the action using UnDo, but only
within the currently active session.

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Edit Comment: Open a text editor for writing or editing a comment for a selected document. See
Working With Comments And Memos.

Open Group Manager: See Working With Groups.

Open Network: Open a network on the selected document(s). The network only contains the
document and does not display links yet. This option is for instance useful if you want to compare
cases. See Analytic Functions in Networks.

Word Cloud: Word Clouds visualize the frequency of words. The more frequent a word occurs, the
larger the word is displayed in the image. Word Clouds are an exploratory tool that allow you to gain
quick inside into your data. It can be the basis for auto coding and further analysis. See Creating
Word Clouds.

Word List: This function allows you to generate a list of all words that occur in selected documents.
The list can be sorted in alphabetic order or by frequency. You can export it to Excel for further
data crunching. See Word Lists.

Concepts: Let ATLAS.ti find concepts in your data that you then can review and autocode. See
Find Concepts.

Report / Excel Export: Reports can be created as text file (Word, PDF), or in Excel format. All
reports are customizable. See Creating Reports.

Many of the options available in the ribbon are also available from the context menu of a
document.

Tools Tab

Renumber Documents: When adding documents to a project, they are numbered by ATLAS.ti in
consecutive order. If you remove one or more documents, this may result in gaps. Use this option to
close these gaps.

You can also use this option to re-order documents the way you want them to be ordered. To
achieve this, rename the document in a way so that sorting them by name results in the order you
want them to be in. Next click on the 'name' column to sort the documents by name and then
select the 'renumber' option. The document numbers will then follow the alphabetical order. See
also Managing Documents.

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Renumber Quotations: Selecting this option will close any gap in the numbering of quotations.

Each quotation that you create has an ID. The ID consists of the document number, and a number
indicating the chronological order when the quotation was created. For example, the ID 3:12 means
that this quotation is in document 3 and that it was the twelfth quotation that was created in this
document.

If you delete quotations or modify them, the ID does not change. If you delete a quotation with the
ID 3:11, this does not mean that quotation 3:12 automatically becomes quotation 3:11. Such an
automatism is not always desired. If you for instance have already started the writing process and
made reference to some quotations using their ID, you would not want ATLAS.ti to change the IDs
automatically.

If you do want all quotations to be numbered in sequential order, you need to evoke it manually by
selecting the Renumber Quotations option.

Import Transcript: This option is available after you have added a multimedia document (audio or
video). If you have a transcript with timestamps for this document, you can add it as transcript. The
transcript and multimedia document are synchronized via the time marks. See Importing
Multimedia Transcripts.

Document Export: This option allows you to export your documents as external data files. Text files
are exported as Word docx files, all PDF. image and multimedia files in their original format.

Repair Link: If you have linked an audio or video file to a project, and the link is no longer valid, you
can repair the link using this option.

Remove Codings: You can use this option if you want to unlink all codes from all quotations. This
means all quotations and all codes remain in the document, but none of the quotation is coded.
This is useful at times for team projects and inter-coder agreement analysis.

Browse Geo Location; All geo documents are based on Open Street Map or Bing. If you want to see
a geo-location in Google Maps, you can use this option. See Working With Geo Docs.

Duplicate document(s): This allows you to create an exact copy of one or more documents with all
quotations, codes, links, ect. This can be useful if for instance you want to code a document based
on different aspects. This option will allow you to split a document, also when it is already coded.
You duplicate it first, then (entering edit mode) you delete the second part of one document, and
the first part in the other.

Search & Filter / View Tab

As these tabs are the same in all manager, they are discussed here Entity Manager.

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Quotation Manager

The Quotation Manager can be used for retrieving and reviewing data by codes, creating smart
codes, writing comments, creating reports, or opening networks. When working with multimedia
and geo data, it is useful to rename quotation names as titles for audio- or video segments or for
location names for geo data. See Working with Quotations.

Quotation Reference
ID: The ID consist of two numbers best explained by an example: An ID 3:10 means that the
quotation comes from document 3, and it is the 10th quotation that was created in this document.
Quotations are numbered in chronological and not in sequential order.

Reference: The reference indicates the location of the quotation in the document, e.g., paragraph
12 - 13. For audio and video documents, the reference gives the start position in h:m:s. For geo
quotations, the geo-location is provided.

Indicator of Hyperlinks: Brackets (< or >): indicate that the quotation is a start anchor or target for
a hyperlink. For further information see Working with Hyperlinks.

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Position in the Document: Start / End / Extent

If you scroll a bit to the right, you find information about start and end position of a quotation in the
document, and the total length of a quotation. The measure that is used is dependent on the media
type:

Start / End

• Text quotation: number of paragraphs

• Text PDF: page number in ATLAS.ti plus number of characters on the page
• Graphic quotation: upper left coordinates / lower right coordinates
• Audio quotation: hours:minutes:seconds: milliseconds
• Video quotation: hours:minutes:seconds: milliseconds
• Geo quotation: n/a

Extent

• Text quotation: total number of paragraphs

• Text PDF: total number of pages covered
• Graphic quotation: height in pixel of the quotation's rectangle.
• Audio quotation: hour:minutes:seconds:milliseconds
• Video quotation: hour:minutes:seconds:milliseconds
• Geo quotation: n/a

Adding Quotation Names

Name: The name field initially is empty. You can enter a name for each quotation, e.g., to enter a
title, a description for an image quotation, or a geo-location. See also Working with Quotations.

Selection Behaviour
A single-click selects a quotation. If you have written a comment for the selected quotation, it is
displayed in the at the bottom of the window.

A double-click on a quotation loads its document (unless already loaded) and displays its content
in context.

Multiple Selection: You can select more than one quotation at a time, either to delete them, to
attach codes, to open a network on them, or to create output.

Drag & Drop

By dragging one or more quotations onto other quotations, you create hyperlinks. See Working with
Hyperlinks for further information.

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Filter
Click on one or more codes in the filter area on the left to view only quotations linked to the
selected code(s).

By default the quotation preview is shown in the bottom pane of the window. You can switch to the
comment pane, by clicking on the burger menu at the top right-hand side of the pane.

Status Bar: The status bar at the bottom shows how many quotations there are in the project.

Quotation Manager Ribbon

From left to right:

Smart code: After selecting codes in the side panel of the Quotation Manager you can create smart
codes. See Working with Smart Codes.

Code in Vivo: In-vivo coding creates a quotation from the selected text AND uses the selected text
as the code name.

Apply Coding: Coding a selected data segment with a new or existing code. See Coding Data.

Quick Coding: Coding with the last used code.

Rename Quotation: You have the option to enter a name for each quotation. This is useful for
interpretive analysis approaches, e.g., to summarize the quotation content or to use it as 'initial
code' when using Charmaz's constructive grounded theory approach. It is also useful when working
with multimedia data to describe the multimedia content in words.

Delete: Removes the quotation and all codings and other links from the project.

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Edit Comment: Open a text editor for writing or editing a comment for a selected quotation. See
Working With Comments and Memos.

Merge Quotations: You can merge two or more quotations. The new quotation boundary can either
be the boundary of a selected target quotation, or it can be expanded to include all selected
quotations.

Renumber Quotations: This eliminates all gaps in quotation numbering due to deletion and
renumbers all quotations in sequential order as they occur in the document.

Link Source: Uses the selected quotation as source in the process of creating a hyperlink. See
Creating Hyperlinks.

Link Target: Click to select the selected quotation as target in the process of creating a hyperlink.
See Creating Hyperlinks.

Open Network: Open a network on one or more selected quotations. See Opening an ad-hoc
Network.

Word Cloud: Word Clouds visualize the frequency of words. The more frequent a word occurs, the
larger the word is displayed in the image. In the Quotation Manager you can create word clouds for
selected quotations. See Creating Word Clouds.

Word List: This function allows you to generate a list of all words that occur in selected quotations.
The list can be sorted in alphabetic order or by frequency. You can export it to Excel for further
data crunching. See Word Lists.

Report / Excel Export: Reports can be created as text file (Word, PDF), or in Excel format. All
reports are customizable. See Creating Reports.

Search & Filter / View Tab

As these tabs are the same in all manager, they are discussed here Entity Manager.

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Code Manager
The Code Manager is frequently used to:

• create and modify codes

• to code data segments via drag & drop
• to set code colors
• to retrieve coded data segments
• to organize them in code groups
• to merge and to split codes
• to filter them
• to review them in networks
• to review its content using word clouds and word lists
• to create reports.

In the bottom pane below the code list, you can either view the code comments or a diagram. For
more information about the diagram, see Code Distribution Over Documents.

To change between comment and diagram view, click on the burger menu on
the top right-hand side of the diagram.

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Good to know
Groundedness: Code frequency or groundedness. It shows how many quotations are linked to a
code.

Density: Number of linkages to other codes. See Linking Nodes.

Colors: If you add code colors, a colored circle is displayed in front of the code icon and name.
Code colors also have an effect on the display of code nodes in networks. See Working with
Networks.

If you do not want to see all columns, right-click on a column header and deselect, what you
do not want to see.

Selection behaviour

A double click on a code opens the list of linked quotations in the Quotation Reader You can
browse through the list of quotations and view them highlighted in the context of its document. If
there is only one quotation linked to a code, it will immediately be highlighted in the context of its
document.

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Single-click: Selects a code. If you have written a definition for the selected code, it is displayed in
the comment pane below the list. Once selected, the code can be used for drag & drop coding, or
you can add it to a code group via drag & drop. Multiple Selection: You can select more than one
code at a time by holding down the Ctrl or Shift key. This is useful to:

• delete multiple codes

• to code a data segment with multiple codes
• to open a network that includes all selected codes
• to create reports based on the selected codes
• to assign multiple codes to a code group or to remove them from a group
• to create a new code group based on the selected codes

Drag & Drop

You can use the Code Manager as a convenient tool for coding by dragging codes onto a
highlighted piece of data. If you drag codes onto another code within the same list pane, code-
links will be created. If you drag a code on top of another code in the margin area, it will be
replaced.

Filter

Click on one or more code groups in the filter area on the left to set a local filter. This means only
the items in the manager are filtered. If you want to filter your entire project, then you need to set a
global filter. See Applying Global Filters for Data Analysis.

Status Bar: The status bar at the bottom shows how many codes there are in the project.

Code Manager Ribbon

From left to right:

New Codes: Create one or more new codes.

New Folder:

New Smart Code: If you select two or more codes in the Code Manager, you can create ORed
smart codes i.e., a smart code that combines all selected codes with the OR operator. For further
information see Working with Smart Codes .

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Create Snapshot: You can create a 'snapshot' of a smart code to turn it into a regular code again
with real links to quotations. The word snapshot indicates that it conserves the state of the smart
code. See Creating Snapshot Codes.

New Group: Create a new code group based on a selection you have made.

New Smart Group: Smart Groups are a combination of existing groups using Boolean operators. For
further information see Working with Smart Groups.

Duplicate Code(s): This option duplicates an existing code with all it links. It is a 1:1 clone of the
original. Before the code splitting function became available it was a helpful first step for splitting.
Now this is no longer necessary. However, you might find some other usages for it. See Working
with Codes.

Rename Code: When building a code system it is often necessary to rename a code.

Delete: Delete selected code(s).

Edit Comment: Open a text editor for writing or editing a comment for a selected code. See
Working with Comments and Memos.

Edit Smart Code: A smart code is a saved query. If you want to see the query that the smart code
is based upon or edit it, use this option. For further information see Working with Smart Codes .

Open Group Manager: Open the Group Manager for Codes. See Working with Groups for more
detail.

Change Color: Select a color for one or more selected codes.

Merge Codes: This option allows you to merge two or more codes into one code. If the codes have
a comment, it will be added to the merged code. In addition, information about which codes were
merged will be added to the comment of the merged code as an audit trail. Also see Merging
Codes.

You need to select multiple codes (i.e., all codes that you want to merge) in order for the
Merge option to become selectable.

Split:

Split Code: The split code function supports you in developing sub codes for a category. See
Splitting a Code.

Split into Subcodes:

Show in Network: Opens an ad-hoc network on the selected code that shows all existing links. See
Opening ad-hoh Networks.

Word Cloud: Word Clouds visualize the frequency of words. The more frequent a word occurs, the
larger the word is displayed in the image. Word Clouds are an exploratory tool that allow you to gain
quick inside into your data. If you create a word cloud for selected codes, it shows you the
frequencies of the words that are coded with the code(s). See Creating Word Clouds.

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Word List: This function allows you to generate a list of all words that occur in the quotation sof the
selected code(s). The list can be sorted in alphabetic order or by frequency. You can export it to
Excel for further data crunching. See Word Lists.

Concepts: Let ATLAS.ti find concepts in your data that you then can review and autocode. See
Find Concepts.

Report / Excel Export: Reports can be created as text file (Word, PDF), or in Excel format. All
reports are customizable. See Creating Reports.

Tools Tab
Import / Export Codebook: A codebook including codes and code colors, code definitions and
code groups can be imported or exported in two formats: Excel and the QDPX exchange format.
See Importing & Exporting Code Lists and QDPX Universal Data Exchange.

Find Redundant Codings: It can happen that you code a longer segment and then within this
segment you code a segment using the same code again. This is redundant.

ATLAS.ti can find all those instances for you to help you clean up your coding. It is a helpful option
when working in teams where redundant codings may occur after merging. See Finding Redundant
Codings .

Search & Filter

The options under the Search tabs are the same as in all other managers, and are discussed here:
Entity Manager.

View Tab

The above image shows the default options: You see the code groups on the left-hand side, the
comment field below the code list, and the code list in 'Details' view.

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Code Cloud

Click on the button Cloud to visualize your code list in form of a word cloud:

If you right-click on a code, the same context menu opens as in 'Details' view. Thus, in the cloud
view you can start the same actions as in the regular view. You can for instance rename codes, split
or merge codes, or open a network on one or multiple codes.

Code List as Bar Chart

Select Bar Chart to visualize your code list in form of a bar chart:

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The codes in the bar chart view also have a context menu. Thus, also from here, you can start the
same actions as in standard view. Select multiple codes if you want to merge codes.

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Relation Manager
The Relation Manager is used to review the properties of existing relations, to edit existing
relations, or to create new relations. You can switch between relations for code-code links and
relations for hyperlinks. As the column information and the ribbon options are the same for both,
below you find only one description. For further information see Working With Networks.

You can access the Relation Manager from within networks or via the drop-
down option of the Links button in the Home ribbon.

Usage: Number of times it is used in the project.

Style: Preview of line: direction, color, width and property (directed, non-directed)

Layout: Automatic layout direction if you open a network on an entity.

Short: Short name as an alternative to the full name. You can either display full names, short names
or the symbolic name for all relations in a network.

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Symbol: Symbolic name as an alternative to the full name. You can either display full names, short
names or the symbolic name for all relations in a network.

Formal Property: The formal property of a relation: symmetric or asymmetric. See About Relations.

Relation Manager Ribbon

From left to right:

New Relation: Select to create a new relation.

Duplicate Relation(s): Duplicate a relation, e.g., if you want to create a new relation based on an
already existing relation with a few modifications.

Rename Relation: Select a relation and rename it.

Delete Relation(s): Select on or more relations that you want to delete.

Line Color: Select the line color.

Line Width: Select the line width.

Line Style: Select the line style(solid or dashed).

Layout Direction: Select the layout direction. If you open an ad-hoc network, the layout directions
are used to position the nodes in the network.

Formal Property: Select the property for the relation. Options are: symmetric (non-directed) and
asymmetric (directed). This is further explained in the section About Relation

Filter: You can filter relations based on the following options: created today, created this week,
created by yourself, or all relations that have a comment. An additional option is to invert the filter.

Excel Export: You can export the information you see in the manager as Excel table.

View Tab
As the View tab is the same in all manager, it has been described here Entity Manager.

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Link Manager
The Links Manager lists all existing code-code links and all existing hyperlinks (links between two
quotations). It is frequently used to review, modify or comment these links. You can switch to view
the list of Code-Code Links and the list of Hyperlinks.

Link Manager Columns for Code-Code Links

The information provided for each code-code link consists of:

Source: The start position of a link. This is relevant for directed (asymmetric and transitive) links.

Relation: Relations can be used to name a link. This is possible for code-code links and for links
between quotations (hyperlinks). See the section on Working with Networks for more detail.

Target: The end position of a link.

Created by: The name of the user who created the link.

Modified by: The name of the user modifying the link.

Created / Modified: Date and time when a link was created and modified.

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In the side panel on the left-hand side you see the list of all available relations and how often they
have been used (number in parentheses). Click on one or more relations in the side panel filter the
list of links.

Link Manager Columns for Hyperlinks

The information provided for each hyperlink consists of:

Source: The start position of a hyperlink. This is relevant for directed (asymmetric and transitive)
links.

Relation: Relations can be used to name a hyperlink. See the section on Working with Hyperlinks
for more detail.

Target: The end position of a hyperlink.

Created By: The name of the user who created the hyperlink.

Modified By: The name of the user modifying the hyperlink.

Created / Modified: Date and time when a hyperlink was created and modified.

In the side panel on the left-hand side you see the list of all available relations for hyperlinks and
how often they have been used (i.e., number in parentheses). If you click on one or more relations,
all hyperlinks will be filtered by the selected relations.

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Link Manager Ribbon

The ribbon is the same for Code-Code and hyperlinks.

From left to right:

Cut Link(s): Cutting the link between selected codes or quotations.

Flip Link(s): Change source and target of selected link.

Change Relation: Change the relation of a selected link.

Edit Comment: Open a text editor for writing or editing a comment for a selected link.

Open Relation Manager; You can access the Relation Manager from here, if you want to create or
modify a relation. See Creating New Relations.

Filter: You can filter links by selecting a relation in the filter area on the left. The Filter button in the
ribbon offers some additional options: you can invert the filter, or filter by links created today,
created this week, created by yourself, or by all links that have a comment.

Open Network: Open a network on the selected link(s). See Open ad-hoc Network.

Excel Export: You can export the information you see in the manager as Excel table.

View Tab
As the view tab is the same in all manager, it is discussed here: Entity Manager.

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Memo Manager
The Memo Manager is used to keep track of your writing. You can create, read and review,
comment, sort and organize, and group your memos. Further options are to view a memo and its
connection in a network, or to turn a memo into a document for further analysis.

Groundedness: Number of quotations to which a memo is connected.

Density: Number of codes and other memos to which the memo is connected.

Double-click opens the memo editor as floating window. This window can be docked into the
currently active region.

Ctr + Double-click opens the list of quotations that are linked to a memo.

Drag & Drop

You can attach a memo to a quotation by dragging it onto the quotation in the document or the
margin area.

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A memo can also be dragged to a quotation, code or memo in the Project Explorer or any other list.
Vice versa, you can also drag quotations, codes or memos from any list or from the margin area to
a memo to link it.

Filter
Click on one or more memo groups in the filter area on the left to set a local filter. This means only
the items in the manager are filtered.

Status Bar: The blue status bar at the bottom shows how many memos there are in the project.

Memo Manager Ribbon

From left to right:

Create Free Memo: Create a new memo.

New Group: Create a new memo group based on the selection you have made.

Create Smart Group: Smart Groups are a combination of existing groups using Boolean operators.
For further information see Working with Smart Groups

Duplicate Memo(s): Duplicate an existing memo. Maybe it became to long, and you want to split it
into two memos.

Convert to Document: If you want to code a memo, or create quotations to hyperlink selected
passages from a memo to other data segments, you can convert a memo into a project document.

Edit Memo: Open text pane for writing the contents of a memo in a full-fledged text editor.

Rename Memo: Change the name of a selected memo.

Delete Memo(s): Delete selected memo(s).

Edit Comment: Open a text editor for writing or editing a comment for a selected memo. See
Working With Comments And Memos.

Set Type: The default memo type is "memo". This can be changed to a user defined type. Memos-
types can be used to sort and organize memos.

Open Group Manager: Open the Memo Group Manager. See Working With Groups for more detail.

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Open Network: Open a network on the selected memo(s) that show all other entities the memo is
linked to. See Opening an ad hoc Network.

Report / Excel Export: Reports can be created as text file (Word, PDF), or in Excel format. All
reports are customizable. See Creating Reports.

Search & Filter / View Tab

As these tabs are the same in all manager, they are discussed here: Entity Manager.

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Network Manager
The Network Manager is frequently used to create and open networks, to rename, comment and
group them.

Degree: Number of nodes in a network.

Double-click opens the network editor as floating window. This window can be docked into the
currently active region.

Drag & Drop: You can add a network as node to a network editor, or assign selected networks to a
group via drag & drop.

Filter: Click on one or more network groups in the filter area on the left to set a local filter. This
means only the items in the manager are filtered.

Status Bar: The Status Bar shows how many networks there are in the project.

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Network Manager Ribbon

From right to left:

Create Network: Create a new network.

New Group: Create a new network group based on the selection you have made.

New Smart Group: Smart Groups are a combination of existing network groups using Boolean
operators. This option is only available to offer consistent choices in all managers. You may not
even feel the need to create network groups, let alone combining them using smart groups :-).

Duplicate: Duplicates the selected network. This option is useful it you want to create a spin-off of
an already existing network where parts of the existing network is still relevant, and you want to
build on it further.

Rename Network: Change the name of an existing network.

Delete: Delete selected network(s).

Edit Comment: Open a text pane for writing or editing a comment for a network in a full-fledged
text editor.

Open Group Manager: Open the group manager for networks.

Show in Network: Opens the network

Excel Export: Exports the information displayed in the Network Manager.

Search & Filter / View Tab

As these tabs are the same in all manager, they are discussed here: Entity Manager.

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Supported File Formats

In principle, most textual, graphical, and multimedia formats are supported by ATLAS.ti. For some
formats, their suitability depends on the state of your Windows system. Before deciding to use an
exotic data format, you should check if this format is available and if it is sufficiently supported by
your Windows system.

Textual Documents
The following file formats are supported:

Format File Type

MS Word .doc; .docx; .rtf
Open Office .odt
HyperText Markup Language .htm; .html
Plain text .txt
other .ooxml

Text documents can be edited in ATLAS.ti. This is useful to correct transcription errors, to
change formatting, or to add missing information. When adding an empty text document to
an ATLAS.ti project, you can also transcribe your data in ATLAS.ti. We however recommend
using a dedicated transcription tool or use automated transcriptions. You can add transcripts
with timestamps and synchronize them with the original audio or video file. For this you use
Multimedia Transcripts.

Transcripts
You can prepare your own transcripts in ATLAS.ti, or import transcripts that have been created
elsewhere.

This could mean - you or another person transcribing data for you - have used a specialized
transcription software like:

• Easytranscript
• f4 & f5 transcript
• Transcribe
• Inqsribe
• Transana
• ExpressSribe, a.o.;

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Other sources are transcripts prepared automatically by services like Microsoft Teams, Zoom or
YouTube in SRT or VTT format. Examples of supported services are:

• MS Teams
• Zoom
• YouTube
• Happyscribe
• Trint
• Descript
• Sonix
• Rev.com
• Panopto
• Transcribe by Wreally
• Temi
• Simon Says
• Vimeo
• Amberscript
• Otter.ai
• Vocalmatic
• eStream

For further information on how to import transcripts from these services, see Importing Automated
Transcripts in VTT and SRT format

PDF files (Text and Graphic)

PDF files are perfect if you need the original layout. When PDF was invented, its goal was to
preserve the same layout for onscreen display and in print.

If the PDF file has annotations, they are displayed in ATLAS.ti. However, they cannot be edited.

When preparing PDFs, you need to pay attention that you prepare a text PDF file and not a graphic
PDF. If you do the latter, then ATLAS.ti treats it as a graphic file, and you cannot search it or
retrieve text.

When scanning a text from paper, you need to use character recognition software (OCR, frequently
provided with your scanner) in order to create a text PDF file. Another option is to apply character
recognition in your PDF reader/writer software.

When you retrieve text from a coded PDF segment the output will be rich text. Thus, you may lose
the original layout. This is due to the nature of PDF as mentioned above. It is a layout format and
not meant for text processing.

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PDF files (eBooks, PowerPoint, Visio, Draw)

The following file types will be transformed into PDF files, when adding them to an ATLAS.ti project:

• eBooks: *.epub, *.mobi

• Microsoft Visio: *.vsd, *.vsdx
• LibreOffice / OpenOffice Draw: *.odg, *.odp, *.ods
• PowerPoint: *.ppt, *pptx

Images
Supported graphic file formats are: bmp, gif, jpeg, jpg, png, tif and tiff.

Size recommendation: Digital cameras and scanners often create images with a resolution that
significantly exceeds the resolution of your screen. When preparing a graphic file for use with
ATLAS.ti, use image-processing software to reduce the size so that the graphics are comfortably
displayed on your computer screen. ATLAS.ti does resize the images if they are too big. But this
requires additional computer resources and unnecessarily uses space on your computer hard disk.

To resize and image manually, you can use the zoom function via the mouse wheel or the zoom
button in ATLAS.ti.

Audio- and Video Documents

Supported audio file formats are: aac, m4a, mp3, mp4, wav. Supported video file formats are; 3g2,
3gp, 3gp2, 3gpp, asf, avi, m4v, mov, mp4, wmv For audio files, our recommendation is to use *.mp3
files with AAC audio, and for video files *.mp4 file with AAC audio and H.264 video. These can be
played both in the Windows and in the Mac version. More information is available here. As video
files can be quite sizable, we recommend linking video files to an ATLAS.ti projects rather than to
import them. See Adding Documents for further information.

Geo Documents
When you want to work with Geo data, you only need to add a new Geo Document to your ATLAS.ti
project. This opens an Open Street world map. When you click on the option Query Address, you
can navigate to a specific region or location on the map. For more information, see Working With
Geo Docs.

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Social Network Comments

ATLAS.ti imports Excel files generated by exportcomments.com. You can use the service for free to
export up to 100 comments per link. For a small fee, you can use the service for three days to
download the data you need. This also allows you to export nested comments.

Supported social networks are:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram
• YouTube
• TikTok
• VK
• Twitch
• Discord

For further information see Importing Social Network Data.

Survey Data
The survey import option allows you to import data via an Excel spreadsheet (.xls or .xlsx files). Its
main purpose is to support the analysis of open-ended questions. However, this option can also be
used for other case-based data that can easily be prepared in form of an Excel table.

In addition to the answers to open-ended questions, data attributes (variables) can also be
imported. These will be turned into document groups in ATLAS.ti. For more information, see
Working With Survey Data.

Reference Manager Data

In order to support doing a Literature Review with ATLAS.ti, you can import articles from reference
managers. The requirement is that you are using a reference manager that can export data as
Endnote XML file like Endnote, Mendeley, Zotero, or Reference Manager.

If your reference manager cannot export data in Endnote xml format, you can export data in RIS or
BIB format and use the free version of Mendeley or Zotero to produce the xml output for ATLAS.ti.

See Working With Reference Manager Data.

Twitter
You can collect data from Twitter searching for keywords, hashtags, users, etc. ATLAS.ti can collect
tweets that are not older than one week !

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You need to sign in with your own Twitter account to import twitter data to ATLAS.ti. See Working
With Twitter Data.

Evernote
If you collect and store you data using Evernote, you can directly import files and folders from
Evernote. See Bring out the best in Evernote with ATLAS.ti 8 Windows.

Supported formats are:

Evernote Export File Type

Evernote 2.x database .enb
Evernote exported XML data .enex
Evernote database .exb
Evernote data .reco
Evernote handwritten notes and sketches .top
Evernote for Google Android note file .enml

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Adding Documents
Video Tutorial: Creating a project and adding data.

What happens when you add documents to a project

All documents that you add to a project are copied, and the copies become internal ATLAS.ti files.
This means, strictly speaking, that ATLAS.ti no longer needs the original files. However, we strongly
recommend that you keep a backup copy of your original source files.

When you add documents to a project, they are stamped with a unique ID. This ID allows ATLAS.ti
to detect if documents are the same when merging different projects.

What happens when you add documents to a project

All documents that you add to a project are copied, and the copies become internal ATLAS.ti files.
This means, strictly speaking, that ATLAS.ti no longer needs the original files. However, we strongly
recommend that you keep a backup copy of your original source files.

As audio and video files can be quite sizable, you have the option to create an external reference to
the files. This means the multimedia documents remain at their original location and are accessed
from there. Preferably, these files should not be moved to a different location. If the files need to be
moved, you need to re-link the files to your project. ATLAS.ti will alert you, if there is an issue, and a
file can no longer be accessed.

Important for team projects

When you work in a team and want to work on the same documents, it is important that one person
is setting up the project and adds all documents and codes that should be shared. The reason for
this is that all all entities are stamped with a unique ID when they are created. This ID allows
ATLAS.ti to detect if entities are the same when merging projects.

If the same documents (or codes) are added on different computers to different projects, then they
all have different IDs. Rather than being merged when you merge all projects, they are added. Thus,
the merged project contains duplicates. You can merge duplicated codes yourself, but you cannot
merge duplicated documents! If this happens, you need to manually transfer all coding that has
been done from the duplicated documents. See Team Work for further information.

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How to add documents

Click on the Add Documents button in the Home tab, or click on the dialog box
launcher (drop-down arrow), or drag- and-drop them from the File Manager
either onto the document display area or the ribbon.

If you click on "Add Documents", you can select individual files. If you want to add entire folders or
link larger multimedia files (audio / video) to your project, click on the dialog box launcher and
select the appropriate option.

All added or linked documents are numbered consecutively starting with D1, D2, D3 and so on.

Linking video files

As video files can be quite sizable, you have the option to link them to a project instead of adding
them. This means they remain at their original location and are accessed from there. Preferably,
these files should not be moved to a different location.

If the files need to be moved, you need to re-link the files to your project. ATLAS.ti will alert you, if
there is an issue, and a file can no longer be accessed. You find a Repair Link option in the
Document Manager under the Document Manager > Tools Tab.

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Sort Order of Documents

The default sort order is by name in alphabetical order. You cannot change the order of the
documents by dragging them to a different position. However, it is possible to change the order of
the documents by renaming and then renumbering them. See User-defined document sort order.

Adding transcripts with multimedia file

If you have a transcript and want to enter it together with its audio or video file, you first need to
add the multimedia file. In a second step you add and link the transcript to the multimedia file. For
further information see Importing Transcripts or Importing Auto Transcripts

Size Restrictions
Theoretically, size restrictions do not play a major role due to the way ATLAS.ti handles documents.
However, you should bear in mind that your computer's processing speed and storage capacity
may affect the performance.

Excessively large documents can be uncomfortable to work with, even when you have an
excellently equipped computer. The crucial issue is not always the file size, but rather, in the case
of multimedia files, the length of playing time.

For textual documents, the number and size of embedded objects may cause extraordinarily long
load times. There is a high likelihood that if a textual document loads slowly in ATLAS.ti, it would
also load slowly in WORD or WordPad.

For very long texts or multimedia files, scrolling to exact positions can be cumbersome.

Please keep those issues in mind when preparing your files.

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A Word about "Big Data"

Please keep in mind that the focus of ATLAS.ti is to support qualitative data analysis and to a lesser
extent the analysis of qualitative data.

Big data is a buzz word nowadays, and a lot of big data often comes as text or images, hence
could be considered qualitative. ATLAS.ti, however, is not suited for true big data analysis, which is
not the same as qualitative data analysis.

As point of orientation, coding can be supported using the auto coding feature. However, you still
need to read and correct the coding, and most coding in ATLAS.ti is done while the researcher
reads the data and creates or selects and applies a code that fits.

A project is too large if you have so much data that you need to rely on a machine to do all the
coding for you, and you cannot read what has been coded yourself. If this is the case, ATLAS.ti
might not be the right tool for you.

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Transcription
You can prepare your own transcripts in ATLAS.ti, or import transcripts that have been created
elsewhere.

This could mean - you or another person transcribing data for you - have used a specialized
transcription software like:

• Easytranscript
• f4 & f5 transcript
• Transcribe
• Inqsribe
• Transana
• ExpressSribe, a.o.;

Other sources are transcripts prepared automatically by services like Microsoft Teams, Zoom or
YouTube in SRT or VTT format. Examples of supported services are:

• MS Teams
• Zoom
• YouTube
• Happyscribe
• Trint
• Descript
• Sonix
• Rev.com
• Panopto
• Transcribe by Wreally
• Temi
• Simon Says
• Vimeo
• Amberscript
• Otter.ai
• Vocalmatic
• eStream

For further information on how to import transcripts from these services, see Importing Automated
Transcripts in VTT and SRT format

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Preparing your Own Transcript

A multimedia transcript in ATLAS.ti consists of two documents: an audio or video file plus an
associated transcript. The first step is to add the audio or video file to a project. Then you
can associate one or multiple transcripts with the document.

It is not yet possible to set timestamps in ATLAS.ti Windows. You can only view existing
timestamps if you import transcripts from other sources like automated transcripts prepared
by Teams or Zoom.

Step 1 - Add an Audio or Video File

To add an audio or video file: click on the Add Documents button in the Home
ribbon; or select the link option from the dropdown menu: Add Documents >
Add Linked Video/Audio.

For more information see: Add a multimedia file to your project.

Step 2 - Create a Word file

Create a new document in Word and save it under a meaningful name like "TR
_Tim Miller_m_t_south_58"

(TR = transcript; Tim Miller = interviewee name or pseudonym; m = male; south = from region
south; 58 = age 58).

Step 3 - Associate the Word File

Load the multimedia document, select the Tools tab in the toolbar, and from
there Import Transcript. Select the Word document that you have prepared in
step 2.

The transcript will be imported into the project and loaded next to the multimedia file, and you see
a new entry in the Project Explorer under the Multimedia Transcripts branch.

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Step 4 - Begin to transcribe

Click on the Edit button.

Start the recording by clicking on the Play button, and listen to as much as you
can remember. Stop the audio or video recording.

Start typing the transcript in the space on the right-hand side.

Repeat.

Click on the Save button in the edit toolbar from time to time. When you close the edit mode
without saving, ATLAS.ti will remind you.

In the future, you will also be able to set timestamps that synchronize the audio/video file
with the transcript. This is currently only available in the ATLAS.ti Mac version.

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Importing Transcripts in RTF or Word format

A multimedia transcript in ATLAS.ti consists of two documents: an audio or video file plus an
associated transcript. The first step is to add the audio or video file to a project. Then you
can associate one or multiple transcripts with the document.

The different transcription programs use various formats for time stamps. ATLAS.ti supports the
following:

Transcription Software Format of time stamps

Easytranscript, f4 & f5transcript #hh:mm:ss-x#
Transcribe [hh:mm:ss]
HyperTRANSCRIBE, Inqscribe, Transcriva [hh:mm:ss.xx]
HyperTRANSCRIBE, Inqscribe, Transcriva [hh:mm:ss.xxx]
Transana (h:mm:ss.xx)
Transcriber Pro hh:mm:ss

This is how you import an existing transcript:

Step 1 - Add an Audio or Video File

To add an audio or video file: click on the Add Documents button in the Home
ribbon; or select the link option from the dropdown menu: Add Documents >
Add Linked Video/Audio.
For more information see: Add a multimedia file to your project.

Step 2 - Associate a Transcript

Load the multimedia document, select the Tools tab in the toolbar, and from
there Import Transcript.

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inst
Select the transcript that belongs to the audio or video file and click Open.
Currently, supported file formats are: txt, rtf, doc, docx, srt, and vtt.
The transcript will be imported into the project and loaded next to the
multimedia file. Below you see an audio recorded interview transcribed with f4
transcript.

Further, you see a new entry in the Project Explorer under the Multimedia Transcripts branch.

It is possible to associated multiple transcripts with the same audio or video file, e.g. if you
have different language versions.

Synchronized Scrolling
By default, synchronized scrolling is activated in the toolbar after importing a transcript. This
means when you play the multimedia file, the text segment in the transcript between two
timestamps is highlighted while the multimedia file is playing.

In the lower area of the multimedia file you can see the timestamps. However, these are not
visible in the transcript in the current Windows version and cannot be modified.

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Deleting an As

Open the Multimedia Transcripts branch in the Project Explorer, right-click on

either transcript or the multimedia file, and select Delete.

This does not remove the document from the project. The multimedia file and transcript are still
available in the Documents branch, but they are no longer associated.

If you want to remove an associated document from the project, you need to delete the
association first.

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Importing Automated Transcripts in VTT and SRT

format

Video Tutorial: Importing automated transcripts

A key shift that we have seen due to the COVID-19 pandemic is that researchers conduct
their interviews via MS Teams or Zoom. Both create an automated transcript or caption of
the recording, which can serve as a first version rough transcript. With ATLAS.ti you can
import the transcript and associate it with the video recorded interview.

The automated transcripts are provided in form of VTT or SRT files. This is standard also used by
many other services. Thus, with ATLAS.ti’s native support for this format, you can now import
transcripts from a great many services. Examples are:

• MS Teams
• Zoom
• YouTube
• Happyscribe
• Trint
• Descript
• Sonix
• Rev.com
• Panopto
• sonix
• Transcribe by Wreally
• Temi
• Simon Says
• Vimeo
• Amberscript
• Otter.ai

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• Vocalmatic
• eStream

All what you then need to do is to go through the text and make changes as necessary, and your
transcript is done!

How to Generate Automated Transcripts - Useful Links

For most services, you will find instructions on how to generate and export transcripts on their
websites. This is the best source of information as we are currently witnessing a rapid development
in the area of automated transcription and procedures may change quickly. For your convenience,
below we provide some links but invite you to also search yourself for updated information.

Zoom

• Instructions how to generate transcripts from Zoom recordings

Microsoft Teams

• Instructions on how to record a meeting in MS Teams

• Information on how to generate automatic captions

• In the following video it is demonstrated how to conduct and transcribe interviews with
Microsoft Teams.

YouTube does not provide information directly on how to access the subtitles. If you search online,
you will find a number of third-party tools that support the download of YouTube videos with
subtitles.

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How to Import Automated Transcripts

Step 1 - Add an Audio or Video File

To add an audio or video file: click on the Add Documents button in the Home
ribbon; or select the link option from the dropdown menu: Add Documents >
Add Linked Video/Audio.
For more information see: Add a multimedia file to your project.

Step 2 - Associate a Transcript

Load the multimedia document, select the Tools tab in the toolbar, and from
there Import Transcript.

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inst
Select the VVT or SRT file and click Open.

The transcript will be imported into the project and loaded next to the multimedia file. Further, you
see a new entry in the Project Explorer under the Multimedia Transcripts branch.

Below you see a video interview

recorded in MS Teams with the auto generated transcript in VTT format. The transcription will not
be perfect, however it serves as a good starting point. Editing the transcript will take less time than
starting from scratch. Furthermore, reading and correcting the transcript allows you to familiarize
yourself with the data.

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It is possible to associated multiple transcripts with the same audio or video file, e.g. if you
have different language versions.

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Working With Reference Manager Data

ATLAS.ti is frequently used for assisting with literature reviews. See for example:

• On Conducting a Literature Review with ATLAS.ti

• Using ATLAS.ti 8 Windows in Literature Reviews
• Managing Literature Reviews Using ATLAS.ti

video tutorial Literature Review with ATLAS.ti Windows & Mac

You may have collected lots of articles in a reference manager. Not all of these articles will be
relevant for the literature review for a particular research or paper you are writing. Thus, create a
collection of 50 to 200 articles in your reference manager for further coding and analysis in
ATLAS.ti.

You can import EndNote XML files or bibtex files. This should allow you to import data from almost
all reference managers.

Importing Reference Manager Data

To start importing the file into ATLAS.ti, select the Import & Export tab and the
button Reference Manager.

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If your reference manager does not export the PDF files into a separate folder, make sure
that the PDF files are stored at the locations indicated in the XML or bibtex files. Usually this
will be the library of your reference manager.

ATLAS.ti can create document groups for you based on the following metadata:

• First authors
• Co-authors
• Publication type (journal article, book, book chapter, etc.)
• Language
• Source - If you import documents from more than one reference manager, it is useful to
group documents by source, so that you know where they were coming from.
• Periodical
• Year
• Volume
• Issue
• Edition
• Publisher

Document name format

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The default name for the document in ATLAS.ti is the name of the document as it used in the
Reference Manager. For easier sorting and organization, you can choose to add the name of the
first author, and the publishing year to the document name (recommended).

If the full document is not available

If only the document abstract is available and not the full document, you can select to import the
abstract as a document.

If you have written a note about the document in your Reference Manager, this note will be
imported as document comment.

Make your selections.

Click on the file loader icon and select the XML or bibtex file that you have
exported from your reference manager.

Inspecting the Imported Documents

Open the Document Manager

The imported documents are sorted by author and year in alphabetical order, if you selected this
option. Further, document groups are created from all options that were selected.

The text entered as note in the reference manager is imported as document comment. If the URL
of a document is available, it will also be added into the comment field.

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Importing Social Network Comments

Video Tutorial: Importing social network comment. Social networks provide a powerful reflection of
the structure and dynamics of the modern society. Often it is not a single tweet or post that is
interesting, but the reactions and interactions of the social network users. There are many
applications for analysing user comments such as: social movements, brand communities,
marketing campaigns, political discourse, discourses on currently relevant topics within a given
community or society, understanding your audience, or even shit-storms.

ATLAS.ti imports Excel files generated by exportcomments.com. You can use the service for free to
export up to 100 comments per link. For a small fee, you can use the service for three days to
download the data you need. This also allows you to export nested comments.

Supported social networks are:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram
• YouTube
• TikTok
• VK
• Twitch
• Discord

Look for a post on social networks whose comments you want to analyse.
Copy the URL.

Go to exportcomments.com, enter the URL and download the comments.

Go to ATLAS.ti and select the Import & Export tab and from there the Social
Network Comments button.

Select the Excel file you exported from exportcomments.com and click Open.

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ATLAS.ti codes all users automatically and creates categories for each social network. All
automatically generated codes are grouped into a code group (Codes from social media comment
import).

This is how the document after import could look like. The title and a screenshot of the video that
is being discussed have been added to the document:

A possible next step is to run a sentiment analysis:

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Working With Survey Data

Video Tutorial: Importing Survey Data. These days, most surveys are conducted online. A positive
side effect is that (a) all data is immediately available in a digital format and (b) respondents often
do write lengthy answers to open-ended questions. If you work with surveys from the analog world,
chances are, they will end up in an Excel™ spreadsheet at some point. Regardless how your surveys
originate, ATLAS.ti can handle them once they exist in that format.

Online surveys can be created using a number of tools. What most of these tools have in common
is that the let you export your data as Excel™ file. When importing such an Excel file via the Survey
Import option in ATLAS.ti, a wizard will guide you through the import process, and you can decide
which information from your survey should be included, which questions should be turned into
document groups for comparative analysis, and which questions will make up the body of the data.

In addition to the answers to open-ended questions, demographic information like age, profession,
or age group, answers to single choice questions (yes/no, or offering more than two options) and
answers to multiple choice questions can be imported. Within the framework of ATLAS.ti these are
mapped in the form of document groups, one group per value.

A survey broadly consists of the name of the survey, the questions, and the answers for each
respondent. Questions can be of different type:

• Single choice between two (yes/no) or more options

• Multiple choice
• Open-ended

Within the framework of ATLAS.ti these concepts are mapped as follows:

Survey Concept ATLAS.ti Concept

Open-ended question Code (and code comment)
Answer to an open ended question Content of a quotation (data)
Single Choice question a document group for each value
Multiple Choice question a document group for each value

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ATLAS.ti automatically codes each open-ended question with the information provided in the
header. As this is usually the question, the code name would be very long. Therefore, you can split
it into code label and comment. The recommendation is to use the question number as code label
and the text of the full question as comment. In order to do this you add two columns (::) between
question number and question, as in: 'Question 1::Tell me about the highlights of your last vacation'.

Data are imported case-based. This means each row of the Excel™ table that is imported from the
online survey tool is transformed into a document.

Click here to learn how to Import Survey Data.

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Importing Survey Data

If you import the same table repeatedly, rows with already existing documents are ignored.
This way, you do not have to wait until the last respondent has filled out the questionnaire.

When importing the same data again with updated information, you can only import new
cases (i.e. rows in Excel), but not new questions (i.e. columns in Excel).

Select the Import & Export tab and then the Survey button.
Inst
Select the Excel file to be imported and click Open.

A wizard opens that guides you through the next steps:

For each table column you can decide whether it should be transferred into a document attribute, a
document group, or content of a coded document. You can also exclude columns.

Undefined: ATLAS.ti tries to make an educated guesses for each column. If this is not possible,
then 'undefined' is entered. You then need to select a suitable option. The data cannot be imported
if some columns are set to 'undefined'.

Ignored: Select if you do not want to import this column. We recommend that you clean up your
table beforehand in Excel and remove everything that you don't want to import to ATLAS.ti. This will
facilitate the import.

Document Attribute: name: use the content of each cell in this column as document name. You can
also select more than column to make up the name as shown in the example here. If both 'case no.'

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and 'Name' are chosen to become the document name, the document name will be 'case 1 Paul',
'case 2 Anne', 'case 3 Toni', etc. You can use the Body row option in the toolbar at the bottom of
the wizard to move through the contents of each row.

Document Attribute: comment: Use the information in this column as document comment.

Document Group: single-answer question: If you have a question where you ask respondents to
indicate their marital status, and the possible answer choices are: single, married, divorce, then
ATLAS.ti creates a document group for each of these values:

• martial status::single
• marital status::married
• marital status::divorce

Document Group: multiple-answer question Use this option, if respondent can give multiple
answers to one question. For example: "What are your favorite flavors of ice cream? Select any that
you like." ATLAS.ti will create a document group for each answer choice. The default answer
separator is a comma (,). See the bottom section of the wizard. Adjust the separator, if a semicolon
(;) is used.

Coded document content: open-ended question: All answers that should become part of the body
of the document.

Toolbar

Header Rows

Some survey apps use two header rows as header, like Survey Monkey for instance. This means,
your Excel output could look like this:

If this is the case, you need to change the header rows from 1 to 2. Below you see an example:

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Inspecting Imported Survey Data

Open the Document Manager and take a look at what has been added to the
project:

Document names: If you do not specify a name for each case, the default is case 1, case 2, case 3
and so on. In the example shown here, the case no. and the name is used as document name.

Document groups: Based on the information provided in the Excel table, document groups are
created. The highlighted respondent 'case 7 Leo' in the example has a university degree, is a male,
is married, and has 2 children. He answered the question: 'Do children fulfillment & purpose' with
yes.

ATLAS.ti automatically creates a group that contains all survey data in case you work with data
from multiple sources.

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Data: The document text for each case consists of the answers to the open questions. Each
answer is automatically coded with the information provided in Excel. The code can just be the
question number or a longer label.

You can now begin to add some more detailed coding for each question. Useful tools that help you
to quickly gain insights into your data are sentiment analysis and letting ATLAS.ti look for
concepts.

For a comparative analysis based on the document groups that have been created, you can use the
Code Document table:

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The image above shows a comparison of respondents with 1, 2, and 3 children. Compared are the
kind of reasons they give pro and contra having children.

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Analyzing Survey Data

• Analyzing survey data requires that you know how to code. See Working With Codes.

• You may want to explore the data first by creating Word Clouds or Word Lists, see Exploring
Data and by using the auto coding feature. See Search & Code.

• After coding, further analysis options that are often used with survey data are:

◦ the Code-Document Table

◦ the Query Tool in combination with the Scope option
◦ the Code Co-occurrence Table

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Importing Twitter Data

You need a Twitter account to use this function.

To import Twitter data, select the Import & Export tab and then the Twitter
button.
If you do this for the first time, you have to authorize ATLAS.ti to access your
account by entering your username and password.

Note that you only will be able to import tweets from the past week. Further, as the final
selection is done by Twitter and not within our control, queries at different times, or on
different computers may result in different tweets. There is also a rate limit set by Twitter.
This means you can make 180 requests within a time period of 15 minutes.

Enter a query. You can also look for multiple hashtags or authors by using OR.
For example: #WorldAidsDay|#HIV|#Aids.

Next, select whether you want to import the most recent or the most popular
tweets and whether to include re-tweets, images and profile images.

After you have made your select, click Import Tweets.

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Automatic Coding and Linking for Tweets

The imported data is automatically coded based on the selection you make:

Tweets often contain many more hashtags than the original one that you searched for. Coding all
hashtags often results in great many codes.

You can choose to code:

• only the queried hashtags.

• the author
• all mentioned Twitter users
• the location
• the language.

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An automatic link can be created between:

• authors and locations

• authors and mentioned Twitter users.

These linkages can be visualized using ATLAS.ti networks.

Inspecting Imported Twitter Data

Load the document with imported tweets.

On the top of the document, you can read how many tweets and retweets were imported and how
many you requested. Each tweet is coded with the selection you have made.

Open the Code Manager to inspect the code and code groups that have been
created.

The code groups help you to navigate through your codes. By clicking on the code group Twitter:
Languages, for instance, you can immediately see how many and which languages are used in the
tweets you imported.

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Adding a Geo Document to a Project

ATLAS.ti uses Open Street Map or Bing Map / Big Satellite Map as its data source for geo
documents. Even though there is only one data source, you can also use more than one geo docs
in your project, e.g. to create distinct sets of locations, to simulate tours, to simply tell different
stories.

To add a geo document to the project, go to the Home tab, look for the Add
Documents button, click on the dropdown arrow and select New Geo
Document.

A new document is added and if you open it you see the world map. The default name is "New Geo
Document". You may want to rename it, so it better describes your analytic intention.

Finding a Location
The first thing you probably want to do is to query an address:

In the Document tab, click on the button Query Address.

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A new tab opens in the navigator on the left. Enter a search term.

The map immediately displays the location that fits the search term and adds a place mark.

Changing the View from Open Street Map to Bing

If you prefer to use Bing Map or Bing Satellite Map,

Select the contextual Tools Tab and change the Map Type in the section Maps.

For further information, see Working with Geo Data.

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Working with Geo Documents

Change Map Type

Under the tools tab, you can change how you want to view your geo document. Options are:

• Open Street Map

• Road Map (Here - Map Data)
• Satellite Map (Here - Map Data)

Creating Geo Quotations

For more general information on quotations, see Quotation Level and Working with
Quotations.

Creating a Geo quotation is not much different from creating other type of quotations. The only
difference is that the quotation is just one location on the map - the place mark, and not a region.

Right-click on the place mark and select the option Create Free Quotation (or
click on the Create Free Quotation button in the Document ribbon).
To create further quotations:
inst
Either enter a new address and search for a location of interest, or left-click a
point of interest on the map to set a place mark.

Right-click and select Create Free Quotation from the context menu.
If you move your mouse over a quotation, a text window opens displaying
information about the quotation like the name, the author, when it was created,
any codes and memos that are attached to it, the longitude and latitude and
the address.

Display of Geo Q
Geo quotations can be access in the margin area, the Quotation Manager, the Project Explorer, and
from within networks. Geo quotations are displayed as follows:

• The quotation icon shows a place mark.

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In the Project Explorer, the Quotation Reader and Manager and all reports, geo quotations are
• referenced in decimal degrees, e.g. LAT 48.859911° LON 2.377317°. In addition, the
Quotation Manager shows a preview of the Geo location. You may want to consider renaming
Geo quotations, e.g. by adding the name of the location to the coordinates. Another option is
to add a comment. See also Working with Multimedia Quotations.

Activating Geo Quotations

Select a Geo quotation in any of the following places and double-click:

• margin area
• Quotation Manager
• Project Explorer
• Network

The quotation will be displayed in context.

An activated place mark is colored in orange. Non-activated place marks are colored in gray.

Modifying a Geo quotation

To modify a Geo quotation, activate it, so it is highlighted in orange.

Move the place mark to a different location. The quotation follows along.

Coding Geo Quotations

For more general information on coding, see Coding Data.

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You can also create a quotation and link a code to it in one step, or code an existing quotation:

Set a place mark or select an existing quotation, right-click and select the
option Apply Codes (or click on the equivalent coding buttons in the Document
ribbon).
All other drag-and-drop operations described for coding also apply.

Creating a Geo
You can create a snapshot from the geographic region that is currently shown on your screen. This
snapshot is automatically added as a new image document.

The advantage of the image is that you can select a region as quotation and not only a single point
on a map. Further you can browse the Geo location in Google Maps (see below).

Open a Geo document.

In the toolbar, click Snapshot.

A new document is created. The default name is: 'Geo Snapshot @
longitude:latitude' of the last selected location.

As a snapshot results in an image document, you can also handle it like an image document. See
for example Creating Image Quotations.

Browsing Geo Locations in Google Map

Create a Geo snapshot.

In the contextual Tools tab, selecting the button Browse Geolocation

This opens Google Maps in your default browser outside of ATLAS.ti.

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Managing Documents
Whenever the content of a document needs to be displayed, printed, or searched, it accesses its
data source and loads the content. This request is often triggered indirectly, e.g., by displaying a
quotation. The following lists a few procedures that directly or indirectly load the content of a
document:

• Activating a document in the Project Explorer or the Document Manager.

• Activating a quotation in a Navigator, the Quotation Manager or the Quotation Reader.
• Selecting a quotation for an activated code or memo.
• Activating a hyperlink in the margin area.

Loading Documents

Select a document in the Project Explorer and double-click. It will be loaded in

the next available tab.

Alternatively:

Double-click a document in the Document Manager. (To open the Document

Manager double-click on the main document branch in the Project Explorer.)

Editing Documents

To edit a document, click on the Edit button in the toolbar. The ribbon changes,
and you see all editing option that are available.
inst
To leave edit mode, click on the button Exit Edit Mode.

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We recommend not do stay in edit mode while coding. You may accidentally modify text
while highlighting text segments for coding.

When working in a team, we strongly recommend not to edit text. If team members edit the
same document, you will lose one version when merging the project. If text needs to be
modified, it should only be edited in the Master Project by the project administrator.

Renaming Documents

Right-click a document in the Project Explorer or Document Manager and

select the Rename option from the context menu.

Alternatively:

Select a document and press the F2 key.

Renaming a document in ATLAS.ti does not change the name of the original
source file. As described above under Adding Documents, documents are
copied into the ATLAS.ti library when adding them to an ATLAS.ti project, and
ATLAS.ti no longer needs the original source files.

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Deleting Documents
If you accidentally have added documents or want to remove them from your project for other
reasons, you can remove them.

Select one or multiple documents in the Project Explorer or the Document

Manager, right click and select Delete.

If you delete a document by mistake, you can always use the Undo option in the Quick Access
toolbar.

After deleting documents, the consecutive numbering may be off. To renumber documents in
consecutive order again, select the Tools tab in the Document Manager, and from there the
Renumber Documents option.

Duplicating Documents
If you need a document for different purposes, e.g. you want to view it from different angles and
want to code different aspects; or if you want to associate it with different transcripts, you can
duplicate a document. All work that you have done so far in the document, like the document
comment you have written, all quotations and their comments, all hyperlinks, all linked codes and
memos will be duplicated as well,

Open the Document Manager and select one or more documents that you
want to duplicate.

Click on the Tools tab and select Duplicate Document(s)

The duplicated document(s) will be added at the end of the list of documents. They have the same
name as the original document(s) plus a consecutive number in parentheses.

In terms of project size, the file(s) in the library are not duplicated. The duplicated document uses
the same source file as the original document.

Renumbering all Documents

This option becomes useful after you removed one or more documents from a project. This results
in gaps in the sequence of document numbers. You may remove these gaps by renumbering all
documents using the Renumber Documents option.

Open the Document Manager.

inst
Select the Tools tab and from there: Renumber Documents.

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User-defined Document S

If the documents are not listed in the order you want them to be listed as by default, you can
impose your own sort order. This is how you do it:

Rename the documents in a way that when sorted in alphabetic order by

name, they show up in the order you want them to be.

Click on the Name column in the Document Manager to resort the documents.

Check whether the documents are now in the correct order.

Select the Renumber Documents option from the Tools tab.

It is not necessary to renumber documents for working with ATLAS.t! However, it might be
useful for your own work organization, and it can give reports a cleaner appearance.

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Project Management

Opening a Project
To open a project, click on a project in the list of projects on the Welcome Screen, or if a project is
already open, and you want to open another one, select File > Open.

Saving a Project
To save a project, click on the Save icon in the Quick Access toolbar, select File > Save, or use the
key combination Ctrl+S. The project is saved as internal ATLAS.ti file in the ATLAS.ti library. The
default location for the library is the application folder on your computer. See Where Does ATLAS.ti
Store Project Data?

It is possible to either change the default location for the ATLAS.ti library or to create new libraries.
See About ATLAS.ti Libraries.

If you want to save an external copy of your project, you need to export it. See Project
Export.

Renaming a Project
You can rename projects from the welcome screen, either when you start ATLAS.ti or when closing
all projects.

To rename a project:

Select a project on the welcome screen. Right-click on a project and select the
option Rename Project.

Deleting
You can delete projects from the welcome screen, either when you start ATLAS.ti or when closing
all projects.

To delete a project:

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Right-click on a project and select the option Delete Project from the context
menu
You will be asked to confirm the deletion as this is a permanent action that
cannot be undone.

Password Protection
To set a password for your project, you need to load it first.

Select File > Info.

Click on the Set Password button and follow the instructions on the screen.

ATLAS.ti Scientific Software GmbH does not save your passwords. We cannot access, read
or recover your password. If you cannot remember your password, you can no longer access
your project!

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ATLAS.ti Project Data is Saved to a Library

Working with the ATLAS.ti Library

The default location for ATLAS.ti project files is on the C drive. If it is not possible for all users to
work on the C drive, either because of institutional restrictions or the C drive is already full and
there is not enough space, there is an option to create a custom location where your ATLAS.ti-data
are saved. Important to know

• Each user works within her or his own ATLAS.ti library.

• Each user can define where the ATLAS.ti library should be located. This location can be on
your computer, on a server, or an external drive.

• It is not possible to use a cloud sharing service like Dropbox because the specific way in
which such systems work can jeopardize the integrity of the ATLAS.ti library.

• It is possible to work with multiple libraries. Theoretically, you could create a new empty
library every time you start a new project. This, however, requires careful data management
on your part as you need to keep track where all of these different libraries are located.

Changing the Library Location

When you start ATLAS.ti, select Options at the bottom left of your screen. If a
project is already open, you need to close it. You cannot change the location of
the library, if a project is currently open.

Select Application Preferences > ATLAS.ti Library location > Switch Library.

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A wizard opens that guides you through the process. The next choice you need to make is whether
you want to open an existing library, move the library to a different location, or create a new empty
library.

Moving the Library to a Different Location: Chose this option if you want or need to move your
current library to a different location, e.g. because you do no longer want to work on the C drive. It
is possible to keep a copy of the library at the old location.

Creating a New Library: This option allows you to create a new library at a location of your choice.
If you already have projects, none of these will be moved over into the new library. To fill this
library, you either create new projects from scratch, or you import project bundle files that you
previously exported from other libraries.

Open an existing library: Chose this option if you work with multiple libraries, and you want to gain
access to an already existing library at a different location.

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After you made your choice, click Next.

• If you selected to open an existing library: Select the location for this library

• If you selected to move the library: Select the location where you want this library to be. You
can keep a copy of the actual state of the library at the current location. Just keep in mind
that this copy is not updated if you continue your work using the library at the new location.

• If you selected to create a new empty library: Select where this new library shall be created.
After confirming the new location, your opening screen will be empty, and you can begin to
fill it with new projects.

A note from the Help Desk: We know that your project data is very valuable to you and that
you do not want to lose it. Therefore, please select a sensible location for the ATLAS.ti
library. For instance: Do not store it on the desktop. You probably have a folder where you
store all project related data. If you cannot or do not want to use the ATLAS.ti default
location, we recommend that you create a sub-folder for your ATLAS.ti related work within
your project folder, and within this sub-folder, a dedicated folder for your library. Make sure
your project folder is included in any automated back-up routine of your computer!

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Creating a Project Backup

ATLAS.ti 22 projects cannot be used in previous versions.

Please export your projects on a regular basis and store the bundle files in a safe location. In
case something happens to your computer, you still have a copy of your project to fall back
on!

To create a backup of your project, you need to export it and save it as project bundle file on your
computer, an external drive, a server or cloud location.

A project bundle file serves as external backup of your project independent of the ATLAS.ti
installation on your computer.

• The project bundle file contains all documents that you have added or linked to a project, and
the project file that contains all of your coding, the codes, all memos,comments, networks
and links. Large audio or video files can be excluded from the bundle.

• Project bundle files are also used to transfer projects between computers. They can be read
by both ATLAS.ti Mac and Windows. See Project Transfer.

• If your project contains linked documents, they can be excluded when creating a project
bundle file. See "Creating Partial Bundles" below.

Exporting a Project
To export your project to either save it as backup or to use it for transferring it to a different
computer:

Select File > Export.

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Click on the Project Bundle button.

If your project does not contain multimedia files, the Windows File Manager opens. If it does
contain multimedia files, see Exporting partial bundle files.

The default name for the bundle will be the project name plus the name of the currently logged-in
user and the date: project name (user name YYYY-MM-DD). You can rename the project bundle file
at this stage, which however does not change the name of the project that is contained within the
bundle.

Select a name and location where you want to store the project and select
Save.

Think of the project bundle file like a bag that contains your project. Putting a different label
on the outside of the bag does not change anything that is inside, which is your project with
all your coded segments, comments, memos, networks, etc. and all documents that have
been added to it. When you import the project bundle, the project name after import will still
be the original name. If you want to rename the project file, you need to do this either during
the process of importing the project, or on the opening screen. See Project Management.

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Exporting a partial bundle if your project

contains multimedia files
If your project contains large multimedia files, you can exclude those. This reduces the size of the
bundle file. When preparing a partial project bundle, make sure you also back up the multimedia
files that you excluded from the bundle. If you import the project at a later stage, you can relink
excluded files to the project during or after import.

If your export a project that does contain multimedia files, the following window opens:

Deselect all files that should NOT be included in the bundle, then click on the
Project Bundle button.

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Project Transfer

You can transfer ATLAS.ti 22 projects to the web version and vice versa, ATLAS.ti web
projects to ATLAS.ti 22. The latter is the recommended option - begin your work in the Web
version, especially if you are interested in synchronous coding with a team. If you want to
use the functionality of the desktop version, export your project and import it into the
desktop version. If you transfer a desktop project to ATLAS.ti web, the formatting of
document changes as online you work in a browser. Therefore, you cannot set up a mixed
team work project where some people work in the desktop version and others in the web
version.

ATLAS.ti 22 projects cannot be used in previous versions.

In order to transfer a project to a different computer, e.g., to share it with team members, you need
to create a project bundle file.

A project bundle file contains all documents that you have added or linked to a project. In
addition, it contains the project file with all codings, codes, memos, comments, networks,
and links.

To create a project bundle file:

Select File > Export.

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If your project does not contain multimedia files, the Windows File Manager opens. If your project
does contain multimedia files, see Creating Partial Bundle Files.

Click on the Project Bundle button.

The default name for the bundle will be the project name plus the name of the currently logged-in
user and the date: project name (user name YYYY-MM-DD). You can rename the project bundle file
at this stage, which however does not change the name of the project that is contained within the
bundle.

Select a name and location where you want to store the project and select
Save.

Think of the project bundle file like a bag that contains your project. Putting a different label
on the outside of the bag does not change anything that is inside, which is your project with
all your coded segments, comments, memos, networks, etc. and all documents that have
been added to it. When you import the project bundle, the project name after import will still
be the original name. If you want to rename the project file, you need to do this either during
the process of importing the project, or on the opening screen. See Project Management.

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Creating a Project Snapshot

A project snapshot is a copy of the internal ATLAS.ti project file. Reasons for creating a snapshot
are:

• to preserve certain stages of your project to review it later.

• as fall-back version before a merge, in case something turns out different from what you
expected, and you have already saved the merged project. See Project Merge.
• as a copy of your project that you want to use as template for another project.
• as a copy of your project to prepare for inter-coder agreement analysis. See Inter-coder
Agreement.

When creating a snapshot, ATLAS.ti automatically adds the following to the project name:
(Snapshot YYYY-MM-DD hh:min:sec). You can, however, also enter any other name.

To create a snapshot,

Select File > Snapshot.

Accept the default name or enter another unique name, and click Create
Snapshot.

Just like ATLAS.ti project files, snapshots are saved internally in the ATLAS.ti environment. A
snapshot has the same ID as the project from which it is created.

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Where Does ATLAS.ti Store Project Data?

By default, ATLAS.ti projects and all documents that you add to a project are stored in a sub folder
called Scientific Software in the application folder on your computer.

The application folder in Windows is called: AppData and can be found under your user account's
home folder. Within the sub folder Roaming, you find folders from a number of different
applications, also for ATLAS.ti.

The AppDataRoaming folder is a hidden folder and can either be accessed by entering the full path
name or by typing %appdata% into the Windows 10 search field. If the username is "Mary." the full
path would be:

C:\Users\Mary\AppData\Roaming\Scientific Software\ATLASti.22

The ATLAS.ti library is a system folder and not meant for user access. Files in this folder
cannot be used outside ATLAS.ti!

If you need to change the default location for the library, see Working with the ATLAS.ti Library.

Default Locations for Files and Text Analysis Models

You can check which default location are used by your installation of ATLAS.ti as follows:

When you start ATLAS.ti, select Options at the bottom left of your screen. If a
project is already open, you need to close it. You cannot change the location of
the library, if a project is currently open.

Select Application Preferences and look for the section ATLAS.ti Default File
Location.

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Working With Groups

Groups in ATLAS.ti help you to sort, organize and filter the various entities. Groups are available for
documents, codes, memos, and networks.

Common to all groups are:

• An entity can be sorted into multiple groups. For example if you sort a document into the
group gender::female, it can also be sorted into other groups like location::urban, or family
status::single.
• If you click on a group in a manager, you activate a filter (see below). Then only the items
that are in the selected groups are displayed.
• You can combine groups using Boolean operators. See for example Exploring Coded Data.
• You can save a combination of groups for further re-use in form of a smart group.
• You can set groups as global filter.

There are no groups for quotations, as codes already fulfil this function. Codes group
quotations that have a similar meaning. Therefore instead of groups, you see the codes in
the side panel of the Quotation Manager.

Application of Docume

Video Tutorial: Organizing documents and document groups. Often data come from different
sources, locations, respondents with various demographic backgrounds etc. To facilitate the
handling of the different types of data, or to compare respondents based on sociodemographic
characteristics, they can be organized into document groups. You can also use document groups
for administrative purposes in team projects if different coders should code different documents.
You can then create a group containing all documents for coder 1, another group containing the
documents for coder 2 and so on.

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Another application is the use of document groups

for analytic comparisons in the Code Document Table.

Document Groups are also useful as global filters for instance for Code Co-occurrence Analysis.

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Document groups can also be added to Networks and you can show which codes have been
applied to which group.

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Application of Code Groups

Code groups can be used to sort and organize codes in the Code Manager. Code groups facilitate
the navigation of codes in the Code Manager as local filter.

Code groups can be used as global filters in analysis.

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Code groups can also be used in the Code Document Table for case comparisons.

Users often mistake code groups as a kind of higher order code, which they are not. They do
however can be quite useful in building a coding system.

Application of Memo Groups

Memo groups come in handy if you have written lots of memos. You could for example group
memos by function: methodological notes, team memos, research diaries, analysis.

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If you have multiple memos that contain answers to one research question, you can group all those
memos.

If you have multiple memos that contain input for a particular section in the research report, you
may want to create a memo group for those.

You find more information on working with memos here: Memos and Comments.

Groups as Filters
Groups are listed in the filter area of the document, code, memo and network manager.

Click on one or more groups to filter the list of items. If you want to select
multiple groups hold down the Ctrl key.
Once you have set one or more groups as filter, a yellow bar appears above the
entity list indicated that a) a filter has been set, and b) which one.

To reset the filter to see all entities again, click the X on the top right-hand side
of the yellow bar.
It is also possible to run simple AND and OR queries:

As soon as you select more than one group, you see the word any in blue in the filter bar. This
means the default operation is to combine the items of the selected groups with OR.

If you want to filter by the intersection of two or more groups, click on the word
"any" and change it to all. This is the Boolean AND operator.

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An example would be to filter by all female respondents who live in an urban region. This requires
that you have grouped the documents by these two criteria:

• education::some college
• Gender::female The same options are available for all entity types.

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Creating and Renaming Groups

You can create groups in various ways and at various places in the software.

Creating Groups in a Manager

Open the Document Manager, e.g. with a click on the Documents button in the
Home tab.

Select several documents and drag-and-drop them into the side panel on the
left. Use the common Windows selection technique (hold down the Ctrl- or
Shift key).

Enter a name for the group and click Create.

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Another way to create groups in a manager is:

To select a number of entities in a manager, right-click and select the option

New Group from the context menu.

Enter a name for the group and click Create.

Creating Groups in the Project Explorer

Select a number of entities in a branch of the Project Explorer, right-click and

select the option New Group from the context menu.

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Creating Groups in a Group Manager

Open the Group Manager by double-clicking on a group in the Project Explorer.

Alternatively:

In the Home tab, click on the drop-down for documents, codes, memos or
networks and select the respective Group Manager.

In the Group Manager:

Select the button New Group and enter a name.

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Next select on ore more items on the right-hand side in the pane: 'Documents
/ Codes / Memos / Networks not in group' and move them to the left-hand side
'Documents / Codes / Memos / Networks in group' by clicking on the button
with the left arrow (<). You can also double-click each item you want to move.

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Creating Document Groups in the Query Tool

At times, you first need to code the data to find relevant information like years of working
experience, special skills, attitudes about something, relationship to other people, etc. For this you
need an option to create document groups based on query results.

You can create groups based on queries - thus based on information that you have coded. See
Creating Document Groups From Results.

Renaming a Group

Select a group in the Group Manager and click on the Rename option in the
ribbon.

Right-click on a group and select the Rename option from the context menu.

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Select a group and press F2. This opens the 'Rename dialogue'.

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Removing Group Members / Deleting Groups

Removing Group Members

You can remove group members at four different locations:

Project Explorer

Open the branch for a group, select one or more items that you do not want to
have in the group, right click and select Remove from Group from the context
menu.

In Managers

Open a Manager and select a group.

Select one or more items in the list that you do no longer want to have in the
group, right click any of the selected items and select Remove from Group
from the context menu.

Filter Area in Managers

Open a Manager and select a group.

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Select one or more items in the list that you do no longer want to have in the
group, right-click on the group and select Remove from Group in the context
menu.
Removing Group Members in the Group Manager

Open the Group Manager by double-clicking on a group in the Project Explorer.

Alternatively:

In the Home tab, click on the drop-down for documents, codes, memos or
networks and select the respective Group Manager.
inst
Next select on ore more items on the left-hand side in the pane: 'Documents /
Codes / Memos / Networks in group' and move them to the right-hand side
'Documents / Codes / Memos / Networks not in group' by clicking on the
button with the right arrow (>). You can also double-click each item you want
to remove.

Deleting Groups

Select one or more groups in the Project Explorer or the side panel of a
manager.
inst
Right-lick and select Delete from the context menu.

It is also possible to delete a group in a Group Manager. In Group Managers you can only delete
one group at a time.

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Importing & Exporting Document Groups

You can export and import the list of documents and their groups to and from Excel.

Exporting the data gives you an overview of all your document groups and their members. It can
also be used as a starting point to prepare an Excel file for import.

You may want to import a Document Group table, if you already have an Excel file with information
about each document like gender, education levels, location, etc.

The content of the Document Group Table consists of the following:

• First column: document name.

• Second and subsequent columns: document groups or document attributes

As document groups in ATLAS.ti are dichotomous, the document groups are listed in the columns,
and the cells contain a 0 if the document is not in the group, and a 1 if the document is in the
group.

If you do not follow the ATLAS.ti naming conventions (see below), the table will look as follows:

If you use the ATLAS.ti naming convention for document groups: attribute name::attribute label or
value, then ATLAS.ti uses the attribute name as column header and the attribute label or value for
each cell. For instance, if you have the following groups:

• education::high school
• education::some college
• education::University degree
• gender::male
• gender::female
• has children::yes
• has children::no
• marital status: single
• marital status: married
• marital status: divorced
• number of children:1
• number of children:2

....the Excel table looks as follows:

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Exporting Document Groups to Excel

Select the Import & Export tab in the ribbon and from there the Document
Groups button with the up arrow.

This opens a File Manager. Select a location for saving the Excel file. Accept
the default name or change it. Select Save.
tip
If you use the naming convention for document groups as shown above, then
the table shows the more conventional format with attributes / variables as
column header and the various values for each variable in the table cells.

Importing Document Groups from Excel

If you want to prepare a table for import, the easiest way is to export a table first. This way you
generate a table that already contains all document names in the order as they occur in ATLAS.ti

Export a document group table (see above).

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Add the document attributes as column headers. See examples below.

• If there are multiple values for a variable, add the prefix #.

• If you do not add a prefix, a document is assigned to the group if the cell value is 1.

Enter the values for each document in the table cells.

• if there is no entry in a cell, the document is not assigned to a group.

• if two or more values of the same attribute apply to the document, then enter the values
separated by a coma.

In the following you see two examples:

Document #age likes

#gender #favorite drink
Name group chocolate
doc 1 male 1 1 cola
doc 2 female 2 milk,beer
doc 3 female 2 1 juice
tea, coffee,
doc 4 male 1
cola
doc 5 male 3 1 coffee

Save the table in Excel.

Example Excel table ready for import to ATLAS.ti:

Import Document Groups Table

Select the Import & Export tab in the ribbon and from there the Document
Groups button with the down arrow.

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This opens a File Manager. Select the Excel file and click Open.
tip
If you want to add new groups even though a few groups already exist, you
can proceed as described. Just leave existing groups in the table. ATLAS.ti will
recognize them and does not create them anew.

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The ATLAS.ti Quotation Level

Christine Silver, expert in computer assisted qualitative data analysis software, explains the
ATLAS.ti quotation level as follows:

"When you create a quotation, you’re marking a segment of data that can later be retrieved
and reviewed. You might know, right at that point how and why it’s interesting or meaningful,
in which case you can immediately capture that – by re-naming it, commenting on it, coding
it, linking it to e.g. another quotation, or a memo. If you don’t yet know, you can just create
the quotation, and come back and think about it later, perhaps when you have a better
overview of the data set in its entirety and are ready to conceptualise meaning in relation to
your research objectives."

"One of my favourite things about ATLAS.ti is that quotations can be visualised and worked
with in a graphical window, i.e., the ATLAS.ti networks. The content of quotations can be
seen within the network, and quotations can be linked, commented upon, and coded in that
visual space. This is very useful if you like to work visually or are used to analysing qualitative
data manually with highlighters, white-boards, post-it notes etc. Networks can also be used
as visual interrogation spaces – for example to review quotations which have more than one
code attached, which is very powerful. Everything you do in the network is connected
throughout the ATLAS.ti project."

The ATLAS.ti quotation level offers an extra layer of analysis. In ATLAS.ti you are not required to
immediately code your data as in most other CAQDAS software. You can first go through your data
and set quotations, summarize the quotations in the quotation name and write an interpretation in
the comment field. See Working with Quotations. This is useful for many interpretive analysis
approach for the process of developing concepts. Once you have ideas for concepts you can begin
to code your idea.

This prevents you from falling into the coding trap, i.e. generating too many codes. Codes that can
be applied to only one or two segments in your data are not very useful. Code names should be
sufficiently abstract so that you can apply them to more than just a few quotations.

You will also see later in the analysis process that you find that none of the further analysis tools
like the Code Document Table or the Code Co-occurrence Table seem to be very useful.

If you find yourself generating 1000 or more codes, take a look what you can do with quotations
instead. Based on that develop codes on a more abstract level allowing you to build a well-rounded
code system.

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Creating Quotations in Text Documents

When you code data, quotations are created automatically. See Coding Data.You can however also
create quotations without coding. To do so:

Highlight a section in your text, right click and select the option Create Free
Quotation. Alternatively, you can also select the equivalent button in the
ribbon.

Once a quotation is created, you see a blue bar in the margin area and an entry in the Quotation
Manager and the Document tree in the Project Explorer.

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Quotation ID
Each quotation has an ID, which consists of two numbers:

• The ID 8:1 means that the quotation was created in document 8, and it is the first quotation
that was created in this document.

• The ID 3:10 means that the quotation comes from document 3, and it is the 10th quotation
that was created in this document.

Quotations are numbered in chronological and not in sequential order. If you want to change this
order, see the next section:

Changing the Chronological Order of Quotations

The quotation ID numbers quotations in the chronological order when they have been created. For
various reasons, at times users want the quotations to be numbered in the sequential order as they
occur in the document.

When you delete quotations, the numbering is not automatically adjusted. Instead, they are gaps.
Renumbering the quotations also closes those gaps.

To renumber quotations:

Open the Quotation Manager and select the Renumber Quotations option in
the ribbon.

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Adding Quotation Names

Being able to name each quotation has a number of useful applications.

• It allows you to quickly glance through your quotations in list view.

• You can use the name field to paraphrase a quotation as required by some content analysis
approaches, or to write a short summary.
• You can use the name field for fine-grained coding (line-by-line Grounded Theory coding;
initial coding in Constructive Grounded Theory, or as required by other interpretative
approaches) instead of applying codes. If you already apply codes during this phase, you will
end up with too many codes that are useless for further analysis. See Building a Code
System.
• Adding titles to multimedia quotations. See Working with Multimedia Data.

To add a name to a quotation, right-click on a quotation in the margin area, the

Project Explorer, the Quotation Manager or in the Quotation Reader and select
Rename.

If you select a quotation in the Quotation Manager, you see a preview of the quotation in the
panel below the quotation list. This applies to all data file formats.

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Resize a Quotation

Modifying the length of a quotation is easy.

If you select a quotation, e.g. by clicking on the bar in the margin area, you see
a white circle at the beginning and at the end of the quotation. Move the start
or end position to a different location depending on whether you want to
shorten or lengthen the quotation. This applies to all media types.

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Creating Quotations in PDF Documents

A text PDF file can contain images as well, like picture, graphs or tables. In ATLAS.ti you can create
quotations for text and images in PDF documents.

Text selection: Select the text just like you do in a Word file. Make sure you place the cursor right
next to a letter.

Selecting a graphical element: Like selecting an area in a graphic file, draw a rectangular area with
your mouse. See also Creating Graphic Quotations.

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Select a segment in the PDF document, right click and select the option Create
Free Quotation. Alternatively, you can also select the equivalent button in the
ribbon.

PDF files can be text or image files. Sometimes users accidentally add an image PDF and
wonder why they can only create graphic quotations and cannot select text. If this happens,
you need to re-create the PDF file, e.g. by letting an OCR scanner running over your PDF
image file. In a lot of PDF creators these days this is an option in the software, no additional
physical scan is needed.

How to create quotations in audio and video documents, see Creating Multimedia Quotations.

How to create quotations in image documents, see Creating Image Quotations.

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Creating Quotations in Image Documents

If you work with pictures, video or geo snapshots, or PDF image documents:

Move the mouse pointer to the upper left corner of the rectangular section that
you are going to create, hold down the left mouse button and drag the mouse
to the lower right corner of the rectangle. Release the mouse button. You have
now created a selection, and the rectangle will be highlighted.

Right click and select the option Create Free Quotation. Alternatively, you can
also select the equivalent button in the ribbon.

inst
To modify an image quotation, just re-size the rectangle.

You can preview graphical quotations in the Quotation Manager; they can be inserted into
networks, and they are included as graphical snippets in reports.

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Creating Quotations in PDF Documents

A text PDF file can contain images as well, like picture, graphs or tables. In ATLAS.ti you can create
quotations for text and images in PDF documents.

Text selection: Select the text just like you do in a Word file. Make sure you place the cursor right
next to a letter.

Selecting a graphical element: Like selecting an area in a graphic file, draw a rectangular area with
your mouse. See also Creating Graphic Quotations.

Select a segment in the PDF document, right click and select the option Create
Free Quotation. Alternatively, you can also select the equivalent button in the
ribbon.
warn
PDF files can be text or image files. Sometimes users accidentally add an
image PDF and wonder why they can only create graphic quotations and

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cannot select text. If this happens, you need to re-create the PDF file, e.g. by
letting an OCR scanner running over your PDF image file. In a lot of PDF
creators these days this is an option in the software, no additional physical
scan is needed.

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Working with Multimedia Data

In this section, the following options are discussed:

• Creating multimedia quotations

• Creating multimedia quotations while listening to the audio file or viewing the video file
• Display of multimedia quotations
• Coding multimedia quotations
• Activating and playing multimedia quotations
• Adjusting the size of multimedia quotations
• Renaming a multimedia quotation
• Capturing video snapshots as image documents for further analysis

Creating Multimedia Quotations

You can also immediately code multimedia files. However, as especially video files contain so much
more information as compared to text, it is often easier to first go through and segment the audio
or video file, i.e. creating quotations before coding.

To create an audio or video quotation, move your mouse pointer on top of the
audio waveform and mark a section by clicking on the left mouse button where
you want it to start. Then drag the cursor to the end position. The times of the
end and start positions are shown, as well as the total length of the segment.

As soon as you let go of the mouse, a quotation is created, and you see the blue quotation
boundary in the margin area

If you want to make a selection first and then create a quotation, you can change the default
settings. See Project Preferences. If you deactivate Automatically create new quotation on
selection, to create a quotation you need to hoover with the mouse over the selection and
click Create Quotation.

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Creating Multimedia Quotations while Listening / Watching

You can also create an audio or video quotation while listening to or viewing a
document. For this, you can use the buttons Mark Position and Create
Quotation buttons in the toolbar; or the short-cut keys (see below).

Using the Ribbon Buttons

inst
Play the video. If you find something interesting that you want to mark as
a quotation, click Mark Position. This set the start position. To set the end
point and create a quotation, click Create Quotation.

Continue listening / watching and setting quotations.

Using Short

To mark the start position: use (<) or (,)

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To create a quotation: use (>) or (.)

Which short-cut key to use depends on your keyboard. Use those keys where you do not have to
use Shift.

Play the video. If you find something interesting you want to mark as a
quotation, click on the (,) or the (<) key. This sets the start position.

To set the end position and create a quotation, click on the (.) or (>) key.

• A new quotation will be listed in the Quotation Manager, the Project Explorer or Quotation
Browser. The quotation ID consists of the number of the document plus a consecutive count
in chronological order by time when a quotation was created in the document. The quotation
ID 15:5 for examples means that this is a quotation in document 15, and it was the 5th
quotation that was created in the document.

• After the ID you see the quotation reference, which is the start position of the audio or video
quotation. The name field is empty. You can for instance add a short title for each multimedia
quotation, see below.

• Depending on the media type, the quotation icon changes.

Audio and video quotations can be easily recognized by their special icon.

Coding Multimedia Quotations

Coding multimedia quotations is not different from coding text or image documents:

Right-click the quotation and select Apply Codes. For further information see:
Coding Data.

Activating and Playing Multimedia Quotations

In the Margin Area

To play the quotation, double-click on the quotation bar, or hoover over the
audio waveform with the mouse and click on the play icon.

You can move the play-head with the mouse to any position within an audio or video file.

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From other Places

• You can double-click on a multimedia quotation in the Project Explorer, the Quotations
Browser or the Quotation Manager to play it in context.
• You can preview a multimedia quotation in the preview area of the Quotation Manager.
• You can preview a multimedia quotation if it is part of a hyperlink. See Working with
Hyperlinks.

Adjusting the Size of Multimedia Quotations

To adjust or change the length of the quotation, drag the start or end position
to the desired position.

Renaming a Multimedia Quotation

When you create audio or video quotation, the name field is empty. You can enter a name for
instance to add a short description of what the audio or video quotation is all about.

Right-click on the quotation in the margin area or in the Quotation Manager

and select the Rename option. This allows you to create a meaningful text
output of coded audio and video segments.
Use the comment area to add further information, e.g. describe the segment
and offer a first interpretation

See also Making Use of Quotation Name and Comment for Analytical Purposes.

See Example Reports for an instruction on how to create reports for named and commented
multimedia quotations.

Capturing Snapshots of Video Frames as Image Documents

If you want to analyze particular frames of your video in more detail, you can capture a snapshot.

Move the play head to the desired position in the video.

Click on the camera icon in ribbon, or right-click on the video and select the
option Capture Video Frame.
The snapshot is automatically added as a new image document to your
project. See Creating Quotations im Images for further information on how to
work with image files.

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Working with Quotations

Video Tutorial: Working with quotations.

Making Use of the Quotation Names and Comments for

Analytical Purposes
You can use the quotation name field for paraphrasing or summarizing the content of textual
quotations, as a title for video and image quotations, or for entering the location for geo quotations.

The quotation name can also be used for instance for the phase of line-by-line coding in Grounded
Theory, or for initial coding in Constructive Grounded Theory, or for other inductive approaches.
Instead of generating too many codes on a descriptive level, the quotation name can be used for
this type of coding.

Open the Quotation Manager into a new tab group next to the document you
are currently working on. See Working with Tabs and Tab Groups.

Create a quotation in the document. This quotation will also be added to the
Quotation Manager.

Right-click on a quotation in the Quotation Manager and select Rename, or

select F2, or select the rename button in the ribbon of the Quotation Manager.

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The example below shows an example where a name was added to add titles for video quotations:

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Further interpretations can be written into the comment field of the quotation. Below you see
an example where this feature was used extensively for a grounded theory analysis.

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If you are interested to read more about this study, you can read the following paper CAQDAS and
Grounded Theory Analysis, or the book chapter: Grounded Theory Analysis and CAQDAS: A Happy
Pairing or Remodeling GT to QDA.

See Example Reports for an instruction on how to create reports for named and commented
(multimedia) quotations.

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Reviewing Coded Quotations and Modify Coding

There are several ways how to review coded quotations:

• Double-click on a code anywhere. This opens the Quotation Reader - or gives an option to
open the Quotation Reader.

• Open the Quotation Manager and select a code in the side panel.

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Create a query in the Query tool, a Code Document Table, or a Code Co-occurrence Table
• and review quotations in the result lists.

For further information, see Quotation Reader.

Displaying Quotations in Context

Displaying quotations in context means that you can view a quotation that is listed in a browser or a
list in the context of the original data.

• Double-click on an entry in the Quotation Manager.

• Click on the quotation bar in the margin area.

• Double-click on the quotation in the Document sub-branch in the Project Explorer.

• Once you have coded data, quotations can also be retrieved via their codes. See Quotation
Reader.

• Quotations can be activated in networks. See Working With Networks.

• Quotations can be activated from a result list of a project search (see Project Search).

Deleting Quotations

To delete a single quotation, right-click on a quotation and select the Delete

option from the context menu.

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This option is available in all browsers, windows and lists where you see quotations, i.e. the Project
Explorer, the Quotation Reader, the Quotation Manager, in a network, or the margin area.

Deleting a quotation does not delete the data itself. Think of quotations like a layer on top of your
data. Deleting this layer does therefore not delete the underlying data. However, all other existing
links like links to codes, memos or hyperlinks will be removed when deleting a quotation.

Changing the Chronological Order of Quotations

The quotation ID numbers quotations in the chronological order when they have been created. For
various reasons, at times users want the quotations to be numbered in the sequential order as they
occur in the document.

When you delete quotations, the numbering is not automatically adjusted. Instead, they are gaps.
Renumbering the quotations also closes those gaps.

To renumber quotations:

Open the Quotation Manager and select the Renumber Quotations option in
the ribbon.

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Coding Data - Basic Concepts

“Coding means that we attach labels to 'segments of data' that depict what each segment is
about. Through coding, we raise analytic questions about our data from […]. Coding distills
data, sorts them, and gives us an analytic handle for making comparisons with other
segments of data” (Charmaz, 2014:4).

“Coding is the strategy that moves data from diffuse and messy text to organized ideas
about what is going on” (Richards and Morse, 2013:167).

"Coding is a core function in ATLAS.ti that lets you “tell” the software where the interesting
things are in your data. ... the main goal of categorizing your data is to tag things to define or
organize them. In the process of categorization, we compare data segments and look for
similarities. All similar elements can be grouped under the same name. By naming something,
we conceptualize and frame it at the same time" (Friese, 2019).

Independent Code / Category Code / Subcode

ATLAS.ti 22 offers you new ways to organize your codes in the code system. If you do not have the
need to organize your code into a hierarchy of higher and lower order codes, you can work with
independent codes. If you want to create a hierarchy of codes, you can make use of category
codes and subcodes. If some codes do not fit in any category, they can just remain independent
codes.

An additional way to organize your codes are folders. You can add independent codes and
categories with their subcodes to folders. Folders can also contain other folders.

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Below each of these types are explained in more detail:

Independent code: If you start coding your data, and you begin with creating some new codes,
those will be independent first level codes. They remain independent codes until you add them to a
category as subcode. The groundedness of an independent code is the number of quotations
coded by it.

Free code: A free code is also an independent code, but one that has not (yet) been used for
coding. Its groundedness is zero and it has no subcodes.

Category Code: A code becomes a category, when you drag & drop codes underneath it. These
can be independent codes or subcodes that you move from a different category. The category
itself does not code quotations. Therefore, you can only insert other codes as subcodes
underneath if the code is not linked to quotations.

The reason for this is that via the category code you can retrieve all quotations from all sub codes.
So, if you want an aggregated view of your data, just select the category. If you could apply the
category code and its subcodes to the same quotations, you would get duplicated quotations. This
is prevented by not allowing the category code to be used for coding.

The groundedness of a category code is the number of quotations coded by all of its subcodes.
Since you can apply several codes to the same quotation, the total for a category can differ from
simply adding up quotations for all subcodes. Both sums are only equal, if you use subcodes in a
mutual exclusive manner, as for example required for inter-code agreement analysis

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For all previous ATLAS.ti users, because the category code can retrieve all quotations from
its subcodes, the semantic operators SUB, UP and SIBLING are no longer needed and have
been removed from the query tool.

Subcode: A subcode is a code that is sorted under a category code. No further subcodes can be
created under subcodes. The reason for this is methodical rather than technical. Each code should
only appear once in a code system. See: How to build a code system. If you use a deeper
hierarchy, you will likely start duplicating and even multiplying codes at the lower levels. Not only
does this make your code system long and difficult to maintain, it also prevents you from
performing effective comparative analysis.

Folder: Folders help you organize your codes. You can move independent codes and categories
with their subcodes into folders. A folder can also contain folders, as many as you want. Folders
cannot be used to code data.

The number behind a folder, is the number of quotations coded by independent codes or sub
codes that are contained within the folder. As you can apply multiple codes to the same quotation
(i.e., multi-value coding), the total can be different from adding up all the numbers for all
independent and all subcodes.

How Groundedness is Counted

Independent Code: The groundedness of an independent code is the number of quotations coded
by it.

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Category Code: The groundedness of a category code is the number of quotations coded by all of
its subcodes. Since you can apply several codes to the same quotation, the total for a category can
differ from simply adding up quotations for all subcode. Both sums are only equal, if you use
subcodes in a mutual exclusive manner, as for example required for inter-code agreement analysis

The image above shows the category positive effects. Adding up the quotations coded by all
subcodes, the sum is 44. The groundedness for the category however is 41. This means there are 3
quotations that are coded with more than one of the subcodes. This is illustrated in the image
below:

Subcode: The groundedness of a subcode is the number of quotations coded by it. For example,
the subcode life is richer is coding 6 quotations.

Folder: The groundedness of a folder is the number of quotations coded by independent codes or
subcodes that are contained within the folder. As you can apply multiple codes to the same
quotation (i.e., multi-value coding), the total can be different from adding up all the numbers for all
independent and all sub codes or categories. In the above example the folder Experience of
Parenthood has a groundedness of 139 quotations. This is lower than the sum for the three
categories contained in the folder (42 + 62 + 41 = 145). Again, this means that some quotations are
coded by more than one of the codes in the folder. Counted are only unique quotations and not the
number of codings.

How Density is Counted

The code density is unrelated to the code hierarchy and the number of codings. Density is defined
as the number of linkages between two codes. You can link two codes to each other via drag-and-
drop, or as recommended, in a network. See the chapter on networks for further information.

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Creating and Applying Codes

Video Tutorial: How to code data.

Creating New Codes without Coding

You can create codes that have not (yet) been used for coding. Such codes are called "free" codes.
See Coding Data - Basic Concepts. This can for example be useful when ideas for codes come to
mind during normal coding work and that cannot be applied to the current segment but will be
useful later. If you already have a list of codes, possibly including code descriptions and groupings
elsewhere, you can use the option: Importing A List Of Codes.

In the Home tab, click on New Entities and from the drop-down menu select
New Code(s). The short-cut key combination is Ctrl+K.

You can also create new codes in the Code Manager.

Click on the button New Codes in the ribbon of the Code Manager.

Coding with a New Code

Open a document and highlight a data segment, i.e., a piece of text, audio or
video data, an area in a graphic document, or a location in a geo document.

Right-click and select Apply Codes, or use the short-cut Ctrl+J, or click on the
'Apply Codes' button in the ribbon.

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Enter a name and click on the plus button or press enter. After the code is
created, you can enter a definition in the comment field.

You can continue to add more codes, or simply continue to select another data segment. The
dialogue closes automatically.

for more information on working with data other than text, see Working With Multimedia
Data and Working With Geo Docs.

Code In-Vivo
Use in-vivo coding when the text itself contains a useful and meaningful name for a code.

In-Vivo coding can only be applied to textual primary documents.

In-vivo coding creates a quotation from the selected text AND uses the selected text as the code
name. If the selected text's boundaries are not exactly what you want for the quotation, modifying

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the quotation's "spread" is often the next step after creating the in-vivo code. See Working with
Codes > Modifying the length of a coded segment.

Select a segment in a text document, right-click and select Code in Vivo, or

the corresponding button in the ribbon (Windows) / toolbar (Mac).

"Over-dependence on in-vivo codes ... 'can limit your ability to transcend to more conceptual
and theoretical levels of analysis and insight' (Saldana, 2009:77). Where they are descriptive
and unique to one person, the coder needs to move on from them quite quickly to generate a
more analytical code." (Bazeley, 2013:166).

Display of Coded Data Segments in the Margin Area

The coded segment is displayed in the margin area. A blue bar marks the size of the coded
segment (= quotation), and the code name appears next to it. When coding data in this way, a new
quotation is created automatically, and the code is linked to this quotation.

The yellow post-it within the code icon indicates that a comment has been written for this code.

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Applying Existing Codes

Existing codes can be applied using the Coding Dialogue or via Drag & Drop.

Using the Coding Dialogue

Highlight a data segment, right-click and select Apply Codes, or simply

double-click on the quotation.

It is easy to quickly jump to the code you are looking for by entering the first few letters of the code
in the search field.

Select one of the existing codes, click on the plus button or press Enter.

Drag-and-Drop Coding
Drag-and-Drop Coding is possible from the following locations:

• the Codes branch from the Project Explorer

• the Code Browser in the navigation panel.
• the Code Manager

At the end of this chapter, you find other Drag-and-Drop options that are also available for your
convenience.

Drag & Drop Coding from the Code Browser

To open the Code Browser, go to the Home ribbon and select Codes from the
Navigator section. The search field in the Code Browser facilitates handling a
longer code list. Rather than scrolling the list, you enter the first letters of a
code.

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Highlight a data segment, select one or more codes from the code list and
drag the code onto the highlighted data segment.

By the way, in case you were wondering, code density is not a value that is calculated by the
software. It goes up, when the researcher begins to link codes to each other. See Working
With Networks.

Drag & Drop Coding from the Code Manager

When using the Code Manager for drag & drop coding, it is recommended to place it next to the
data you are coding into a new tab group. See Working With Docked And Floated Windows. You
can quickly access codes using code groups to filter the code list, or by using the search field. In
the Code Manager you can see and edit code comments.

Highlight a data segment, select one or more codes from the code list and
drag the code onto the highlighted data segment.

Quick Coding
Quick Coding assigns the last used code to the current data segment. This is an efficient method
for the consecutive coding of segments using the most recently used code.

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Highlight a data segment or click on an existing quotation.

Right click and select Quick Coding from the context menu, or use the short-
cut Ctrl+L. Another option is to click on the Quick Coding button in the ribbon.

Document Ribbon when Coding

Create Free Quotation: Use of you want to create a quotation without coding it.

Apply Codes: Opens the Coding Dialogue.

Code In vivo: In-vivo coding creates a quotation from the selected text AND uses the selected text
as the code name.

Quick Coding: Quick Coding assigns the last used code to the current data segment.

Search & Code: You can access the four Search & Code functions from here:

Focus Group Coding: You can start the Focus Group Coding function from here.

Rename: This allows you to rename a selected quotation.

Delete: Select a code in the margin area or a quotation. Only the quotation will be deleted.

Unlink: You can unlink codes from a quotation, or a hyperlink using this option.

Reverse Link: Reverses the link of a selected hyperlink.

Relation: Opens the Relation Manager.

Comment: Click the drop-down arrow and select which comment you want to view or edit.

Word Cloud: Creates a word cloud from the document.

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Word List: Creates a word list from the document.

Concepts: Searches for concepts in your data to review and autocode. See Concept Search.

Search Document: Searches the content of the document.

Edit: Starts edit mode, so you can modify the content of the document. When selected the ribbon
changes, and you see the available edit options:

Print: Click on this option if you want to print the document as you see it on your screen including
the margin area. After clicking this option, the following printer dialog opens:

Printer: Select if you want to send the output to a printer or whether you want to save it as PDF
document.

Orientation: The default selection is 'Landscape', as this is likely the best option to see the
document and all codes in the margin area.

Margin space: Under 'Margin space', you can adjust the width of the margin if you need more or
less space.

Pages: You can print all pages, or a page range.

With the 'Previous' and 'Next Page' buttons you can preview all pages.

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The print with margin option is available for text, PDF and image documents.

Keyboard Shortcuts For Coding

Coding Short-Cut
Create Free Code Ctrl+K
Apply Codes Ctrl+J
Quick Coding Ctrl+L
Code In-Vivo Shift + Ctrl + V

More Drag-And-Drop Options

• You can drag-and-drop quotations in the Quotation Manager to a code in the side-panel in
the Quotation Manager.

• You can drag-and-drop quotations from the Quotation Manager to a code in Code Manager.

• You can drag-and-drop one or more codes to a quotation in the Quotation Manager.

• You can drag-and-drop one or more codes to a quotation in the Quotation Browser in the
Navigation Panel.

• You can drag-and-drop quotations from the Quotation Browser to a code in Code Manager.

• You can drag-and-drop quotations from the Quotation Browser in the Navigation panel to a
code in side panel of the Quotation Manager.

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Writing Code Comments

Code comments can be used for various types of purposes. The most common usage is to use
them for a code definition. If you work in teams, you may also want to add a coding rule, or an
example quote. If you work inductively, you can use code comments to write down first ideas of
how you want to apply this code. You can also use it to write up summaries of all segments coded
with this code and your interpretation about it. There are several ways to write a code comment.

• Adding a code comment when creating a new code in the coding dialog:

Enter a new code name and click on the + to create the code. Now you can
enter a description or code definition in the comment field.

• Select a code in the Project Explorer or the Code Browser. The comment field is shown below
the list.

• In the margin area, you can double-click on a code to open the editor for writing a comment
editor. Another option is to right-click on a code and select the Edit Comment option from
the context menu. You can also click on the Edit Comment button in the ribbon of the
contextual Code tab.

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• In the Code Manager is open, you can use the comment field at the bottom of the window.
Note that you can switch between seeing bar charts or the comments.

Another option is to right-click on a code anywhere and select the Edit Comment option from the
context menu.

All codes that have a comment shows a little yellow dot on top right-hand side of the code
icon.

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Working with Codes

Modifying the Length of a Coded Segment

Select the quotation by clicking on the quotation bar or code in the margin
area. Then move the handle in form of a little white circles to the right or left, or
up and down, depending on whether you want to shorten or lengthen the
quotation.

Removing a Coding
This option is the reverse function of coding. It removes the links between codes and quotations.
Unlike the delete function, neither codes nor quotations are removed; only the association between
the code, and the quotation is removed.

In the Margin Area

Right-click on the code in the margin area and select the option Unlink from
the context menu.

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In the Coding Dialogue

Double-click on quotation in the margin area. This opens the Coding Dialogue.
Click on Applied Codes to quickly see which codes have been applied to the
quotation. Click on the button with the minus (-) to remove a code.

Replacing a Code via Drag & Drop

If you want to replace a code that is linked to a data segment:

You can drag and drop another code from either the Project Explorer, Code
Browser, or the Code Manager on top of it.

Adding, Changing and Removing Code Color

Via the ribbon

To change the code color, select one or multiple codes in the Code Manager
and click on the Change Color button in the Code ribbon. Select one of the
offered colors.

To remove code color, select one or multiple codes in the Code Manager, click
on the Change Color button in the Code tab and click on Remove color.

Code color can also be modified in a network. See Further Options in Networks.

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Via the context menu

Select one or multiple codes in the Code Manager, the Project Explorer or
Code Browser, right-click and select Change Color from the context menu.
Select one of the offered colors.

The default color palette is suitable also for colorblind people. Additional colors can be
added if you import a list of codes from Excel. See Importing code lists.

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Renaming a Code

Right-click on a code in the margin area and select the Rename option from
the context menu.

Other places where you can rename a code are:

In the Project Explorer, the Code Browser, or Code Manager, right-click on a

code and select the Rename option. In the Code Manager, you can also click
the Rename button in the ribbon. Another option is to click the F2 key.

Deleting One or Multiple Code(s)

In the Project Explorer, the Code Browser, or Code Manager, right-click on a

code and select the Delete option. In the Code Manager, you can also click on
the Delete button in the ribbon.

About Renaming, Deleting and Unlinking Codes

Renaming and deleting codes are procedures that seem trivial, but understanding the scope of
these operations can be a problem for new users. For both operations you must understand, that
there is only ONE code, for example 'source of happiness: children' in a given project, even if you
applied this code many times.

In the margin are, you may see the code appear many times while scrolling through your document.
In fact, you are seeing the codings for this code. Technically speaking, these are links between a
quotation represented by a blue bar and the code, represented by its name and icon.

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Removing a coding in the margin area (i.e., unlinking the code) is like erasing a word in the margin
of a paper document with an eraser. It only affects one coding, i.e., one specific occurrence of the
code. All other occurrences of the same code are untouched. The effect of the operation is local.

By renaming or removing a code from a project, you are affecting every occurrence of the code
throughout the entire project. The effect is global. Renaming the code will instantly change all the
code links in the margin to reflect the new name. Deleting it will remove all occurrences in the
margin (and from all other contexts in which it was engaged, like networks, groups, etc.).

Duplicating a Code
It is also possible to duplicate codes with all its linkages. The duplicated code is a perfect clone of
the original code including color, comment, code-quotation links, code memo links and code-code
links. Duplicating a code can be a useful option to clean up or modify a code system.

To duplicate a code, open the Code Manager, select one or more codes, right-
click and select the Duplicate Code(s) option from the context menu. Another
option is to select the Duplicate Code(s) button in the ribbon. The clone has
the same name as the original code plus a consecutive number, i.e., (2).

This option is also available in the Network Editor. See Further Options in Networks.

Writing Code Comments

Code comments can be used for various types of purposes. The most common usage is to use
them for a code definition. If you work in teams, you may also want to add a coding rule, or an
example quote. If you work inductively, you can use code comments to write down first ideas of
how you want to apply this code. You can also use it to write up summaries of all segments coded
with this code and your interpretation about it. There are several ways to write a code comment.

• Adding a code comment when creating a new code in the coding dialog:

Enter a new code name and click on the + to create the code. Now you can
enter a description or code definition in the comment field.

• Select a code in the Project Explorer or the Code Browser. The comment field is shown below
the list.

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• In the margin area, you can double-click on a code to open the editor for writing a comment
editor. Another option is to right-click on a code and select the Edit Comment option from
the context menu. You can also click on the Edit Comment button in the ribbon of the
contextual Code tab.

• In the Code Manager is open, you can use the comment field at the bottom of the window.
Note that you can switch between seeing bar charts or the comments.

Another option is to right-click on a code anywhere and select the Edit Comment option from the
context menu.

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All codes that have a comment shows a little yellow dot on top right-hand side of the code
icon.

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Retrieving Coded Data

Video Tutorial: Retrieving coded data.

From the Project Explorer, Code Manager or Code Browser

Double-click a code. This open the Quotation Reader and you can review all
codings.

If you prefer to read the data in context, you can dock the Quotation Reader to the right or left-
hand side of your screen in single line format. To do so:

Select the option Dock to Navigation Area in the ribbon:

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Simple Retrieval in the Margin Area

If you double-click on a code in the margin area, the comment field opens.
From there you can access the quotations coded with the code.

Simple Boolean Queries in The Quotation Manager

Open the Quotation Manager.

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Select a code in the filter area. If you have a long list of codes, you can enter a
few letters into the Search Code field to reduce the list to only the codes you
are looking for:

The list of quotations only shows the quotations of the selected code. If you click on a quotation, it
will be shown in the preview area. If you double-click, the quotation will be shown in the context of
the document.

The yellow bar on top shows the code(s) you are using as filter.

When selecting two or more codes in the side panel, the filter is extended to an OR query: Show
quotations coded with of ANY of the codes.....

Click on the blue underlined any operator. This opens a drop-down, and you
can change between ANY and ALL.

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• ANY: Show all quotations linked to any of the selected codes.

• ALL Show quotations where all the selected codes apply. This means that two or more codes
have been applied to the exact same quotation.

If you want to export the results, click on either the Report or Excel Export button in the ribbon.
Find more detail see Creating Reports.

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Creating Categories and Subcodes

Video Tutorial: Building a code hierarchy. If you want to sort your codes into higher and lower order
codes, you can make use of categories and subcodes. An additional way to organize your codes
are folders. Folders can contain other folders. This gives you multiple levels of organizing your
codes. Only independent codes and subcodes can contain coded data. The reason for this is
methodical rather than technical. If you use a deeper hierarchy, you will likely start duplicating and
even multiplying codes at the lower levels. Not only does this make your code system long and
difficult to maintain, it also prevents you from performing effective comparative analysis. Below we
quote just one of the many authors who offer this advice:

"If you have a typical project of moderate complexity, it should require no more than 10 top-
level [parent] categories" to cover the topic [...]. Furthermore, most code systems do not go
more than two or three levels deep. If they do, it is likely that the categories being used are
no longer true subcategories of the higher-order categories they are under; and, on a
practical level, it becomes inconvenient for the coder to remember, locate, and effectively
use them" (Bazeley, 2013. p. 183).

See also: How to build a code system.

An additional way to organize your codes are folders. You can add independent codes and
categories with their subcodes to folders. Folders can also contain other folders. This allows you to
group codes under themes or topics that are too abstract anyway to be used for coding.

Below is an example showing a 3 level hierarchy, illustrated using the ATLAS.ti network function:

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Creating Categories with Subcodes

There are two ways to create a category: by moving codes via drag & drop under a free code, or by
splitting a code that already has codings.

Moving Codes under a Free Code

Create a new code.

Select one or more codes in the code list using the common selection
techniques for multi selections.

Drag the codes to the newly created code. A context menu opens. Select the
first option: Build Code Hierarchy:

Once you have added subcodes to an independent code, it becomes a category. The code icon
changes. See image below.

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Creating a Category via Splitting

Select a code that you want to split into subcodes.

Right-click and select the option Split into Subcodes, or click on the dropdown
next to Split in the ribbon and select Split into Subcodes from there. The Split
Code tool opens.

Click on Add Codes to enter the labels for the subcodes. After entering the
first code, press the down arrow to move to the next entry field to enter the
second label, and so on. Once you are done, click on Add.

By default, a subcode with the name Undecided is added to the first column of the table. All
quotations are added to this subcode. The next step is to assign the quotations to the new
subcodes you have created. If a quotation does not fit into any of these subcodes, you can just
leave it in the subcode 'Undecided'.

This is how you assign the quotations to one or more subcodes:

Select a quotation. Its content is shown at the bottom of the screen. Assign the
quotation by clicking on the checkbox of the subcodes that apply.

To speed up the process, you can press the number keys (1,2,3, usw.) to assign the selected
quotation to subcode 1, 2, 3, usw.

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Mutually exclusive: If you do not want to allow that a quotation is coded with two of the subcodes,
activate the option Mutually Exclusive. This is a requirement for some content analysis approaches
and for calculating inter-coder agreement. See Requirements for Coding.

Once all quotations have been assigned to one or more subcodes, click on
Split Code. The code that you split will be turned into a category. This is
indicated by the changed code icon. If you click on the drop-down arrow in
front of the code, you can expand the category to see the subcodes.

The groundedness of a category code is the number of quotations coded by all of its subcodes.
Since you can apply several codes to the same quotation, the total for a category can differ from
simply adding up quotations for all subcodes. Both sums are only equal, if you use subcodes in a
mutual exclusive manner.

Creating category and subcodes in the coding dialog

When double-clicking on a quotation in the margin, or when highlighting a data segment and
selecting the Apply Codes option from the context menu, the coding dialog opens. You can create
a new category with a subcode directly here in the dialog, or add a new subcode to an existing
category.

Adding a category with subcode

In order to create a category code with a subcode, you simply have to enter as
label: category name: subcode name:

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Adding a new subcode to an already existing category

Start typing the name of the category code. This filters the code list.

Select one of the existing sub codes, highlight the subcode name and type
over the new name, or delete that part of the name first and then add the new
subcode name.

Easy coding with subcodes of a category

There is a very easy way to apply subcodes to your data via drag & drop coding.

Highlight a section of your data and drag & drop a category code from other
the project explorer, code browser or code manager onto the text.

A window pops up showing you the list of subcodes. Select one of the subcodes to code.

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If you select an existing quotation and one or more subcodes of the selected category have
already been applied, this is indicated by a check mark.

How to move subcodes out of a category

You have two options, you can move subcodes from one category to another category via drag &
drop.

If you want to move subcodes out of a category to the first level, they become independent codes
again. If you move all subcodes, the category code also becomes an independent code again.

Highlight the subcodes you want to move and drag them to the left side until
you see a black vertical line, then drop:

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The subcodes will be sorted into your code list in alphabetic order. The groundedness of the
category wil be adjusted. In the example illustrated below, all subcodes were moved out of the
category; the category has become an independent code with groundedness 0:

Organizing Codes in Folders

Independent codes or categories with their subcodes can be organized into folders. In contrast to
code groups, a code or a category cannot be in more than one folder. The folder structure is
hierarchical, code groups are not.

Folders can be contained in other folders. There might be projects that require a fourth level of
organization. Below you find an example with three levels. See also the recommendations in the
chapter How to build an effective code system.

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How to create folders

In the Code Manager ribbon, click on the New Folder icon.

Or:

Select one or more codes or categories, right-click and select the option New
Folder with Selection from the context menu.

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If you delete a folder, all content in the folder is also deleted.

How to move items between folders or out of a folder

You have two options: You can move independent codes, categories, or subcodes from one folder
to another folder via drag & drop. The second option is to highlight all items that you want to move,
and drag them to the left side until you see a black vertical line; then drop.

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Exploring Coded Data

To explore the words that have been used in the quotations linked to one or more codes, you can
create a word list or word cloud. Word lists and word clouds are described in detail in the section
Exploring Data.

To create a Word Cloud or Word List, right-click on a code or code group

somewhere in your project and select either the word cloud or word list option
from the context menu. Another option is to use the ribbon button in the Code
Manager.

You can also create a Word Cloud or Word List for selected quotations:

Open the Quotation Manager, select one or more codes in the side panel to
retrieve their quotations. Click the Word Cloud or Word List button in the
Quotation Manager ribbon.

You can aggregate the words by activating the two options 'Ignore Case' and 'Infer base forms'. The
latter summarizes for instance 'child' and 'children', or 'bring', 'brings' and 'brought'. If you use this
option you can hoover over a word, and it will tell you which words have been combined under the
term.

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Parts of Speech
You can also select to only display words that belong to a certain category of words, the so-called
'parts of speech'.

A part of speech is a term used in traditional grammar for one of the main categories into which
words are classified according to their functions in sentences, such as nouns or verbs. Also known
as word classes, these are the building blocks of grammar.

Commonly listed English parts of speech are noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronoun, preposition,
conjunction, interjection, numeral, article, or determiner.

Noun

Nouns are a person, place, thing, or idea. They can take on a myriad of roles in a sentence, from
the subject of it all to the object of an action. They are capitalized when they're the official name of
something or someone, called proper nouns in these cases. Examples: pirate, Caribbean, ship,
freedom, Captain Jack Sparrow.

Pronoun

Pronouns stand in for nouns in a sentence. They are more generic versions of nouns that refer only
to people. Examples: ou, he, she, it, ours, them, who, which, anybody, ourselves.

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Verb

Verbs are action words that tell what happens in a sentence. They can also show a sentence
subject's state of being (is, was). Verbs change form based on tense (present, past) and count
distinction (singular or plural). Examples: sing, dance, believes, seemed, finish, eat, drink, be,
became

Adjective

Adjectives describe nouns and pronouns. They specify which one, how much, what kind, and more.
Adjectives allow readers and listeners to use their senses to imagine something more clearly.
Examples: hot, lazy, funny, unique, bright, beautiful, poor, smooth.

Adverb

Adverbs describe verbs, adjectives, and even other adverbs. They specify when, where, how, and
why something happened and to what extent or how often. Examples: softly, lazily, often, only,
hopefully, softly, sometimes.

Preposition

Prepositions show spacial, temporal, and role relations between a noun or pronoun and the other
words in a sentence. They come at the start of a prepositional phrase, which contains a preposition
and its object. Examples: up, over, against, by, for, into, close to, out of, apart from.

Conjunction

Conjunctions join words, phrases, and clauses in a sentence. There are coordinating, subordinating,
and correlative conjunctions. Examples: and, but, or, so, yet, with.

Articles and Determiners

Articles and determiners function like adjectives by modifying nouns, but they are different from
adjectives in that they are necessary for a sentence to have proper syntax. Articles and
determiners specify and identify nouns, and there are indefinite and definite articles. Examples:
articles: a, an, the; determiners: these, that, those, enough, much, few, which, what.

Some traditional grammars have treated articles as a distinct part of speech. Modern grammars,
however, more often include articles in the category of determiners, which identify or quantify a
noun. Even though they modify nouns like adjectives, articles are different in that they are essential
to the proper syntax of a sentence, just as determiners are necessary to convey the meaning of a
sentence, while adjectives are optional.

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Interjection

Interjections are expressions that can stand on their own or be contained within sentences. These
words and phrases often carry strong emotions and convey reactions. Examples: ah, whoops, ouch,
yabba dabba do!

Open and Closed Word Classes

The parts of speech are commonly divided into open classes (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and
adverbs) and closed classes (pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, articles/determiners, and
interjections). The idea is that open classes can be altered and added to as language develops and
closed classes are pretty much set in stone. For example, new nouns are created every day, but
conjunctions never change.

In contemporary linguistics, the label part of speech has generally been discarded in favor of the
term word class or syntactic category. These terms make words easier to qualify objectively based
on word construction rather than context. Within word classes, there is the lexical or open class
and the function or closed class.

Source: The 9 Parts of Speech: Definitions and Examples

In ATLAS.ti, you can select one or more of the following parts of speech:

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All other options are explained in the chapter Exploring Text Data

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Merging Codes

Video Tutorial:

You may begin your coding very close to the data generating lots of codes. In order not to drown in
a long list of codes, you need to aggregate those codes from time to time, which means merging
and renaming them to reflect the higher abstract level. Another reason for merging is that you
realize that two codes have the same meaning, but you have used different labels.

Moving all low frequency codes under a category code to "clean up" is not a good solution.
You may start by using descriptive labels for independent codes, but you need to aggregate
them at some point, usually after having gone through your first few sources. If you have too
many of those low frequency codes, you create a proliferating coding system that becomes
unmanageable (Bazeley, 2013). In addition, it will also not be very useful for your analysis.

There are a few exceptions as always. Codes with low frequencies that capture an exceptionally
insightful thought, for instance, don't and also should not be merged. There should only be a few of
those and not dozens or hundreds.

This is how you do it:

Select two or more codes in the Code Manager and drag them to the code
where you want to merge them into. A menu opens. Select the second option
Merge code ... into ...

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A comment is automatically inserted into the target code that provides an audit trail of which codes
have been merged. If the codes that are merged had a comment, these comments are also added
to the target code.

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Another option is to select the Merge Codes option from the context menu, or the ribbon.

Select two or more codes in the Code Manager and click on the Merge button
in the ribbon (or right-click and select the Merge option from the context
menu).

Next, select the target code into which all other codes should be merged, and
click on the Merge Codes button.

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It is also possible to use the network editor for merging codes. This provides a visual space
where you can arrange your codes, review, sort and order them and decide which once to
merge. See Networks: Further Options.

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Splitting a Code
"Inevitably, not all codes you produce will continue to prove useful. Some will be too general,
others too specific to one or two segments of data (see Merging Codes). With the exception
of contextual codes, a category that is so broad or so vaguely defined that it codes a very
large number of passages or very lengthy passages is less likely to be useful in analysis"
(Bazeley, 2013:185).

Splitting a code is necessary if you have been lumping together many quotations under a broad
theme. This is a suitable approach for a first run through to get an idea about your data. At some
point those codes need to be split up into codes with a lower number of codings or into subcodes
of a category to be meaningful for analysis.

This can be done in two ways:

1. Splitting into independent codes

2. Splitting into subcodes (creating a category)

Splitting a code into independent codes

Select a code that you want to split in the Code Manager, and click the Split
Code button in the ribbon. Or select a code in the Code Manager, Project
Explorer or Code Browser, right-click and select Split from the context menu.

In the Split Code tool, you see the list of the quotations coded with the code.

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Click on New Codes to enter the labels for the subcodes. After entering the
first code, press the down arrow to move to the next entry field to enter the
second label, and so on. Once you are done, click on Create.

By default, the name of the original codes is added to the first column of the table. All quotations
are still linked to it. The next step is to assign the quotations to the new codes you have created. If
a quotation does not fit into any of these new codes, you can just leave it linked to the original
code.

This is how you assign the quotations to one or more subcodes:

Select a quotation. Its content is shown at the bottom of the screen. Assign the
quotation by clicking on the checkbox of the codes that apply. The quotation is
automatically unlinked from the code that you are splitting.

To speed up the process, you can press the number keys (1,2,3, usw.) to assign the selected
quotation to subcode 1, 2, 3, usw.

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After you have distributed some or all of the quotations into sub codes, click on
Split Code. Now the new codes are created, and the quotations are assigned
accordingly.

It is not required that you assign all quotations to the new codes. Quotations can remain linked to
the original code, or also to the original code and any of the newly created codes.

Options

• Copy Comments: Select if you want all sub codes to have the same comment as the code
you split.

• Copy links: Select if you want all sub codes to inherit existing links to other codes or memos.

• Mutually exclusive: If activated, you can assign a quotation to only one sub code. This is a
requirement for some content analysis approaches and for calculating inter-coder
agreement.

Mutually Exclusive Coding

If you do not want to allow that a quotation is coded with two of the codes, activate the option
Mutually Exclusive. This is a requirement for some content analysis approaches and for calculating
inter-coder agreement. See Requirements for Coding.

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Splitting a code into a category and subcodes

Select a code that you want to split into subcodes.

Right-click and select the option Split into Subcodes, or click on the dropdown
next to Split in the ribbon and select Split into Subcodes from there. The Split
Code tool opens.

Click on New Codes to enter the labels for the subcodes. After entering the
first code, press the down arrow to move to the next entry field to enter the
second label, and so on. Once you are done, click on Create.

By default, a subcode with the name Undecided is added to the first column of the table. All
quotations are added to this subcode. The next step is to assign the quotations to the new
subcodes you have created. If a quotation does not fit into any of these subcodes, you can just
leave it in the subcode 'Undecided'.

This is how you assign the quotations to one or more subcodes:

Select a quotation. Its content is shown at the bottom of the screen. Assign the
quotation by clicking on the checkbox of the subcodes that apply. The
quotation is automatically unlinked from the subcode 'Undecided'.

To speed up the process, you can press the number keys (1,2,3, usw.) to assign the selected
quotation to subcode 1, 2, 3, usw.

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Mutually exclusive: If you do not want to allow that a quotation is coded with two of the subcodes,
activate the option Mutually Exclusive. This is a requirement for some content analysis approaches
and for calculating inter-coder agreement. See Requirements for Coding.

Once all quotations have been assigned to one or more subcodes, click on
Split Code. The code that you split will be turned into a category. This is
indicated by the changed code icon. If you click on the drop-down arrow in
front of the code, you can expand the category to see the subcodes.

The groundedness of a category code is the number of quotations coded by all of its subcodes.
Since you can apply several codes to the same quotation, the total for a category can differ from
simply adding up quotations for all subcodes. Both sums are only equal, if you use subcodes in a
mutual exclusive manner.

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Display of Codes in the Project Explorer and

Code Browser
In the Project Explorer under the main Codes branch, all codes are listed. If you only want to see
the list of codes, go to the Home ribbon and select Codes from the Navigator section. The number
behind a main codes branch, e.g., (11) is the total number of first level entries. These can be
folders, categories and independent codes.

The number behind a folder, is the number of quotations coded by independent codes or sub
codes that are contained within the folder. As you can apply multiple codes to the same quotation
(i.e., multi-value coding), the total can be different from adding up all the numbers for all
independent and all subcodes.

The number behind a category code is the number of quotations coded by all of its sub codes. As
you can apply multiple codes to the same quotation, the total for a category can be different from
adding up the numbers for each subcode. It is only the same if you apply subcodes in a mutual
exclusive manner, as for example required for inter-code agreement analysis

IMAGE

View Options the Code Manager

There are three View Modes: You can view codes in list view (default), as cloud or in form of a bar
chart:

Code Cloud

Click on the button Cloud to visualize your code list in form of a word cloud:

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If you right-click on a code, the same context menu opens as in 'Details' view. Thus, in the cloud
view you can start the same actions as in the regular view. You can for instance rename codes, split
or merge codes, or open a network on one or multiple codes.

Code List as Bar Chart

Select Bar Chart to visualize your code list in form of a bar chart:

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The codes in the bar chart view also have a context menu. Thus, also from here, you can start the
same actions as in standard view. Select multiple codes if you want to merge codes.

The chart "Code Distribution by Document" that you see below the code list is explained in
the chapter Analysing Code Distributions ,

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Display Code List as Code Cloud or Bar Chart

An alternative way to view your list of codes is in form of a code cloud or a bar chart.

Code Cloud

In the Code Manager, select the Views tab and from there the Cloudoption.

The image above shows a code list filtered by a code group that contains three categories and
their subcodes. The subcodes are displayed with their long names in the code cloud (category:
subcode).

Code List as Bar Chart

Select the option Bar Chart to visualize your code list in form of a bar chart.

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If you right-click on a code, the same context menu opens as in 'List' view. Thus, in the cloud view
you can start the same actions as in the regular view. You can for instance rename codes, split or
merge codes, or open a network on one or multiple codes.

Printing the Code-Cloud or the Bar Chart View

You can print both the 'Cloud' view and the 'Bar Chart'. In order to do so:

Select the Image button from the main Codes tab.

The image will be saved as jpg file in HD resolution 1920 x 1080 and 96 dpi.

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Working With Code Groups

Code groups help in organizing codes, they make it easy to access specific codes from a long list
of codes, and they allow you to create any kind of filter you need for querying your data.

Code groups can be created in two ways - you can create them in the Code Group Manager, or in
the side panel of the Code Manager.

To create a group in the Code Manager, click on the Home tab and open the
Code Manager by clicking on the Codes button.

Select a few codes and drag them into the filter area on the left-hand side.

After dropping the codes, enter a name for the code group and click on the
button Create.

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When you click on the newly created code group, only the codes from this
group will show up in the list on the right-hand side. This allows you to quickly
access codes in your list without having to scroll the list all the time. Above the
list of codes, you see a beige bar that shows by which group(s) you have
filtered:

To show all codes again, close the yellow pane that shows up on top of the
code list when selecting a group.

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For more information on how to work with groups, see Working With Groups.

If you are interested in learning about the differences between codes, code groups and smart
codes, please view this video.

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Importing and Exporting a List of Codes

Exporting the List of Codes

Use this option if you want to export a list of codes for re-use in another ATLAS.ti project, or in
another software. For the latter, you need to use the QDPX export option. For further information
see the chapter on Universal Data Exchange

To export all codes with comments and groups for use in another ATLAS.ti
project, select the Import & Export tab and from there Export Codebook /
Export to Excel.

Select a location where you find to save the file, and decide whether the Excel file should contain
headers for codes, comments and groups, and whether to open the list in Excel immediately.

Importing the List of Codes

For purposes of creating a code book for a report or appendix, we recommend using the
Export option offered in the Code Manager. This export is already formatted. See Report
Examples.

Importing an already existing code book can be useful for a number of reasons:

• To prepare a stock of predefined codes in the framework of a given theory. This is especially
useful in the context of a team project when creating a Master project.
• To code in a "top-down" (or deductive) way with all necessary concepts already at hand. This
complements the "bottom-up" orinductive coding stage in which concepts emerge from the
data.

You can prepare a code book including code descriptions, code groups and colors in Excel and
import the Excel file. This is how you need to prepare the Excel file:

You can enter headings like Code, Code Definition, Code Group 1, Code Group 2, but you do not
have to. The headers can be in any language. The columns are interpreted in the following order,
whether you add headings or not:

• column 1: code name

• column 2: code description (comment)
• column 3: code group 1
• column 4: code group 2
• all subsequent columns: further code groups

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• All single codes are imported as independent codes.

• All codes that have the same prefix will be imported as subcodes. Based on the prefix,
ATLAS.ti determines the category codes. As in the example shown here: 'benefit' will become
a category code; all codes like 'benefit: creative' or 'benefit: collaboration', will become
subcodes of benefit.
• If you color the code names, this color is used in ATLAS.ti as code color.

Folders cannot be imported via the Excel file. They need to be added later.

To import the Excel file, select the Import & Export tab and next Codebook. From the
dropdown menu, select Import from Excel

Select a file. Depending on whether you have inserted headers in the Excel file,
activate or deactivate the option "My data contains headers."

If your project already has codes, you need to decide what ATLAS.ti should do if the list of codes in
the Excel table contains codes that are already in your project. You can update the attributes of the
existing codes, i.e., code color and comment, so they match the information that is in the Excel
sheet.

Make your choices and click Import.

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You also find the Import / Export Codebook options in the Tools tab of the Code Manager.

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Building a Code System

A well-structured code list is important for further analysis, where you look for relationships and
patterns in the data, with the goal of integrating all results to tell a coherent story. If, as in a survey,
you only have questions with the answer categories "yes" and "no" in your questionnaire, your data
will only consist of nominal variables. This means that the analysis is limited and does not go
beyond the descriptive level. This is comparable to a codebook that consists of a set of codes
whose analysis level remains indefinite. The aim of building a code system is that you can access
your data through the codes and that you can make full use of the analysis tools.

At the end of the chapter you will find a list of articles and books based on which the
following recommendations were written.

How to Begin Building a Code System

Unless you are working with theoretically derived a priori codes, to start with, you will be creating
codes to catch ideas as they happen. The list of code grows, and it becomes more and more
difficult to keep an overview. It is time to begin managing your list of codes. This can be after
coding one document, one interview or a few. Managing your code means to start sorting and
ordering them into folders, categories and subcodes. Code groups can help in this process as well.
Via code groups you can collect codes that are connected. Then set the code group as filter so
that you can focus on this smaller subset of codes. Which codes might form a category, which
ones need to be merged or split?

Applying a hierarchically organised catalogue to your code system has several benefits. See also
Bazely (2013:179-183).

• It creates order: you know where to look to place or find a particular code

• It brings conceptual clarity for yourself and others

• It provides a prompt to code additional aspects as you continue to code. You are for instance
reminded to code for 'reasons for having children', 'sources of happiness', 'definition of
happiness', etc. because you have a category for these types of things. It also sensitizes you
to notice other subcodes that appear in the data.

• it will assist you in identifying patterns of relationships in your data. Not only will you be able
to ask questions about a particular category, this will also allow you to explore relationships
between categories, e.g., between emotions and events. You can for instance explorer
whether particular events regularly bring forth particular emotions. This can best be achieved
if the kinds of things whose associations you want to explore are coded to different
categories, in this case a category 'Emotion' with the various types of emotions as subcodes,
and a category 'Event' with the various events as subcodes. Hence, you only need a 2-level
hierarchy consisting of categories and subcodes.

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Several authors provide suggestions in what kind of ways codes in a code system might be
grouped. Lofland (1971) for example suggested acts, activities, meanings, participation,
relationships, and settings. Bogdan and Biklen (1992) proposed setting/context, definition of the
situation, perspectives, understandings of people and objects, process, activities, events,
strategies, relationships and social structure. Bazeley (2013) added people/actors/players, issues,
i.e., matters raised about which there may be some debate, attitudes, beliefs, ideological positions,
frameworks, cultural context, emotional responses or states, personal characteristics, impact/
outcomes (facilitator or barriers).

You may find that some of these ideas easily translate into a category with subcodes; others might
be too abstract to code with them. Instead, they can be used at the folder level. Within the folder
you can develop categories with subcodes which can be applied to code the data.

Below we show you an example. In the first screenshot, you only see the folder and category level.
Code groups have been created as means to filter on folder and category level for different
purposes. See Further Data Analysis

In the second screenshot, the folders have been expanded, and you see the type of categories
which were sorted into the various folders.

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If you have interview transcripts and want to "code" for respondent attributes like gender,
age, family status and the like, you need to use document groups. You only code for
sociodemographic characteristics if there are multiple respondents in one document as for
instance is the case with focus group data.

In the third screenshot, some categories have been expanded, and you see the subcodes. In
previous versions of ATLAS.ti it was useful to use the same colour for all codes of a category. Given
the new visualizations tools, e.g., in the Document and Code Manager, it can be useful to give each
subcode a different color as shown for the category 'sources of happiness'.

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Characteristics of a well-structured code list

• Each code is distinct, its meaning is different from the meaning of any other code.
• The meaning of each code is described in the code comment.
• Each category can be clearly distinguished from other categories.
• All subcodes that belong to a category are similar as they represent the same kind of thing.
Nonetheless, each sub code within a category is distinct.
• Each code appears only once in the code system.
• The code system is a-theoretical. This means the code system itself does not represent a
model nor a theory. The codes merely describe the data, so that the data can easily be
accessed through them.
• The code system should be logical, so you can find what you are looking for.
• The code system contains between 10 and 25 top-level categories.
• The code system is no more than two to three levels deep. Thus, it consists of folders,
categories and their subcodes. If there are layers of meaning in a section of your data, it is
better to create separate codes and double-code the data. This way you can later associate
those layers of meaning, e.g., by using the Code Co-occurrence Table.

Good Practice Tips

Organize your code structure based on conceptual similarities, not observed or theoretical
associations, nor according to how you think your will want to write the result chapters.

Use a separate code for each element of what the text is about, i.e., each code should
encompass one concept only. If there are multiple aspects, the passage can be coded with
multiple codes.

Don't worry if not all of your codes can be sorted into a category. Some codes will remain
single codes. In order not to "loose" them collect them in a folder, so they show up in their
own section in the code system.

The Role of Code Groups in Building a Code System

If you have a lot of low frequency codes that you want or need to merge, then code groups are a
good way to collect them. After you have added all low level codes that belong to the same theme
/ topic / idea, you can set this code group as filter. This makes it easier to merge the codes. The
next most likely step is to create a category and add the merged codes as subcodes. You may
want to keep the code group because it will come in handy later in the analysis as filter.

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Moving on
Once the data is coded, you have a good overview of your material and can describe it. You can
then take the analysis a step further by querying the data. The tools that can be used include the
code co-occurrence table, the code document table, the query tool, and the networks.

The goal is to delve deeper into the data and find relationships and patterns. Writing memos is very
important at this stage as much of the analysis does not just happen because you apply a tool. The
insights come when reading the data resulting from a query, and when writing summaries and
interpretations.

Literature
The recommendations in this section are based on the following authors:

Bazeley, Pat (2013). Qualitative Data Analysis: Practical Strategies. London: Sage.

Bernard, Russel H. and Ryan, Gery W. (2010). Analysing Qualitative Data: Systematic Approaches.
London: SAGE Publications.

Bodgan, R., and Biklen, S.K. (1992). Qualitative Research for education: An introduction to theory
and methods (2nd ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Charmaz, Kathy (2006/2014). Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide Through

Qualitative Analysis. London: SAGE Publications.

Corbin, Juliet and Strauss, Anselm (2008/2015, 3rd and 4th ed.). Basics of Qualitative Research:
Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE
Publications.

Freeman, Melissa (2017). Modes of Thinking for Qualitative Data Analysis. NY: Routledge.

Friese, Susanne (2019). Qualitative Data Analysis with ATLAS.ti. London: Sage.

Gibbs, G. (2008). Analysing Qualitative Data. London: SAGE.

Guest, G., MacQueen, K.M., and Namey, E.E. (2012). Applied Thematic Analysis. Los Angeles: SAGE
Publications.

Guest, G., Kathleen M. MacQueen, and Emily E. Namey (2012). Applied Thematic Analysis. Los
Angeles: Sage.

Hammersley M., and Atkinson P. (2007) Ethnography: Principles in Practice. Third edition. London:
Routledge.

Johnston, L. (2006). Software and method: Reflections on teaching and using QSR NVivo in
doctoral research. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 9(5), 379–391.

Lofland, J. (1971). Analyzing social settings: A guide to qualitative observation and analysis. CA:
Wadsworth.

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Miles, Matthew B., Huberman, M., and Saldaña, J. (2014, 3rd ed.). Qualitative Data Analysis.
Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

Richards, L., and Morse, J.M. (2013, 3rd ed). Readme first: for a user’s guide to Qualitative Methods.
Los Angeles: Sage

Richards, L. (2021, 4ed). Handling qualitative data: A practical guide. London: SAGE Publications.

Saldaña, J. (2021). The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers. London: SAGE Publications.

Spradley, James P. (2016). The Ethnographic Interview. Waveland Press.

Strauss, A. (1987). Qualitative analysis for social scientists. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press.

Weston, C., Gandell, T., Beauchamp, J., Beauchamp, C., McApline, L., and Wiseman, C. (2001).
Analyzing Interview Data: The Development and Evolution of a Coding System, Qualitative
Sociology, 24(3): 381-400.

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Creating a Codebook
If you want to create a codebook for the appendix of a report, do not use the Export Codebook
option that you find under the Import / Export tab. The purpose of this option is to transfer
codebooks between projects or computers. The recommended option to create a code book is to
use the Excel export option from the Code Manager:

Open the Code Manager and select Excel Export in the ribbon.

Select all options that you want to include. Essential options for a code book
are codes and comments. You may also want to include groundedness, density
and code groups.

Example Outcome:

Folders and independent codes are listed in the first column, categories in the second column, and
subcodes in the third column.

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Quotation Reader
The Quotation Reader allows you to conveniently read quotations coded by a selected code or as a
result of a query. You can modify existing codes, which means add or remove codes. Elsewhere,
this has been referred to as coding on.

In the Quotation Reader, you can:

• change between single line, small and large preview

• add or modify the quotation name
• write a comment for a quotation
• apply new or existing codes
• remove applied codes
• view a quotation in the context of the original document
• delete a quotation

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View Options: Depending on the length of your quotations you can adjust the view mode. If you
have very short quotations, the single line view might be all what you need to see. It is also useful if
you have created your own name for quotations, e.g. to paraphrase textual data or wrote titles for
multimedia quotations.

Apply Codes: To change the coding for a quotation, either click on Apply Codes in the ribbon or
click on the green code icon. This opens the coding dialogue, and you use all options that are
explained in the section Coding Date.

You can also select multiple quotations and code them with a new or an existing code.

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View in Context: If you want to see a quotation in the context of the original document, either click
on the up arrow, or the Go to Context button in the ribbon.

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Rename: Select a quotation and click on Rename to add a name for the quotation or to modify a
previously entered name.

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Open Network: If you want to see all links of a quotation, select one or multiple quotations, right-
click and select Open Network, or select the Open Network button in the ribbon. See Working with
Networks.

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Select All: This option allows you to quickly add or remove codes from all quotations, or to delete all
quotations.

If you select all quotations and then the Apply Codes option, you can add a new code or select an
existing one. When you click on the + button, all quotations are coded with this code.

Writing Comments for Quotations

If you want to write a comment for a quotation, select it and write a comment
in the comment area at the bottom of the Quotation Reader window.
Alternatively, right-click and select Edit Comment from the context menu.

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Creating a Report

You can export all or selected quotations from a Quotation Reader in Excel format. To do so, click
on the Excel button in the ribbon. Learn more about creating reports here.

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Exploring Text Data

A quick way to get a feeling for the content of text documents is by creating a word cloud or word
list.

Word lists offer word "crunching" capabilities for a simple quantitative content analysis. This feature
creates a list of word frequency counts, and some additional metrics like word length, and
percentage of occurrence within or across all selected entities. Word lists can be exported to Excel.

Word clouds are a method for visually presenting text data. They are popular for text analysis
because they make it easy to spot word frequencies. The more frequent the work is used, the
larger and bolder it is displayed. Word clouds can be exported as image.

Word clouds and word lists can be created for:

• documents and document groups

• quotations
• content of quotations by code and code group

A stop and go list including a list of 'ignorable' characters can be used to control the analysis.
Words can also be temporarily removed from a list or cloud without the need to add them to a stop
list.

For information see Creating Word Lists and Creating Word Clouds

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Creating Word Clouds

To create a word cloud for documents or codes or quotations select one or
more items e.g. in the Project Explorer or in the respective manager.

In the Project Explorer, right-click and select the option Word Cloud. In a
manager, select the Word Cloud option from the ribbon.

You can always add or remove more items of the same entity type to the cloud or list, once the
word cloud has been created.

Other options are:

• to load a document first and select the Word Cloud button in the ribbon.
• to open a manager and select the Word Cloud button in the ribbon.
• You can also access the Word List / Word Cloud via the Search & Code tab.

When you select to create a word cloud from one or multiple codes, the word cloud shows
the words of the quotations coded with the selected code(s). If you want your list of codes
to be displayed in form of a cloud, you need to select the View tab in the Code Manager and
from there the option 'Cloud'. The size of the codes in the Code Cloud is related to its
frequency. See Working with Codes.

When you hoover over a word, its frequency is shown (= token / number of occurrences of a unique
word).

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Setting the Scope

Once you created a word cloud, you see a side panel on the left. The check-boxes of the currently
active entities are checked. You can check further entities or uncheck already activated entities.

You can also change the entity type. Options are to change between:

• documents
• document groups
• codes
• code groups
• quotations

Another scope option is to enter a search term into the search field to look for a specific document,
code, or quotations that only contain specific words.

World Cloud Ribbon

The Word Cloud ribbon provides several options:

Show Scope: You can activate or deactivate the side panel that allows you to select the scope.

Spiral: Display of the words in a spiral (default).

Typewriter: Display of words from left to right. You can select whether to list the words in
alphabetic order, by frequency of occurrence of by word length in either ascending or descending
order.

Sorting: The word cloud can be sorted in alphabetical order, by frequency or word length.

Threshold: My moving the slider from left to right, you can determine that only words with a certain
frequency are displayed. The number of the left-hand side shows the lowest, the number on the
right-hand side the highest occurring frequency.

Exclude: You can exclude single character words, numbers, hyphens and underscores.

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Stop / Go Lists: To exclude particular words, you can select stop lists. If only certain words should
be displayed, you can create a Go List. See the section on "Stop and Go Lists" below.

Image: You can save a word cloud as graphic file (.jpg).

Filter
• Ignore Case: Select this option, if you do not want to count words separately depending on
whether they contain upper or lower case letters.

• Infer base forms: The plural forms of nouns, the past tense, past participle, and present
participle forms of verbs, and the comparative and superlative forms of adjectives and
adverbs are known as inflected forms. If you activate this options, the word cloud only shows
the basic form of the word, e.g. building but not buildings.

• Parts of Speech: This options allows you to filter your data by specific grammatical elements
(parts of speech) like adjectives, nouns, numerals, pronouns, etc. Below you see an example
that only shows adjectives:

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Filter Tab

Character Filter: In this section you can enter special characters that you do not want to be
counted and displayed in the word cloud. By default, the following characters are excluded:

|"(){}[]<>/#+-_%$&“”´`@^‘„

You can select whether these characters should generally be removed or only at word ends.

If you add or remove characters, or deactivate the restriction to word ends, you can click on the
Reload button. This updates the word cloud.

Context Menu Options

When you right-click on a word, you have the following options:

• Remove from Word Cloud

• Add to Stop List
• Copy to Clipboard
• Search in Context

The option Remove from Word Cloud temporarily removes the word from the cloud.

If you have selected a stop list (see below), you can add more words to it. The option will be grayed
out as shown in the image above, if no stop list has been selected yet.

The Copy to Clipboard option is useful, if you want to run the auto coding tool based on some
words in the word cloud. See Text Search.

The Search in Context option opens the Project Search and shows the selected word in its context.

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Creating Word Lists

To create a word list for documents or codes or quotations select one or more
items e.g., in the Project Explorer or the respective manager.

In the Project Explorer, right-click and select the option Word List. In the
Managers, select the Word List option in the ribbon.

You can always add or remove more items of the same entity type to the list, once the word list has
been created (see Setting the Scope below).

Other options are:

• to load a document first and select the Word List button in the ribbon.
• to open a document, quotation or code manager and select the Word List button in the
ribbon.
• You can also access the Word List / Word Cloud via the Search & Code tab.

When you select to create a word list from codes, the word list shows the words of the
quotations coded with the selected code(s).

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When you hoover over a word, its frequency is shown (= token / number of occurrences of a unique
word).

Sorting Word Lists

Be default, word lists are sorted in alphabetic order by the first column 'Word'. You can also sort by
any of the other columns by clicking on the column header.

Setting the Scope

Once you created a word list, you see a side panel on the left. The check-boxes of the currently
active entities are checked. You can check further entities or uncheck already activated entities.

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You can also change the entity type. Options are to change between:

• documents
• document groups
• codes
• code groups
• quotations

Another scope option is to enter a search term into the search field to look for a specific document,
code, or quotations that only contain specific words.

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Word List Ribbon

Show Scope: You can activate or deactivate the side panel that allows you to select the scope.

Show Details: Display of the word counts of each document if you have selected multiple
documents.

Show Percent: Display the relative frequency of each word (word count relative to the total number
of words in the document / all selected documents)

Threshold: My moving the slider from left to right, you can determine that for instance only words
with a frequency of at least 10 should be displayed. The number of the left-hand side shows the
lowest, the number on the right-hand side the highest occurring frequency.

Exclude: You can exclude single character words, numbers, hyphens and underscores.

Stop / Go Lists: To exclude particular words, you can select stop lists. If only certain words should
be displayed, you can create a Go List. See the section on "Stop and Go Lists" below.

Excel: You can export the results of the word list as Excel table. There are limits in terms of how
much data can be meaningfully processed, or moreover handled by and displayed in Excel.
Assuming there are 2000 unique words in a document, and you process 100 documents, this
results in an Excel table consisting of 200.000 cells.

Filter

• Ignore Case: Select this option, if you do not want to count words separately depending on
whether they contain upper or lower case letters.

• Show Inflected Forms: The plural forms of nouns, the past tense, past participle, and present
participle forms of verbs, and the comparative and superlative forms of adjectives and
adverbs are known as inflected forms. If you activate this options, the word cloud only shows
the basic form of the word, e.g. building but not buildings.

• Parts of Speech: This options allows you filter your data by specific grammatical elements
(parts of speech) like adjectives, nouns, numerals, pronouns, etc. Below you see an example
that only shows nouns:

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Filter Tab

Character Filter: In this section you can enter special characters that you do not want to be
counted and displayed in the word cloud. By default, the following characters are excluded:

|"(){}[]<>/\#+-_%$&“”´&#96;@^‘„

You can select whether these characters should generally be removed or only at word ends.

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If you add or remove characters, or deactivate the restriction to word ends, you can click on the
Reload button. This updates the word cloud.

Context Menu Options

When you right-click on a word, you have the following options:

• Remove from List

• Add to Stop List
• Copy to Clipboard
• Search in Context

The option Remove from List temporarily removes the word from the list.

If you have selected a stop list (see below), you can add more words to it.

The Copy to Clipboard option is useful, if you want to run the auto coding tool based on some
words in the word list. See Text Search.

The Search in Context option opens the Project Search and shows the selected word in its context.

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Stop and Go Lists

Working with Stop and Go Lists are explained in detail here.

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Stop and Go Lists

Words in stop lists are words which are filtered out when processing text. Stop words are short
function words that occur very often and which do not convey any particular meaning. Examples
are 'the', 'a', 'you', 'is', 'at', 'on' and 'which'. ATLAS.ti offers predefined stop lists in 35 languages.
These stop lists are based on the information provided by Ranks NL.

In contrast, if you set a word list as Go List, then only the words that are in the list are counted.

Selecting a Stop List

To select a stop list, click on the drop-down button for Exclude

Importing a Stop List

If you have been importing an older version 8 project, the selection list might be empty:

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All available stop lists are however already on your computer. They were copied during the
installation on ATLAS.ti. To retrieve them:

Click on the Edit button and select Import Lists.

This brings you do the directory where all stop lists that come with ATLAS.ti are stored:

C:\Users...\Documents\Scientific Software\ATLASti.22\Stopwords

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Select all lists that you want to use and click Open.

Close the window, return to the word cloud and select a stop list.

Below you see an example for a word cloud where a stop list was applied:

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Cleaning up a Word Cloud

In the word cloud above, there are still a lot of words that distract from the content of the
interviews like all speaker IDs: INT, SHAZ, DEB, AL, STU.

You can either remove the words from the current cloud, or add the words the stop list. Then they
are also not counted in other word clouds that you create later.

To remove a word from a word cloud temporarily, select the word, right-click
and select Remove.

If you want to remove it from all word clouds permanently:

Right-click on a word and select Add to stop list.

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The cleaned up word cloud might look as follows:

Creating a New Stop or Go Lists

In the ribbon in the section Stop/Go Lists, click on the Edit button.

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In the next window, select New List from the ribbon.

Enter a name for the list and select as list type: Stop List or Go List. Enter an
optional comment to describe the purpose of the list.

Click Create.

To add words to the newly created list, click on th New Word button a few
times. Every time you click, a new field is added where you can enter a word.

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RegEx: You can enter regular expressions, if you want to enter specific terms to the list. If so, you
need to tick the Regex box. Optionally you can write a comment that explains the regular
expression.

You can turn a stop list into a go list (or vice versa) by changing the List Type. Other options
in the ribbon are to duplicate and to delete word lists.

Exporting a Stop or Go List

Exporting a stop or go list allows you to:

• share it with other users

• use it in another project

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In the ribbon, click on Export List. A file manager opens. Select a location and
enter a name and click on Save.

The list is saved as Excel file.

Creating a User-Defined Stop or Go List in Excel

Importing a user defined list works as follows:

Export an existing list and open it in Excel. It serves as a template.

In Excel, change the name of the list, but leave all the header information as is.
If you want to prepare a go list, enter 'no' in the second column/second row
under Stop List.

Now delete all words and replace them with new words, one word per row.

Save the list under a new name and import it.

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Type-Token Ratio

The type-toke ration (TTR) is the relationship between the number of unique words that occur in a
text and their frequencies. The number of unique words in a text is often referred to as the number
of tokens. Several of these tokens are repeated.

• The type-token ratio can vary between 0 and 1.

• The more types there are in comparison to the number of tokens (the higher the value), the
more varied is the vocabulary. This means there is greater lexical variety in the text.

The type-token ration is calculated as follows:

Type-Token Ratio = (number of types/number of tokens) * 100

In word lists and word clouds, you find the type-token ratio in the status bar at the bottom.

The type/token ratio (TTR) varies very widely in accordance with the length of the text - or
corpus of texts - which is being studied. A 1,000-word article might have a TTR of 40%; a
shorter one might reach 70%; 4 million words will probably give a type/token ratio of about
2%.

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Automatically Code Data

With the recent advances in deep learning, the ability of algorithms to analyse text has improved
considerably. Creative use of advanced artificial intelligence techniques can be an effective tool for
doing in-depth research.

Under the Search & Code tab, ATLAS.ti offers five ways of searching for relevant information in
your data that can then be automatically coded.

• Find Concepts and Auto-code

• Text search
• Expert search with regular expressions
• Named Entity Recognition (NER)
• Sentiment Analysis

As ATLAS.ti is a tool for qualitative data analysis, the process is not fully automated. Before coding
the data, you can review all results, make modifications or decide not to code certain finds.

Artificial intelligence techniques have been developed for big data analysis. The data
corpora usually handled by ATLAS.ti are considerably smaller. Thus, you cannot expect all
results to be perfect. Reviewing the results will be a necessary component of the analysis
process when using these tools. When working with the tools, you will see that the tools will
add another level to your analysis. You find things that you simply do not see when coding
the data manually, or would have not considered to code. We, at ATLAS.ti, consider manual
and automatic coding to be complementary; each enhancing your analysis in a unique way.

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Find Concepts and Auto-Code

Video Tutorial: Concept search. Let ATLAS.ti find relevant concepts for you. Review them in
context and auto code.

This function is available for all interface languages

What makes a concept?

In a first step, the significant noun phrases (for example, health care system) are detected in order
to identify the most frequently occurring concepts in the data. In the second step, the concepts
and their frequencies are collected across all files in the set being processed.

ATLAS.ti actively filters the concepts — only the most relevant concepts are presented in the
results. You can review the concepts in their surrounding context in the Quotation Reader, and then
decide which concepts you want to be coded automatically.

You can search for concepts in documents, document groups, codes or code groups for
concepts.

There are several ways how you can start a concept analysis:

Select the Search & Code tab and from there Concepts.

or:

Open the Document or Code Manager, select one or more entities and select
Concepts in the ribbon.

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From the dropdown menu select where you want to search (documents,
document groups, codes or code groups). Then select one or multiple
documents, document groups, codes, or code groups.

As soon as you select an entity, ATLAS.ti begins to analyse the data. The results are displayed in
form of a word cloud. Optional you can also view the result as list. Just change the view option to
List.

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If you hoover over a concept or select it, the noun phrases it is based upon are displayed. If you
click on a concept or any of the noun phrases, the data surrounding the concept / noun phrase are
shown on the right-hand side in the Quotation Reader.

If you find something interesting that you want to code, click on the Apply Proposed Codes button
in the ribbon.

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Text Search and Auto-Code

Video Tutorial: Text search and auto-code. When using this tool, you enter your own search term
and can let ATLAS.ti automatically code your data. The tool offers a number of additional functions
that make it more than a simple auto coding tool:

• You can select synonyms. Synonyms are offered in all interface languages (English, Spanish,
Portuguese, German and Simplified Chinese).
• You can combine multiple search terms using Boolean operators (AND; OR) to look for
occurrences within a sentence or paragraph, or multiple syllabuses in a word.
• You can search for inflected forms, i.e. searching for "run" will also search for running, runs,
ran.
• You can use wildcards (*)
• You can search for exact phrases by entering parentheses as in: „limited liability
corporations”.

Carrying out a text search

To open the tool, select the Search & Code tab and from there Text Search.
inst
Select documents or document groups that you want to search and click
Continue.

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Select the base unit for the search and the coding:

• Paragraphs
• Sentences
• Words
• Exact matches (wild cards can be used)

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Enter a search term. If synonyms are available, you can select them from the
drop-down list right to the search entry field.

You can add more search terms linking them with Boolean operators:

• AND: All of the entered search terms must occur in the selected context (paragraph,
sentence, word).

• OR: Results are returned if any of the search terms occur in the selected context (paragraph,
sentence, word).

Activate the option inflected forms if desired. This option is currently available
for all interface languages.

Inflected forms: The plural forms of nouns, the past tense, past participle, and present
participle forms of verbs, and the comparative and superlative forms of adjectives and
adverbs are known as inflected forms. To improve results you can download and install a
more comprehensive model. To do so, click on Manage Models.

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To run the search, click on Show Results.

The result page shows you a Quotation Reader indicating where the quotations are when
(auto-)coding the data. If coding already exist at the quotation, it will also be shown.

By clicking on the eye, you can change between small and large previews.

You can auto code all results with one code by highlighting all data segments,
e.g. via Ctrl+A. Then select Apply Codes, enter a code name and click the plus
icon.

Depending on the area you have selected, either the exact match, the word, the sentence or the
paragraph is coded.

Another options is to review each find and code it by clicking on the coding
icon. This opens the regular Coding Dialogue.

Exact Match Search

An exact match search finds the characters as they are entered into the search field. The search
results for 'emotion' could look as follows:

• emotions
• emotionless
• demotion

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• demotional

If you only want to find "emotion", you need to add parentheses around the search term. See: Exact
Phrase Search.

Exact Phrase Search

When you want to search using an exact phrase, you simply surround your search expression with
quotation marks. For example, if you want to search for limited liability corporations but only want
to retrieve results in which the terms appear as an exact phrase, type "limited liability corporations"
(including the quotation marks) into the search field.

Your search results will only include data segments that contain the exact phrase - limited liability
corporations - as typed between the quotation marks, but will not include results where the terms
are separated by other words, as in: corporations with limited liability.

For best results, do not include wildcard characters in an exact phrase search unless the wildcard
character * is part of the phrase you are looking for.

For synonyms, ATLAS.ti uses a database provided by TT Software / Databases. ATLAS.ti

Scientific Software GmbH ist not responsible for the content.

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Expert Search with Regular Expressions (regex)

GREP is a well-known search tool in the UNIX world. The original GREP tool printed each line
containing the search pattern, hence the acronym GREP (Globally search for a Regular Expression
and Print matching lines).

In ATLAS.ti, the results of a GREP search are not printed line-by-line; rather, the text matching the
search pattern is highlighted on the screen, or you can automatically code the results including
some surrounding context.

The core of a GREP search is the inclusion of special characters in the search string that control the
matching process. GREP finds instances in your data that match certain patterns.

You can test and debug any regular expression you formulate on this website: https://
regex101.com/

Carrying out a text search with Regex

To open the tool, select the Search & Code tab and from there Expert Search.

Select documents or document groups that you want to search and click
Continue.

Select the base unit for the search and the coding:

• Paragraphs
• Sentences
• Words
• Exact matches

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Enter a search term. You can test your search expression in the text that you
see in the lower half of the screen.

To run the search, click on Show Results.

The result page shows you a Quotation Reader, indicating where the
quotations are when (auto)coding the data. If codings already exist at the
quotation, those will also be shown.

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By clicking on the eye icon, you can change between small, medium and large
previews.

You can autocode all results with one code by highlighting all data segments,
e.g. via Ctrl+A. Then select Apply Codes, enter a code name and click the plus
icon. Depending on the area you have selected, either the exact match, the
word, the sentence or the paragraph is coded.

Another options is to review each find and code it by clicking on the coding
icon. This opens the regular Coding Dialogue.

GREP Examples
GREP
Description
Expression
^ Matches an empty string at the beginning of a line.

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GREP
Description
Expression
$ Matches an empty string at the end of a line.
. Matches any character except a new line.
Matches at least one occurrence of the preceding expression or
+
character.
Matches the preceding element zero or more times. For example, ab*c
*
matches "ac," "abc," "abbbc," etc.
Matches the preceding element zero or one time. For example, ba?
?
matches "b" or "ba."
Matches a range or set of characters: [a-z] or [0-9] or [aeiou]. For
[] example: [0-9] finds all numeric characters, while [^0-9] finds all non-
numeric character
\b Matches an empty string at a word boundary
\B Matches an empty string not a word boundary
< Matches an empty string at the beginning of a word
> Matches an empty string at the end of a word

Enclose ORed expressions with parentheses if OR should be restricted to certain sequences of

characters or expressions. See example below

Backspace character disables the special GREP functionality of the following character:

GREP Expression Description

\d Matches any digit (equivalent to [0-9])
\D Matches anything but a digit
\s Matches a white-space character
\S Matches anything but a white-space character
\w Matches any word constituent character
\W any character but a word constituent

Character classes

Character
Description
Class
[:alnum:] Any alphanumeric, i.e., a word constituent, character
[:alpha:] Any alphabetic character
Any control character. In this version, it means any character whose
[:cntrl:]
ASCII code is < 32.
[:digit:] Any decimal digit
Any graphical character. In this version, this mean any character with
[:graph:]
the code >= 32.
[:lower:] Any lowercase character
[:punct:] Any punctuation character
[:space:] Any white-space character

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Character
Description
Class
[:upper:] Any uppercase character
[:xdigit:] Any hexadecimal character

Note that these elements are components of the character classes, i.e. they have to be
enclosed in an extra set of square brackets to form a valid regular expression. A non-empty
string of digits or arbitrary length would be represented as [[:digit:]]+

Examples of GREP Searches

In the following, a few search examples are presented showing the matching GREP expression in
the column on the right.

• The expression man|woman matches "man" and "woman." You could also use (|wo)man to the
same effect.

• H(a|e)llo matches "Hello" and "Hallo."

• H(a|e)+llo matches "Haaaaaallo" as well as "Heeeeeaaaaeaeaeaeaello."

• And how about the (angry|lazy|stupid) (man|woman) (walk|run|play|fight)ing with

the gr(a|e)y dog - get the idea?

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Named Entity Recognition (NER)

Video Tutorial: Named Entity Recognition. In natural language processing, Named Entity
Recognition (NER) is a process where a sentence, or a chunk of text is parsed through to find
entities that can be put under categories like person, organization, location, or miscellaneous like
work of arts, languages, political parties, events, title of books, etc.

Currently supported languages are: English, German, Spanish and Portuguese

You can think of it like a special auto coding procedure, where you as the user do not enter a
search term. Instead, ATLAS.ti goes through your data and finds entities for you.

You can select which entities you want to search for:

• person
• organization
• location
• miscellaneous (work of arts, languages, political parties, events, title of books, etc.)

After the search is completed, ATLAS.ti shows you what it found, and you can make corrections. In
the next step you can review the results in context and code all results with the suggested codes,
or decide for each hit whether to code it or not.

To open the tool:

Select the Search & Code tab and from there Named Entity Recognition.
inst
Select documents or document groups that you want to search and click
Continue.

Select whether the base unit for the search, and the coding should be paragraphs, sentences, or
word, and which entity category you want to search for.

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Manage Models: If you want to improve your results, you can download and install a more
comprehensive model.

Click on Manage Models if you want to install or uninstall an extended model.

Click Continue to begin searching the selected documents. On the next

screen, the search results are presented, and you can review them.

Reviewing Search Results

If you selected to search for all entity types (persons, location, organization and miscellaneous),
you can review them all together, or just focus on one entity at a time. To do so, deactivate all other
entity types.

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Select all results that you want to code. If a result is interesting but comes up
in the wrong category, you can change the category in the second column of
the result list. In the third column, the suggested code name is listed.

Autocode results

You have three options for the code name:

• Category only: If you select this option, all search hits will be coded under the NER category:
Person, Location, Organization, Miscellaneous

• Category: Entity: If you select this option, categories with subcodes will be created for the
NEW categories: Person, Location, Organization, Miscellaneous. The entities will become the
subcodes.

You also have the option to group all codes of a NER category into a code
group. This option is useful if you selected the second option with subcodes.

Click Show Results to inspect the results in context.

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The result page shows you a Quotation Reader indicating where the quotations are when coding
the data with the proposed code. If coding already exist at the quotation, it will also be shown.

By clicking on the eye, you can change between small and large previews.

You can go through and review each data segment and then code it by clicking
on the plus next to the code name. Or, you can code all results at once by
selecting Apply Proposed Codes. You can select the first option Apply All
Codes, or select only one code from the list.

If you have selected the category: subcode option for coding, the coding results might look as
follows:

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Depending on the area you have selected at the beginning, either the word, the sentence, or the
paragraph is coded.

The regular Coding Dialogue is also available to add or remove codes.

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The Search Engine Behind NER

ATLAS.ti uses spaCy as its natural language processing engine. More detailed information can be
found here.

Input data gets processed in a pipeline - one step after the other as to improve upon the derived
knowledge of the prior step. Click here for further details.

The first step is a tokenizer to chunk a given text into meaningful parts and replace ellipses etc. For
example, the sentence:

“I should’ve known (didn't back then).” will get tokenized to: “I should have known ( did not back
then ).“

The tokenizer uses a vocabulary for each language to assign a vector to a word. This vector was
pre-learned by using a corpus and represents a kind of similarity in usage in the used corpus. Click
here more information.

The next component is a tagger that assigns part-of-speech tags to every token and lexemes if the
token is a word. The character sequence “mine”, for instance, has quite different meanings
depending on whether it is a noun of a pronoun.

Thus, it is not just a list of words that is used as benchmark. Therefore, there is also no
option to add your own words to a list or to see the list of words that is used.

The entity recognizer is trained on wikipedia-like text and works best in grammatically correct,
encyclopedia-like text. We are using modified pre-trained/built-from-the-ground-up models -
depending on the language.

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Sentiment Analysis
Video Tutorial: Sentiment Analysis. Sentiment analysis is the interpretation and classification of
emotions (positive, negative and neutral) within text data using text analysis techniques.

Currently supported languages are interface languages: English, German, Spanish,

Portuguese and Simplified Chinese.

Application Examples
• identifying and cataloguing a piece of text according to the tone conveyed by it.
• understanding the social sentiment of a brand, product or service.
• identifying respondent sentiment toward the subject that is discussed in online
conversations and feedback.
• analysing student evaluations of lectures, seminars, or study programs.

Sentiment analysis works best on structured data like open-ended questions in a survey,
evaluations, online conversations, etc.

Carrying out a Sentiment Analysis

To open the tool, select the Search & Code tab and from there Sentiment
Analysis.
inst
Select documents or document groups that you want to search and click
Continue.

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Select the base unit for the search and the coding:

• paragraphs
• sentences

Select the type of sentiment you want to code:

• positive
• neutral
• negative

ATLAS.ti proposes subcode labels for each sentiment: Positive / Neutral /

Negative. If you want to use different names, you can change them here.

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Manage Models: If you want to improve your results, you can download and install a more
comprehensive model.

Click on Manage Models if you want to install or uninstall an extended model.

Click Show Results to begin searching the selected documents. On the next
screen, the search results are presented, and you can review them.
The result page shows you a Quotation Reader indicating where the quotations
are when coding the data with the proposed code. If coding already exist at
the quotation, it will also be shown.

By clicking on the eye icon, you can change between small. medium and large
previews.

You can code all results with one of the proposed codes or with all proposed
codes at once; or you can go through review each data segment and then
code it by clicking on the plus next to the code name.

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Depending on the area you have selected at the beginning, either the sentence or the paragraph is
coded.

The regular Coding Dialogue is also available to add or remove codes.

The Search Engine Behind the Sentiment Analysis

We are using spaCy as our natural language processing engine. More detailed information can be
found here.

Input data gets processed in a pipeline - one step after the other as to improve upon the derived
knowledge of the prior step. Click here for further details.

The first step is a tokenizer to chunk a given text into meaningful parts and replace ellipses etc. For
example, the sentence:

“I should’ve known(didn't back then).” will get tokenized to: “I should have known ( did not back
then ).“

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The tokenizer uses a vocabulary for each language to assign a vector to a word. This vector was
pre-learned by using a corpus and represents a kind of similarity in usage in the used corpus. Click
here more information.

The next component is a tagger that assigns part-of-speech tags to every token and lexemes if the
token is a word. The character sequence “mine”, for instance, has quite different meanings
depending on whether it is a noun of a pronoun.

Thus, it is not just a list of words that is used as benchmark. Therefore, there is also no
option to add your own words to a list or to see the list of words that is used.

The sentiment analysis pipeline is trained on a variety of texts ranging from social media
discussions to peoples’ opinions on different subjects and products. We are using modified pre-
trained/built-from-the-ground-up models - depending on the language.

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Analyzing Focus Groups

Generally, it can be said that analyzing focus group data is not much different from the analysis of
any other kind of interview data. Most people who ask for specific analytic tools in focus groups do
so because they don't have experience with analyzing other kinds of qualitative data, so they think
there must be something unique about focus groups.

Focus groups are different to a certain extent as there is more interaction. In the vast majority of
studies, researchers are interested in the content of what gets said, rather than the mechanics of
how it gets said.

If you are interested in the interaction, then a discourse analysis might be an appropriate method.
In addition to the regular tools you use in ATLAS.ti for data analysis, consider using hyperlinks to
explore the interaction Quotation Level and Hyperlinks.

The most widely used analysis methods for interview as well as focus group data are versions of
content analysis and thematic analysis. For some inspiration, take a look at this chapter on focus
group analysis.

ATLAS.ti facilitates the coding of speaker units, so that you can compare responses of different
speakers or different group of speakers by attributes like age, gender, etc.

In order for ATLAS.ti to recognize speakers, you need to use speaker IDs or names consistently
when transcribing the data. See Guidelines for Preparing Focus Group Data for more detail.

Focus group auto coding requires text documents in doc, docx, rtf, or txt format. You cannot
use PDF documents with this function.

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Guidelines for Preparing Focus Group Data

There is only one requirement when preparing focus group data: Each speaker or needs to have a
unique identifier and this identifier should be applied consistently throughout the entire transcript.

ATLAS.ti offers two default patterns to recognize speakers:

• name: (pattern 1)
• @name: (pattern 2)

Using pattern 2 when transcribing data, it is unlikely that ATLAS.ti finds anything but speakers.
Searching for pattern 1, ATLAS.ti also finds things like "for example:....."

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Custom Pattern
You can also define your own pattern including the use of regular expressions.

This might be useful if you have previously prepared transcripts and speaker IDs have not been
used consistently.

For instance, the regular expression: To+(m|n) matches "Toom," "Ton," or "Toon" to find different
spellings of the name 'Tom'.

([A-Z]+): recognizes identifiers consisting of letters from A to Z.

([A-Z]+[0-9]+): recognizes identifiers that consist of a combination of letters and numbers

For more information, see Regular Expressions (GREP).

You can use this functionality to auto code any data that has a specific structure. It does not
necessarily have to be a speaker. It could be a date, a number, or any other type of identifier.

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Example transcripts
The speaker IDs do not have to be in bold letters. Bold letters are used here only to make it easier
for you to see, which ones are the speaker IDs.

Example A (pattern 1)
Alex: I don't know, I'm the sort, I don't really struggle to make friends cos  everyone tells me I've got
a big mouth, and I don't stop talking [laughs]

Tom: So is that how, is that how you met just, just through you striking up a conversation?

Deb: I'm trying to think exactly [laughs] I think that's what it was, we were both in the same
research methods class ...

Example B (pattern 1)
Alex:

I don't know, I'm the sort, I don't really struggle to make friends cos  everyone tells me I've got a big
mouth, and I don't stop talking [laughs] .

Tom:

So is that how, is that how you met just, just through you striking up a conversation?

Deb:

I'm trying to think exactly [laughs] I think that's what it was, we were both in the same research
methods class.

Example C (pattern 1)

It is also possible to add further information to each speaker like their gender, age group,
educational level etc. This way, also this information will be automatically coded.

Alex: male: age group 1: high school:

I don't know, I'm the sort, I don't really struggle to make friends cos  everyone tells me I've got a big
mouth, and I don't stop talking [laughs]

Tom: male: age group 2: high school:

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So is that how, is that how you met just, just through you striking up a conversation?

Deb: female: age group 2: some college:

I'm trying to think exactly [laughs] I think that's what it was, we were both in the same research
methods class.

Example D (pattern 2)
@Alex: I don't know, I'm the sort, I don't really struggle to make friends cos  everyone tells me I've
got a big mouth, and I don't stop talking [laughs].

@Tom: So is that how, is that how you met just, just through you striking up a conversation?

@Deb: I'm trying to think exactly [laughs] I think that's what it was, we were both in the same
research methods class.

If your data is not transcribed yet, we recommend using pattern 2 as it is unlikely this pattern
will find sections that are not speaker units.

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Recommendation
For readability, you may want to consider starting each speaker unit on a new line.

Additionally, you may want to enter an empty line between speaker units.

Both is not required. When a pattern is recognized the chosen code(s) are applied from the first
letter of the pattern to the start of the next recognized pattern. Therefore, it does not matter
whether a new unit starts on a new line or whether there is an empty line in between.

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Auto Coding Focus Group Speakers

Focus group auto coding requires text documents in doc, docx, rtf, or txt format. You cannot
use PDF documents with this function.

Select a focus group transcript in the Document Manager and select Focus
Group Coding from the Documents ribbon.

Alternatively:

Right-click on a document in the Project Explorer and select Focus Group

Coding from the context menu.

Next, select a pattern for recognizing speaker units. See Preparing Focus
Group Data.

After selecting a pattern, click Next.

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ATLAS.ti lists all strings that fit the selected pattern and uses these as code name. If a colon (:) was
used also elsewhere in the transcripts, not all finds are speakers.

Deselect all finds that are not speakers, if any.

Check the suggested codes and modify the names if desired.

Add additional codes, if you want to code the speaker units with multiple
codes. Each code needs to by separated by a semicolon.

If you enter codes that already exist in your code list, they will not be duplicated.

Click on the button Code.

ATLAS.ti codes all speaker units. Once it is done, you see a summary screen.

Double-check the results in context and take a look at the Code Manager.
ATLAS.ti also creates a code group from all codes. If the results are not what
you expected, you can undo all coding at this stage.

ATLAS.ti does not yet organize the focus group into a hierarchical structure by default. We however
suggest that you do it manually, similar to the example shown below:

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As coding all speakers often result in dense coding, we recommend using this function after
you have coded the focus group transcript for content.

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Multimedia Data (Audio & Video)

When we refer to multimedia data, we mean audio and video files. The difference in terms of
displaying auto or video files is that there is no picture when working with audio files; the mouse
clicks in handling audio files are the same. Therefore, below we describe all steps for both file
formats together. For illustration purposes, most figures show video data.

Adding Multimedia Documents to a Project

As multimedia files, especially video files can be quite sizable, it is recommended to link multimedia
files to a project rather than to import them.

To link audio or video files to a project, in the Home tab click on the dropdown
arrow of the Add Documents button and select Add Linked Video/Audio.

Linked documents remain at their original location and ATLAS.ti accesses them from there.
Preferably, these files should not be moved to a different location. If the files need to be moved,
you need to re-link the files to your project. ATLAS.ti will alert you, if there is an issue, and a file can
no longer be accessed. You find a Repair Link option in the Document Manager under the Tools
Tab.

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Display of Multimedia Documents

Audio wave: On the right-hand side the audio wave is displayed. You can make is smaller or wider
by positioning your mouse on the left-hand side of the audio wave and dragging it either to the
right-hand side or the left-hand side.

Preview images: For video files, preview images are displayed in the document preview and the
margin area. When you add a new video to a project, you do not immediately see the preview
images as they first need to be generated. Depending on the length of the video this may take a
few seconds or up to a few minutes.

Preview images are generated from key frames. A key frame is defined as one of the frames in a
video, which provides the best summary of the video content. The key frame rate is a variable that
you can set in most encoding software when creating the video file. A fast key frame rate (with a
lower number on the scale, as this refers to the interval between key frames) means that the video
has more frames designated as key frames. A slower key frame rate means that fewer frames are
designated as key frames.

If you've got a typical talking head video or something else with little motion, you can get away with
a slow key frame rate. If you are shooting something with a lot of motion like a sporting event or a
dance recital, a faster key frame rate is necessary. The standard rate is to include a key frame
every 5 seconds.

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Playhead: The playhead shows the current position in the video or audio file.

Document preview: Below the display area you see a preview of the entire document. You can use
it to select the area that should be displayed in the margin area.

Zoom: In most cases, the space from top to bottom of your computer screen will be too small to
meaningfully display your audio or video file, you can zoom the file. This is done in the full
document preview section. For this you use the two orange lines that you see to the right and left
of the full preview. See Zooming the Timeline.

Media Controls
If you move the cursor inside the audio or video pane, the media controls appear, and you can
start, stop and pause the video, skip forward and backwards. You can also start and stop the
multimedia file by pressing the space bar.

From left to right:

Stop: Stops the multimedia file and set the play head to the beginning.

Skip to previous mark: Moves backward to the last mark, which could be the end or beginning of a
selection or a section, or the beginning of the file.

Skip backward: Seek backward in the multimedia file.

Play / Pause

Skip to previous mark: Moves forward to the next mark, which could be the end or beginning of a
selection or a section, or the end of the file.

Skip forward: Seek forward in the multimedia file.

Volume: On or Off

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Click the space bar to stop and start an audio or video file.

Multimedia Toolbar

As soon as an audio or video file is loaded, the multimedia options will be displayed in the
Document tab. If you hoover over each button with the mouse, a screen tip is displayed explaining
each option.

Capture Snapshot: If you want to analyze a particular frame in more detail, you can take a
snapshot. If you click on the snapshot option, the frame will be added as a new image document to
your project.

Media Controls: See above.

Volume: Set the volume on slider between 0% (mute) and 100%

Playback Rate: If you want the video to play faster or slower, you can select a playback rate
between 0,15 times the original speed to 8 times the original speed. The current play back rate is
shown in the blue status bar at the bottom of the screen.

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Mark Position: Sets the start position for a quotation. See Working with Multimedia Files.

Create Quotation: Sets the end position for a quotation and creates a quotation at the same time.
See Working with Multimedia Files.

You can also access the media controls with by right-clicking on the audio or video area.

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Handling Multimedia Data

Zooming the Timeline

A quick way to zoom the timeline is by putting the mouse pointer onto the
preview images on the right-hand side or the margin area. Hold down the Ctrl-
key and scroll the mouse wheel.

You can also zoom the timeline using the two orange sliders to select just the section of the audio
or video you want to see in the margin area:

When you move the mouse pointer over the full preview, two orange sliders
appear. Move the right and left slider to the desired position.

Media Controls
If you move the cursor inside the audio or video pane, the media controls appear, and you can
start, stop and pause the video, skip forward and backwards. You can also start and stop the
multimedia file by pressing the space bar.

From left to right:

Stop: Stops the multimedia file and set the play head to the beginning.

Skip to previous mark: Moves backward to the last mark, which could be the end or beginning of a
selection or a section, or the beginning of the file.

Skip backward: Seek backward in the multimedia file.

Play / Pause

Skip to previous mark: Moves forward to the next mark, which could be the end or beginning of a
selection or a section, or the end of the file.

Skip forward: Seek forward in the multimedia file.

Volume: On or Off

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Click the space bar to stop and start an audio or video file.

Multimedia View Options

If a multimedia document is loaded, you find a number of additional options on the View tab of the
contextual document ribbon.

Position of the timeline: The timeline can be positioned at the bottom of the screen horizontally, or
vertically next to the audio wave form.

Audio waveform: You can show or hide the audio waveform or the video previews in both the
margin or the zoom line.

Auto-scroll: If 'auto-scroll margin' is activated the playhead remains in the middle of the screen and
everything else moves (preview images, audio wave form, margin). If 'auto-scroll margin' is
deactivated, the playhead moves from the top to the bottom of the screen. This is a lot smoother
on your eye. But it means the playhead moves outside the visible area if you have zoomed the
video. Which option is more useful depends on what you are currently doing.

Use Arrow Keys to Navigate

Use the right and left arrow keys, to move the position of the playhead by
1/1000th increments of the length of the video that is currently displayed in the
margin area.

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Use the right and left arrow keys + Ctrl, to move the position of the playhead
by 1/20th increments of the length of the video that is currently displayed in
the margin area.

Keyboard Shortcuts
Action Keyboard Shortcut
Pause Play Space
Pause Play Media Play Pause
Pause Play F4
Play P
Play Shift+P
Play Play
Pause Pause
Stop S
Stop Shift+
Stop Media Stop
Skip Back Browser Back
Skip Back Media Previous Track
Skip Forward Browser Forward
Forward Command Media Next Track
Small Step Back Left
Small Step Forward Right
Medium Step Back Ctrl+Left
Medium Step Forward Ctrl+Right
Large Step Back PageUp
Large Step Forward PageDown
Playback Rate Normal Multiply
PlaybackRate Up Plus (+ key on main keyboard)
Playback Rate Up  Plus (+ key on numeric keyboard)
Playback Rate Down Minus (- key on main keyboard)
Playback Rate Down Minus (- key on numeric keyboard)
Mark Quotation Start , or < (Depending on your keyboard)
Mark Quotation End + Create Quotation . or > (Depending on your keyboard)

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Working with Multimedia Data

In this section, the following options are discussed:

• Creating multimedia quotations

• Creating multimedia quotations while listening to the audio file or viewing the video file
• Display of multimedia quotations
• Coding multimedia quotations
• Activating and playing multimedia quotations
• Adjusting the size of multimedia quotations
• Renaming a multimedia quotation
• Capturing video snapshots as image documents for further analysis

Creating Multimedia Quotations

You can also immediately code multimedia files. However, as especially video files contain so much
more information as compared to text, it is often easier to first go through and segment the audio
or video file, i.e. creating quotations before coding.

To create an audio or video quotation, move your mouse pointer on top of the
audio waveform and mark a section by clicking on the left mouse button where
you want it to start. Then drag the cursor to the end position. The times of the
end and start positions are shown, as well as the total length of the segment.

As soon as you let go of the mouse, a quotation is created, and you see the blue quotation
boundary in the margin area

If you want to make a selection first and then create a quotation, you can change the default
settings. See Project Preferences. If you deactivate Automatically create new quotation on
selection, to create a quotation you need to hoover with the mouse over the selection and
click Create Quotation.

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Creating Multimedia Quotations while Listening / Watching

You can also create an audio or video quotation while listening to or viewing a
document. For this, you can use the buttons Mark Position and Create
Quotation buttons in the toolbar; or the short-cut keys (see below).

Using the Ribbon Buttons

inst
Play the video. If you find something interesting that you want to mark as
a quotation, click Mark Position. This set the start position. To set the end
point and create a quotation, click Create Quotation.

Continue listening / watching and setting quotations.

Using Short

To mark the start position: use (<) or (,)

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To create a quotation: use (>) or (.)

Which short-cut key to use depends on your keyboard. Use those keys where you do not have to
use Shift.

Play the video. If you find something interesting you want to mark as a
quotation, click on the (,) or the (<) key. This sets the start position.

To set the end position and create a quotation, click on the (.) or (>) key.

• A new quotation will be listed in the Quotation Manager, the Project Explorer or Quotation
Browser. The quotation ID consists of the number of the document plus a consecutive count
in chronological order by time when a quotation was created in the document. The quotation
ID 15:5 for examples means that this is a quotation in document 15, and it was the 5th
quotation that was created in the document.

• After the ID you see the quotation reference, which is the start position of the audio or video
quotation. The name field is empty. You can for instance add a short title for each multimedia
quotation, see below.

• Depending on the media type, the quotation icon changes.

Audio and video quotations can be easily recognized by their special icon.

Coding Multimedia Quotations

Coding multimedia quotations is not different from coding text or image documents:

Right-click the quotation and select Apply Codes. For further information see:
Coding Data.

Activating and Playing Multimedia Quotations

In the Margin Area

To play the quotation, double-click on the quotation bar, or hoover over the
audio waveform with the mouse and click on the play icon.

You can move the play-head with the mouse to any position within an audio or video file.

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From other Places

• You can double-click on a multimedia quotation in the Project Explorer, the Quotations
Browser or the Quotation Manager to play it in context.
• You can preview a multimedia quotation in the preview area of the Quotation Manager.
• You can preview a multimedia quotation if it is part of a hyperlink. See Working with
Hyperlinks.

Adjusting the Size of Multimedia Quotations

To adjust or change the length of the quotation, drag the start or end position
to the desired position.

Renaming a Multimedia Quotation

When you create audio or video quotation, the name field is empty. You can enter a name for
instance to add a short description of what the audio or video quotation is all about.

Right-click on the quotation in the margin area or in the Quotation Manager

and select the Rename option. This allows you to create a meaningful text
output of coded audio and video segments.
Use the comment area to add further information, e.g. describe the segment
and offer a first interpretation

See also Making Use of Quotation Name and Comment for Analytical Purposes.

See Example Reports for an instruction on how to create reports for named and commented
multimedia quotations.

Capturing Snapshots of Video Frames as Image Documents

If you want to analyze particular frames of your video in more detail, you can capture a snapshot.

Move the play head to the desired position in the video.

Click on the camera icon in ribbon, or right-click on the video and select the
option Capture Video Frame.
The snapshot is automatically added as a new image document to your
project. See Creating Quotations im Images for further information on how to
work with image files.

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Multimedia Preferences
Under File > Options, you can set project specific preferences for multimedia files:

Autopreview
The effect of Autopreview is that the audio or video quotation immediately starts to play when you
activate or open a function.

• When selecting autopreview for documents the multimedia quotation immediately begins to
play when selecting a multimedia document in the Document Manager.

• When selecting autopreview for quotations the multimedia quotation immediately begins to
play when selecting a multimedia document in the Quotation Manager.

• When selecting autopreview for hyperlinks the multimedia quotation immediately begins to
play when activating a hyperlink.

Preferences for Creating Quotations

The default option is that a multimedia quotation is created as soon as you have made a selection
on the audio wave form. If you prefer to make a selection first before creating a quotation with an
additional mouse click, deactivate this option.

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The Margin Area

The margin area in ATLAS.ti is an important working space. It is not only used to display entities
linked to your data like codes, memos, hyperlinks, groups or networks; it is also a space where you
can interact with your data, write and review comments, link and un-link codes, move codes
around, replace codes, traverse hyperlinks, and the like.

Depending on the current activity, you can set various display options.

Margin Display Options

To set the display options, right-click on a white space in the margin area. You
have the following options:

• to display codes (default)

• to display memos (default)

• to display hyperlinks (default)

• code groups

• memo groups

• networks. The network icon will be display if the quotation or code is part of the network.

• to show icons (default)

• to show username. This is a useful option when working with a team and different team
members code the same document, e.g. for the purpose of inter-coder agreement analysis.

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Margin Drag & Drop

All objects populating the margin area support drag & drop. The effect of a drag & drop operation
depends on the entities that are involved as drag sources (those that are dragged) and targets
(those onto which entities are dropped).

A large variety of entities from the margin area can be dropped into the margin area.

Furthermore, entities can also be dragged from other entity managers and browsers. Entities can
be dragged from the margin into other windows, browsers or even other applications like Word. In
the latter case, the ATLAS.ti entity lose their ATLAS.ti specific "objectiveness" but at least they
render into something useful, e.g., a formatted title and rich text comment.

Linking

When a code or memo is dropped on a quotation bar, a new link is created

between the entity and the quotation represented by the bar.

Dragging a quotation bar onto another quotation bar creates a new hyperlink
between the two. See Creating Hyperlinks.

When a margin entity is dropped onto another margin entity it is replaced.

Three operations are accomplished at the same time: the entity is removed from its original
quotation, it is linked to the target quotation, and it replaces the entity it was dropped on (the latter
is cut from its quotation).

Copying

When you drag and drop a hyperlink, code or memo in the margin to another
quotation holding down the CTRL-key, then the hyperlink, code or memo is
copied.

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Print with Margin

If you want to print a document as you see it on your screen including the
margin area, select the Print option in the Document Ribbon.

Then the following dialog opens:

Printer: Select if you want to send the output to a printer or whether you want to save it as PDF
document.

Orientation: The default selection is 'Landscape', as this is likely the best option to see the
document and all codes in the margin area.

Margin space: Under 'Margin space', you can adjust the width of the margin if you need more or
less space.

Pages: You can print all pages, or a page range.

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With the 'Previous' and 'Next Page' buttons you can preview all pages.

The print with margin option is available for text, PDF and image documents.

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Memos and Comments

Video Tutorial: Using memos at project begin.

Memos
"Memos and diagrams are more than just repositories of thoughts. They are working and
living documents. When an analyst sits down to write a memo or do a diagram, a certain
degree of analysis occurs. The very act of writing memos and doing diagrams forces the
analyst to think about the data. And it is in thinking that analysis occurs" (Corbin & Strauss:
118).

"Writing is thinking. It is natural to believe that you need to be clear in your mind what you are
trying to express first before you can write it down. However, most of the time, the opposite
is true. You may think you have a clear idea, but it is only when you write it down that you
can be certain that you do (or sadly, sometimes, that you do not)" (Gibbs, 2005).

As you see from the above quotes, memos is an important task in every phase of the qualitative
analysis process. Much of the analysis 'happens' when you write down your findings, not by
clicking buttons in the software.

The ideas captured in memos are often the pieces of a puzzle that are later put together in the
phase of report writing.

Theory-building, often associated with building networks, also involves writing memos.

Memos in ATLAS.ti can be just a text on its own, or can be linked to other entities like quotations,
codes, or other memos.

Typical Usage of Memos

• Memos can contain a project description

• You can list all research questions in a memo.

• You can use memos to write a research diary.

• You can use one memo as to do list.

• Memos can be used as a bulletin board to exchange information between team members.

• You can store definitions, findings or theories from relevant literature in one or more memos.

• You can write up your analysis using memos. Those memos will be the building blocks for
your research report.

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Memos can also be assigned as documents, if you want to code them. See Using Memos as
Document .

Differences between Memos and Comments

From a methodological point of view comments are also memos in the sense that comments are
also places for thinking and writing.

In technical terms, in ATLAS.ti there is a distinction between comments and memos, as comments
exclusively belong to one entity. For example, the document comment is part of the document; a
code comment belongs to a particular code and is usually a definition for this code. A quotation
comment contains notes or interpretations about the quotation it belongs to.

Comments are not displayed in browsers separately from the entity to which they are attached.

Quotation comment

Code comment

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Memos

ATLAS.ti memos in comparison can be freestanding.

• You can write a comment for a memo, for example: use this memo for section 2 in chapter 4
in my thesis.

• Memos have a type attribute. This means you can label them as methodological memo, as
theoretical memo, organizational memo, and the like.

• Memos can be linked to quotations, codes and other memos (see Grounded and Density
column in the Memo Manager).

• Memos can be grouped.

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Typical Usage of Comments

Below some ideas are listed for what you can use comments:

Project comment

• project description

Document comment

• Meta information about a document: source, where and how you found or generated it
• Interview protocols

Information about a respondent like gender, age, profession etc., are best handled by
document groups. There is no need to write this type of information into the comment field.

Quotation Comment

• interpretations that only concern a specific data segment

• ideas how a quotation might be related to another quotation
• summaries for what you hear or see in the multimedia quotation
• interpretations of image quotations
• notes on a geo position

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Code Comment

• first ideas what you mean by a code

• a code definition
• a coding rule, especially when working in a team
• an example of what kind of data can be coded with this code
• summary of coded segments

Memo Comment

• note to yourself where you want to use the memo in a report

• comments from supervisors or team members
• links to or notes about relevant literature Network Comment
• description of the network
• idea how you want to develop it further

Link Comment

• Explaining why the two entities are linked in a specific way.

Difference between Memos and Codes

Code names are (or should be) succinct, dense descriptors for concepts emerging during the stage
of closely studying the data. They often reduce complex findings to crisp placeholders and/or
theoretically relevant concepts.

Beginners often stuff lengthy treatises into a code name, blurring the distinction between codes,
comments, and memos and thereby mistaking codes for their more appropriate siblings.

If you find yourself using more than a few words as a code label, consider making use of the
quotation name or comment. See Working with Quotations, or write more extensive thoughts about
a code as code comment.

Like codes, memos have names. These names, or titles, are used for displaying memos in browsers,
and help to find specific memos.

Just like code names, a memo's title should be short and concise. Don't confuse the name with its
content! The purpose is to fill the memo with content, which is a longer text that goes beyond just
describing the memo title. If all what you want to write in the memo fits into the title, use a
quotation comment instead.

References

Corbin, Juliet and Strauss, Anselm (2008). Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and
Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory (3rd and 4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Gibbs, Graham (2005). Writing as analysis. Online QDA.

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Working with Comments and Memos

Writing a Comment
You find a field for writing comments in every Entity Manager.

To write a comment, select an item and type something in to the comment

field. As soon as you select another item, the comment is automatically saved.
inst
Changes can also explicitly be saved by clicking on the Save icon int the top
right of the text pane.
All items that have a comment display a yellow post-it within their icon.

If you want to add formatting,

click on the icon with the arrow in the top right-hand corner. This opens a text
editor that offers a number of formatting option.

Alternatively, you can right-click on any entity and select the Edit Comment option from the context
menu and write a comment for the selected entity.

Creating Memos
Memos can be created from the Home tab, or in the Memo Manager.

To create a memo from the Home tab

Click the drop-down menu for New Entities and select Free Memo.

Enter a name for the new memo and click Create.

Depending on your last settings, the memo editor may open as floating or docked window. If you
want to change between floated and docked windows, see Interface Navigation,

To create a memo in the Memo Manager

Open the Memo Manager and select Create Free Memo in the ribbon.

Enter a name for the new memo and click Create.

Begin to write your memo. When you are done, click the Save button and close
the window.

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Changing the Memo Type

Memos can be organized, sorted and filtered by the type attribute.

Several standard memo types are offered by ATLAS.ti: commentary, memo and theory. You can
add new types or modify existing ones. The default type is memo.

To change the memo type or create a new one:

Select a memo in the Memo Manager and click on the Set Type button in the
ribbon (or select it from the context menu).

Select one of the existing types, or add a new one.

Click the Set Type.

Opening an Exis
You can access memos from everywhere: the Project Explorer, the Memo Manager, in the margin
area if you linked a memo to a quotation, or from within a network.

If you want to review or continue to work on a memo, just double-click the

memo.

Link
Memos can be linked to quotations, codes and other memos. You can link memos per drag & drop
basically anywhere in the program, or visually in networks. See Linking Nodes. Below a few
examples are given.

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Linking Memos to Quotations

The following options are available:

• Drag & Drop a memo from the Project Explorer or Memo Manager onto a highlighted
quotation, or on a quotation in the margin area. You can also drag the quotation to the memo.

• Drag & Drop a memo from the Project Explorer or Memo Manager to a quotation in a result
list (or vice versa) in the query tool, the Code Document Table, Code Co-occurrence Table,
or results from a project search.

• Drag & Drop a memo from the Project Explorer or the Memo Manager to a quotation in the
Quotation Manager (or vice versa).

• Link a memo to a quotation (or vice versa) in a network. See Linking Nodes.

Reviewing Quotations Linked to a Memo

To review all quotations linked to a memo, hold down the Ctrl key + double-
click. This opens the Quotation Reader, and you can read all quotations that
you have linked to the memo.
warn
Do not drop a memo onto a code in the margin area. This action will replace
the code with the memo, which in most cases is not the wanted outcome.

Linking Memos

The following options are available:

• Drag & Drop a memo from the memo branch in the Project Explorer or the Memo Manager to
the code branch in the Project Explorer (or vice versa).

• Drag & Drop a memo from the Memo Manager to a code in the Code Manager (or vice
versa).

• Link a memo to a code (or vice versa) in a network. See Linking Nodes.

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Linking Memos to Memos

The following options are available:

• Drag & Drop a memo to another memo in the memo branch of the Project Explorer.

• Drag & Drop a memo to another memo in the Memo Manager.

• Link a memo to a memo in a network. See Linking Nodes.

Converting a Memo into a Document

As a lot of the analysis happens while you write memos, in some cases you may wish to convert a
memo into a document as secondary data so that you can code it.

Select a memo in the Memo Manager and click on the Convert to Document
button in the ribbon, or select it from the context menu. Alternatively, right-
click on a memo in the Project Explorer and select the option Convert to
Document from the context menu.
The memo is then added to your list of documents.

You can continue to use the memo as memo. The memo comment is not transferred. It is treated
independently of the comment that you may want to write for the memo document.

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Hyperlinks

Representing the Rhetoric of Data

A network based on text segments that are linked to each other is often referred to as a hypertext.
The original sequential text is de-linearized, broken down into pieces that are then reconnected,
making it possible to traverse from one piece of data to another piece of data regardless of their
original positions.

As in ATLAS.ti, you cannot only work with text, this also applies to other data sources like images,
audio, video or geo data.

Cross-references between text passages are very common also in conventional media like books -
just think of religious and juridical texts, literature, journals etc. Footnotes and end notes are
another common deviation from the pure linearity of sequential text. However, in conventional
media, not much navigational support is provided for "traversing" between the pieces of data that
reference each other.

This manual for example is a computer-related hypertext application that displays operational
information in suitable small chunks (compared to lengthy printed information), but with a
considerable amount of linkage to other pieces of information.

Another well-known hypermedia structure is the World Wide Web with its textual, graphical and
other multimedia information distributed world-wide.

What are the advantages of direct connections between text segments, compared to the traditional
procedures of qualitative text analysis?

What Codes Can't Do

The code & retrieve paradigm, which is so prevalent for many systems supporting the qualitative
researcher, is not adequate for certain types of analysis. In formal terms, attaching codes onto
segments of data creates named sets of segments with almost no internal structure. This is not to
say that partitioning lots of text segments into sets is not useful. On the contrary, classification
leads to manageable amounts of segments that later can be retrieved with the help of the attached
code words. But this may not be the only way you want to look at your data.

The concept of hypertext introduces explicit relations between passages. These links have to be
built manually and result from an intellectual effort. The system cannot decide for you that segment
x is in contradiction to segment y. After the work of establishing the links, you can make
semantically richer retrievals like: "Show statements contrary to statement x." See Manager for
Links and Analytic Functions of Networks. A code offers fast access to a set of data segments that
are similar, defined by a simple relation between them, namely equivalence.

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Hypertext allows you to create different paths through the data you are analyzing. For example,
you may create a timeline different from the strict sequence of the original text.

Hyperlinks can express more differentiated relationships between quotations, for example:

• statement A contradicts / supports / refers to statement B.

• Image quotation X in document 7 illustrates what has been said in quotation Y in document
12.

The data segment that you can relate to each other can be from the same or different documents.

Mapping Hyperlinks in Networks

ATLAS.ti incorporates procedures for creating and browsing hypertext structures. It allows for two
or more quotations being connected using named relations. See About Relations.

Further, you can create graphical maps - using Networks - to make parts of your hyperspace
accessible easily.

Hyperlinks may connect quotations (textual, graphical, multimedia) across documents (intertextual
links) or may link segments within the same document (intra-textual links). The natural boundary for
hyperlinks, like all structures in ATLAS.ti, is the project.

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Creating Hyperlinks
A hyperlink is a named linked between two quotations. If, for instance, you notice that one
statement in a report or interview is explaining a previous statement in a bit more detail, you can
link the two using the relation "explains." Or you may find a contradictory or supporting statement.
These are just a few of the default relations that come with the software. If they do not fit what you
want to express, you can create user-defined relations in the Relation Manager. See Creating New
Relations.

ATLAS.ti offers a variety of options for creating and traversing hypertext links. Similar to the linking
of codes, you may create hyperlinks in the network editor. See Linking Nodes.

In addition, hypertext links can be created while you work with your documents. How this works is
described below.

Terminology
• The start of a hyperlink is called source

• The end of a hyperlink is called target.

When creating a hyperlink you first create the link source, next you select the link target and then
you select the relation that defines how these two quotations are linked.

Display of Hyperlinks

In the Margin Area

In the margin area, hyperlink labels show the quotation icon, the name of the relation, the quotation
ID and the first letters of the quotation name. The label is visualized as an arrow. Source links point
to the right, target links to the left.

In the Quotation Manager

All hyper-linked quotations can easily be recognized in the Quotation Manager. All source
quotations are marked with an opening angle bracket <, all target quotations with a closing bracket
>. If a quotation is both, source and target (as the case when creating chains), then both brackets
are used as prefix <>.

Symbol Explanation
< Quotation is source of a hyperlink
> Quotation is target of a hyperlink

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Symbol Explanation
<> Quotation is both start and target, thus at least two other quotations are linked

Creating Hyperlinks in a Document

Open a document.

Select a data segment as source for the hyperlink. It can be an existing

quotation, or a highlighted section of your data. Right-click the highlighted
document area and select the option Create Link Source from the context
menu.

If you select a data segment as source that was not yet a quotation, ATLAS.ti automatically creates
a quotation from it.

Select an existing quotation as target, or highlight a segment in your data, right

click and select the option Create Link Target.

The list of available relations opens up. Select a relation with a left-click. Now
the hyperlink is created.

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If you select a data segment as target that was not yet a quotation, ATLAS.ti automatically creates
a quotation from it.

If none of the existing relations fit, create a new relation in the Relation Manager. See Defining New
Hyperlink Relations.

After creating a hyperlink, you see the following in the margin area: the hyperlink label show the
quotation icon, the name of the relation, the quotation ID and the first letters of the quotation
name. The label is visualized as an arrow. Source links point to the right, target links to the left.

If you double-click on a hyperlink, the hyperlinked quotation is shown. You have the option to
directly jump to the linked quotation by clicking on the option Go to Quotation.

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Creating Hyperlinks in the Quotation Manager

This method can be applied to connect one or more existing quotations to one target quotation.

Select one or more source quotations in the Quotation Manager (multiple

selections can be done in the standard way).

Hold down the left mouse button and drag the quotation(s) to a target
quotation in the Quotation Manager.

Release the left mouse button. The relation menu opens, and you can specify
the relation to be used for the hyperlinks.

Creating Hyperlinks in the Margin Area

Creating hyperlinks in the margin area is suitable for connecting two quotations that are close to
each other:

Select a quotation bar in the margin area.

Hold down the left mouse button and drag the bar onto another quotation bar.

Release the left mouse button. The relation menu opens. Select a relation.

Creating Hyperlinks across Documents

This is a good method if you want to create hyperlinks between two documents.

Load two documents side-by-side. This means you load two documents into
different tab groups. See Working With Tabs And Tab Groups .

Left-click a quotation bar in the margin area of one document and drag it to a
quotation bar in the margin area of the other document. Release the left mouse
button, and select a relation.

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Working with Hyperlinks

Traversing Hyperlinks
Traversing hyperlinks means you view or jump to the linked quotations. To do so:

Double-click on a hyperlink.

A window pops showing you the content of the linked quotation.

To view the content of the linked quotation, select the option Go to Quotation.

Alternatively, you can also use 'Ctrl + double-click' to immediately jump to a linked quotation.

Modifying Hyperlinks
You can modify existing hyperlinks, i.e. cutting a link, flipping (reversing) a link, or changing the
relation at various places.

In the Margin Area

In the margin area, you can unlink or change the direction of a hyperlink:

Right-click on a hyperlink in the margin area and select either the Unlink, or the
Reverse option from the context menu.

In the Hyperlin

In the Hyperlink Manager, you can unlink or change the direction of a hyperlink, or change the
relation.

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To open the Hyperlink Manager, go to the Home tab, and click on the Links
button.
inst
By default the Link Manger shows the code-code links. To change to view the
hyperlinks, click on the Hyperlinks button on the right-hand side of the ribbon.
inst
To modify a hyperlink, select it, right-click and chose one of the following
options: Cut, Flip or Change Relation from the context menu.
See also Links Manager.

Modifying Hyperlinks in the Netwo

Open a network on a hyperlink, e.g. right-click and select Open Network from
the context menu, or click on the Open Network button in the ribbon. See Ad-
hoc networks.
inst
In the network editor, right-click on a link label and select one of the following
options: Flip Link, Cut Link or Change Relation from the context menu.
For more information see Linking Nodes.

Editing Hyperlink Comments

The links between quotations use fully qualified relations, like the links between codes. As a
hyperlink is a "first-class" entity, you can write a dedicated comment for each hyperlink.

Such a comment could explain why quotation A has been linked to quotation B. Link comments can
be accessed, displayed and edited from three locations: the margin area, the Hyperlink Manager
and the Network Editor.

The margin area has the advantage that it is readily available during scrolling through the
documents.

The network editor method offers a visual approach to accomplishing this goal.

Editing a Hyperlink Comment in the Margin Area

Right-click a hyperlink in the margin and select the option: Edit Hyperlink
Comment.

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Editing a Hyperlink Comment in the Hyperlin

Open the Hyperlink Manager.

inst
Select a hyperlink. Edit the comment in text pane below the link list.

Alternatively:

Right-click and select the Edit Comment option in the context menu, or click on
the Editor comment button in the ribbon to open a text editor.

Editing a Hyperlink Comment in

Open a network on a hyperlink, e.g. right-click and select Open Network from
the context menu, or click on the Open Network button in the ribbon. See also
Ad-hoc networks.
inst
Move the mouse pointer to the link between two quotations, right-click and
select Edit Comment.

Creating New Relations for H

New relations can be defined in the Relation Manager. See Creating New Relations. The procedure
for defining or editing hyperlink relations is equivalent to defining or editing code-code relations.

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Further Data Analysis

ATLAS.ti offers several tools that support you in querying your data:

Simple Boolean Retrieval.

See Retrieving Coded Data.

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Analysing Code Distributions

Code distributions are displayed in the Document Manager and in the Code Manager in the form of
bar charts. In the document manager you will see a bar for each code. The higher the bar, the more
often the code was used. In the Code Manager each bar stands for a document. Within the bar you
can see how the codes are distributed in the document.

After you've encoded the data, a look at the code distribution gives you a feel for the data. Which
topics were mentioned more or less frequently, by whom, is there a difference between different
groups of respondents? How are the topics distributed? For further information see Analysing Code
Distributions.

Code-Document Table
The Code Document Table is a cross-tabulation of codes or code groups by documents or
document groups. It shows how often a code (codes of a code group) has (have) been applied to a
document or document group. See Code Document Table.

Co-occurrence Analysis
Use the Code Co-occurrence Explorer to explore coded data to get a quick overview where there
might be interesting overlaps. If you are looking for specific co-occurrences and for accessing the
quotations of co-occurring codes, the Code Co-occurrence Table is the better choice. See Code
Co-Occurrence Tools.

The Query Tool

The Query Tool finds quotations based on a combination of codes using Boolean, Proximity or
Semantic operators. Example: Show me all quotations where both Code A and Code B have been
applied.

Such queries can also be combined with variables in form of documents or document groups. This
means that you can restrict a query to parts of your data like: Show me all quotations where both
Code A and Code B have been applied, but only for female respondents between the age of 21 and
30. See The Query Tool.

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Smart Codes
Smart Codes are stored queries. They can be reused and always reflect the current state of
coding, e.g. after more coding has been done or after coding has been modified. They can also be
used as part of other query, thus, you can build complex queries step-by-step. See Working With
Smart Codes.

Smart Groups
Like smart codes, smart groups are stored queries based on groups. The purpose is to create
groups on an aggregate level. For instance, if you have groups for gender, age and location, you
can create smart groups that reflect a combination of these like all females from age group 1 living
in city X. See Working With Smart Groups.

Global Filters
Global filters allow you to restrict searches across the entire project. If you set a document group
as global filter, the results in the Codes-Document or Code Co-occurrence Table will be calculated
based on the data in the filter and not for the entire project. Global filters effect all tools, windows,
and networks. See Applying Global Filters For Data Analysis.

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Available Operators for Querying Data

Knowing about the available operators is important when using the Code Co-occurrence Tools, the
Query Tool, when creating Smart Codes and Smart Groups. The following types of operators are
available:

• Boolean operators allow combinations of keywords according to set operations. They are the
most common operators used in information retrieval systems.

• Proximity operators are used to analyze the spatial relations (e.g., distance, within/enclosing,
overlapping, co-occurrence) between coded data segments.

Boolean Operators

Video Tutorial: Explaining Boolean Operators

OR, AND, ONE OF (exactly one of the following is true) and NOT

• OR, AND, and ONE OF (exactly one of the following is true) are binary operators which need
exactly two operands as input.
• NOT needs only one operand.
• Codes, code groups, or smart codes can be used as operands in a query.

AND: ALL of the following are true

The AND operator finds quotations that match ALL the conditions specified in the query. This
means you have applied two or more codes to the same quotation.

Example: All quotations coded with both 'code A' AND 'code B' .

The AND operator is very selective and often produces an empty result set as it requires that the
selected codes have all been applied to exactly the same data segment. It produces best results
when combined with less restrictive operators or when the overall number of the available text
segments is large.

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OR: ANY of the following are true

The OR operator does not really match the everyday usage of OR. Its meaning is At least one of...,
including the case where ALL conditions match. The OR operator retrieves all quotations that are
coded with any of the codes used in the expression.

Example: All quotations coded with 'code A' OR 'code B'. The result list will contain all quotations
coded with 'code A' and all quotations coded with 'code B', or quotations coded with both codes.

ONE OF: Exactly one of the following is true

The ONE OF operator asks that EXACTLY one of the conditions must meet. It translates into the
everyday either-or.

Example: All quotations coded with EITHER 'code A' OR 'code B' (but not with both).

NOT: None of the following are true

The NOT operator tests for the absence of a condition. Technically, it subtracts the findings of the
non-negated term from all data segments available. Given 1000 quotations in the project and 20
quotations assigned to 'code A', the query NOT 'code A' retrieves 980 quotations - those which are
not coded with 'code A'.

The operator can be used with an arbitrary expression as in the argument NOT ('code A' OR 'code
B') which is the equivalent of neither 'code A' nor 'code B'.

See Example 2 in the section Building Complex Queries.

Proximity Operators

Video Tutorial: Proximity Operators and Example Queries

Proximity describes the spatial relation< between quotations. Quotations can be embedded
in one another, one may follow another, etc. The operators in this section exploit these
relationships. They require two operands as their arguments.

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Proximity operators differ from the other operators in one important aspect: Proximity
operators are non-commutative. This property makes their usage a little more difficult to
learn.

• Quotations enclosing quotations: A ENCLOSES B retrieves all quotations coded with A that
contain quotations coded with B.

• Quotations being enclosed by quotations: A being enclosed by B (WITHIN) retrieves all

quotations coded with A that are contained within data segments coded with B.

• Overlaps (quotation overlapping at start): A OVERLAPS B retrieves all quotations coded with
A that overlap quotations coded with B

• Overlapped by (quotations overlapping at the end): A OVERLAPPED BY B retrieves all

quotations coded with A that are overlapped by quotations coded with B.

• Co-Occurs: Often when interested in the relation between two or more codes, you don't
really care whether something overlaps or is overlapped by, or is within or encloses. It this is
the case, you simply use the Co-occurs operator.

Co-occur is essentially a short-cut for a combination of the four proximity operators discussed
above, plus the operator AND. AND is a Boolean operator, but also finds co-occurrence, namely all
coded segments that overlap 100%.

The more general co-occurrence operator is quite useful when working with transcripts. In
interviews, people often jump back and forth in time or between contexts, and therefore it
often does not make much sense to use the very specific embedding or overlap operators.
With other types of data they are however quite useful. Think of video data where it might be
important whether action A was already going on before action B started or vice versa. Or if
you have coded longer sections in your data like biographical time periods in a person's life
and then did some more fine-grained coding within these time periods. Then the WITHIN
operator comes in very handy. The same applies when working with pre-coded survey or
focus group data. Using WITHIN, you can for instance find all data segments coded with
'topic x' WITHIN 'question 5'; or all data segments coded with 'code A' WITHIN 'speaker unit:
Tom'.

Non-commutativity of proximity operators

Non-commutativity requires a certain input sequence for the operands. While A OR B is equal to B
OR A, this does not hold for any of the proximity operators: A FOLLOWS B is not equal to B
FOLLOWS A. When building a query, always enter the expressions in the order in which they appear
in their natural language manifestation.

Another important characteristic for these operators when using the query tool is the specification
of the operand for which you want the quotations retrieved. A WITHIN B specifies the constraint,
but you must also specify if you want the quotations for the As or the Bs. This is done implicitly by
the sequence.

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If you enter the query 'A Co-occur B', all quotations coded with A are retrieved.

If you enter 'B co-occur A', all quotations coded with B are retrieved.

For example, if you want to retrieve all segments coded with codes of the code group 'Positive
effects of parenting' for all comments written by people with 1 child: 'No. of children: 1 child', the
query yields 11 quotations:

As results, you will get all quotations coded with the codes of the code group 'Positive effects of
parenting'.

If you enter the codes in a different order - the code 'No. of children: 1 child' first - then the query
retrieves 10 quotations. This is not a mistake, because this time the result will be all quotations
coded with the code 'No. of children: 1 child'.

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In the Query Tool, you need to enter the code whose content you are most interested in on
the right-hand side of the query.

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The Query Tool

The Query Tool is used for retrieving quotations using the codes they were associated with during
the process of coding. The simplest retrieval of this kind - search for quotations with codes- is
what you frequently do by double-clicking ona Code in the Code Manager or a code browser. See
Retrieving Coded Data. This may already be regarded as a query, although it is a simple one. The
Query Tool is more complex in that it can be used to create and process queries that include a
variety of combinations of codes.

A query is a search expression built from operands (codes and code groups) and operators
(Boolean, proximity or semantic operators) that define the conditions that a quotation must meet
to be retrieved, for example "All quotations coded with both codes A and B".

A query can be built incrementally which is instantaneously evaluated and displayed as a list of
quotations. This incremental building of complex search queries gives you an exploratory approach
toward even the most complex queries.

To open the Query Tool:

Select the Analyze tab and click Query Tool.

The query tool ribbon contains all available operators for querying data, plus a few options that
help you build a query. At the left-hand side you see the list of folders, categories, subcodes and
code groups that can be used as operands in a query. The main space is reserved for displaying
the query and the results. At the top right-hand side you find a number of different output options
to create a report of the query results.

Remember the results of a query in the query tool are always quotations.

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How to Build a Query Using Boolean Operators

Video Tutorial Creating a Boolean OR query in the Query Tool

The examples shown are based on the Children & Happiness sample projects part 1. You
can download and import it, if you want to follow along.

Example 1

Open the Query Tool by selecting the Analyze tab and from there click Query
Tool.

Question

The aim is to find all statements where people wrote about the two positive effects of parenting:
'fulfillment' and 'life is richer'.

Next, select the operator OR from the ribbon. It will be added into the white
field.

As OR needs two arguments, you see two nodes with a red dot that can be
filled with codes or code groups. You recognize the active node by the blue
frame. Double-click on a code or code group to fill it. You can also drag and
drop a code or code group to the node, or click on the Add button in the
ribbon. The results of this first part of the query will immediately be displayed
in the result pane.

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Click on the second node to activate it and enter a second code or code
group. If you double-click a third code or code group, it will be added to the OR
query. Another double-click will add a fourth node to the term, and so on.

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Inspecting the Results of a Query

If you click on an operator node, the quotations resulting from the query will be displayed in the
bottom pane. If you click on any other node in the query, the respective results of the selected
node will be shown.

The results of a query are shown in the Quotation Reader. The full functionality of the
quotation reader is also available here.

If you want to read the results in a detached Quotation reader, click on the
burger menu and select the option Open in new window:

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The status bar at the bottom of the screen shows the total number of quotations this query results
in

If you click on any one of the node in a query, the respective results of this node will be shown:

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Options of the Result Pane

If you click on the Eye icon, you can change the view mode. Available options are:

• single line
• small preview
• large preview
• show quotation comments
• show margin

When you click on the Burger icon you can export the results of the query to Excel.

Removing or Modifying a Query

To delete a query, click on the operator node and select Delete in the ribbon,
or the Delete key on your keyboard.

If you only want to delete an argument (i.e. a code or code group) from the
query, click on the respective node and then on the Delete button in the
ribbon, or the Delete key on your keyboard.

If you want to change the operator, click on the Change Operator button in the
ribbon. Changing operators is only available for Boolean queries.

Example 2
In this example, we show how to build a query with two Boolean operators.

Question

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The aim is to find all statements coded with:

("children = level of happiness" OR "children > happiness")

that have also been coded with codes of the code group "sources of happiness".

Select the operator OR from the ribbon.

Add the two codes "children = level of happiness" and "children > happiness"
into the two empty nodes as described above.

Select the operator AND to extend the query. The result of the first query is
now one of the two arguments needed. Activate the empty node by clicking on
it and add the code group "sources of happiness".

Activate the empty node by clicking on it and add the code group "sources of
happiness".

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You can read the query as follows: Find all statements where people wrote that children either
make them more happy, or they experience equal level of happiness and where they also
mentioned a source of happiness. This query yields one quotation as result.

You can rotate the layout of a query by clicking on the Rotate Layout button in the ribbon.

If you selected the wrong Boolean operator, you can exchange it by clicking on Change
Operator in the ribbon. This saves you from rebuilding the query from scratch if you made a
mistake.

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How to Build a Query using Proximity Operators

Video Tutorial: Proximity Operators and Example Queries

The examples shown are based on the Children & Happiness sample projects part 1. You
can download and import it, if you want to follow along.

Example 1

Open the Query Tool by selecting the Analyze tab and from there click Query
Tool.

Question

Is positive and negative perception of parenthood related to the attitude whether having children
contribute to happiness?

These aspects are captured by the code groups: "positive effects of parenting" and "negative
effects of parenting", and the codes "children > happiness" and "children < happiness"

Select the operator Co-occurs in the ribbon.

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As all proximity operators need two arguments, you see two nodes with a red dot that can be filled
with codes or code groups. You recognize the active node by the blue frame.

Select the code "children > happiness" to fill the node on the left-hand side.
You can also drag and drop a code or code group to the node, or click on the
Add button in the ribbon. The results of this first part of the query will
immediately be displayed in the result pane.

Select the code group "Positive effects of parenting" to fill the node on the
left-hand side. The result of this query are 8 quotations.

The status bar at the bottom of the screen shows the total number of quotations this query results
in.

You can read the query as follows:

Remember that the position of the code or code group in a query with proximity operators matters.
The quotations displayed in the result pane are those quotations linked to the code (or argument)
on the left-hand side of the query. Note that the Co-occurs icon shows a black and white field. The
black field represents the quotations that are shown (see image).

If you got the arguments the wrong way around, you can swap them by clicking on the Swap
button in the ribbon.

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To see how the attitude "children > happiness" relate to "Negative effects of
parenting", select the code group "Positive effects of parenting" and Delete it
from the query.

Replace it with the see code group "Negative effects of parenting". The result
will be 0 quotations.

Next, test whether there is a relation between the attitude "children <
happiness" and a negative perception of parenting by replacing the code on
the left-hand side:

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Example 2

In the following example, two proximity operators are used in one query.

Question Do respondents who mentioned positive effects of parenting also mention negative
aspects?

As mentioned positive and negative effects do not necessary co-occur directly, the task is to find
both aspects in the larger context of the entire comment written by each person. This larger
context has been coded with the code "blog comment".

Select the operator Encloses in the ribbon. Enter the code "Blog comment" on
the left-hand side, and the code group "Positive effects of parenting" on the
right-hand side.

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Next, select the operator Co-occurs from the ribbon. The first query now
becomes one of the arguments for the second part of the query. Add the code
group "Negative effects of parenting" to the empty node.

The result shows 11 quotations (if you check the status bar on your screen). As the code "blog
comments" has been entered on the left-hand side, each results reflects one comment. So we
know that 11 respondents have been writing about both positive and negative effects of parenting.

You can rotate the layout of a query by clicking on the Rotate layout button in the ribbon.

Inspecting the Results of a Query

If you click on an operator node, the quotations resulting from the query will be displayed in the
result pane. If you click on any other node in the query, the respective results of the selected node
will be shown.

The results of a query are shown in the Quotation Reader. The full functionality of the
quotation reader is also available here.

Options of the Result Pane

If you click on the Eye icon, you can change the view mode. Available options are:

• single line
• small preview
• large preview
• show quotation comments
• show margin

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When you click on the Burger icon you can export the results of the query to Excel.

Removing a Query or an Argument

To delete a query, click on the operator node and select Delete in the ribbon,
or the Delete key on your keyboard.

If you only want to delete an argument (i.e. a code or code group) from the
query, click on the respective node and then on the Delete button in the
ribbon, or the Delete key on your keyboard.

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How to Build a Query using a Mix of Operators

The examples shown are based on the Children & Happiness sample projects part 1. You
can download and import it, if you want to follow along.

The instructions below are not as detailed, as it is assumed that you have read the examples for
Boolean Queries and Proximity Queries.

Example 1
Question: Find all blog comments written by people who have one child AND who expressed the
ambivalence of parenthood that contain a statement that having children made them happier.

The AND query needs to be embedded within the co-occurrence query:

Select the operator AND in the ribbon.

Add code or code groups to the empty nodes via double-click or drag and
drop (here: "#fam: 1 child" and "parenthood: ambivalence").

Select the operator Co-occurs and enter a code/code group to the empty
node (here: "children: > happiness"). Since the first AND query makes up the
argument for the left-hand side of the query, the final query finds all quotations
that are co-occurring with the quotations of the first argument.

Remember that the position of the code or code group in a query with proximity operators
matters. The quotations displayed in the result pane are those quotations linked to the code
(or argument) on the left-hand side of the query.

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You can read the query as follows: Find all blog comments written by people who have one child
AND who expressed the ambivalence of parenthood that contain a statement that having children
made them happier.

To explore the data further, you can exchange the single nodes of the query, for example to see
whether there are also comments that match the same criteria for people with two children; or to
find comments where people with 1 / 2 or more children write that having children made them less
happy.

If you got the arguments the wrong way around, you can swap them by clicking on the Swap
button in the ribbon.

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Example 2
The aim is to find all blog comments written by people who have expressed that children make
them happy, that are NOT coded with the code 'parenthood: ambivalence'

Here we have to define two conditions that both must apply:

• Blog comments that enclose statements that children mean > happiness.
• All quotations that have not been coded with 'parenthood: ambivalence' As both conditions
must be true, we need to use the AND operator to combine them:

Select the operator NOT in the ribbon.

Add code or code groups to the empty node via double-click or drag and drop
(here: "parenthood: ambivalence")

Select the operator AND and instead of adding a code or code group to the
empty node, extend the query by selecting the operator Encloses.

Add a code/code group to the empty nodes (here: "blog:comment" and

"children: > happiness"). Here it matters again which code/code group is
entered on the right or left-hand side of this sub query.

You can read the query as follows: Find all blog comments written by people who have expressed
that children make them happy, that are NOT coded with the code 'parenthood: ambivalence'

To explore the data further, you can exchange for instance the code 'children: > happiness' with
'children: < happiness'.

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Restrict a Query to Sub Groups in your Data

Video Tutorial: Query Tool with Scope

Opening the Scope Tool

If you want to restrict a search to a particular document or document group, e.g. because you are
interested in comparing male and female respondents, you need to open the scope tool.

Click on Edit Scope in the ribbon of the query tool.

After selecting the Edit Scope option, an additional region opens on the left-hand side. The ribbon
also changes.

You can select a document or document group to restrict a search, or you can build a query using
Boolean operators if you need a combination of documents or document groups, e.g. all female
respondents who have children. Creating a query consisting of documents or document groups
works in the same way as creating a code query. See Example Boolean Query.

Select a single document/document group or build a Boolean query. The result

pane in the Scope area shows all quotations of the documents you have set as
scope. The filtered results are shown on the left-hand side below the code
query.

Changing the Scope

To change the scope, click on the Delete button in the scope tool.

Closing the Scope Tool

To close the scope tool, click again on Edit Scope in the ribbon.

To see the results of a restricted search, always look at the list of quotations below the code
query on the left-hand side of the Query Tool window.

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Storing the Results of a Query

You can store the results of a query as a smart code for further re-use. You can learn more about
smart codes here

After you have created a query, click on the Save Smart Code button in the
Query Tool tab.
inst
Enter a name for the smart code and click Create.
warn
A smart code always contains the quotations of the entire project. If you set a
scope to restrict the query to certain document or document groups, this is not
saved in the smart code!

You can now review all quotations of this query, e.g. in the Code or Quotation Manager, at any time.
If you make some changes in your coding, the smart code will always give you the up-to-date
results.

Smart codes can be recognized by the gray dot at the bottom left-hand side of the code icon. See
Working With Smart Codes for further information.

If a query result delivers the quotations that are necessary to answer a research question, a
smart code can be a convenient way to store this result. This can be reflected in the name of
the smart code, e.g. Research question 3: Positive & negative views on parenting.

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Creating Document Groups from Results

When you add documents to a project, it is easy to create document groups based on sample
characteristics like gender, age, profession, location, etc.

At times, you first need to code the data to find relevant information like years of working
experience, special skills, attitudes about something, relationship to other people, etc. For this you
need an option to create document groups based on query results.

Create a query. See for instance Example Boolean Query. Make sure your
mouse pointer selects the query and not a quotation n the result list. Click on
the New Document Group button in the ribbon and enter a name for the new
group.
ATLAS.ti creates a new group from all documents that yield quotation results
based on the query.

The query might be as simple as just selected one code.

For instance, if you have coded for work experience:

• work experience: 0 - 5 years

• work experience: 6 - 10 years
• work experience: 10 - 15 years
• work experience: > 15 years

You would simply add the code 'work experience: 0 - 5 years' and click on the Create Document
Group button to create a document group of all respondents who have a work experience of 0 - 5
years. Then you add the code 'work experience: 6 - 10 years' and create a document group, and so
on.

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Query Tool Reports

Excel Report

To export the list of quotations that result from a query to Excel, click on the
'burger menu' (next to the eye) on the top right-hand side of the quotation list.

Text Report

To create a text report, click on the Report button in the ribbon. The drop-
down menu offers the following options:

• Report: This is a report that you can customize. It is explained in more detail in the section
Creating Reports.

• List: This report only includes the quotation ID, name, reference and document name. This is
a useful report option if you work with audio and video data that have no textual content. It is
also useful if you worked intensively with the quotation level and added your own quotation
names and comments. See Quotation Level.

• List With Comments: Same as 'list' plus quotation comments.

• Full Content: Includes the full content of text and image quotations, plus the full quotation
reference, any codes, memos and hyperlinks that apply.

• Content plus Comments: Same as 'full content' plus quotation comments.

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Code-Document Table
You can use the Code-Document Table for within and across documents or group comparisons by
relating codes or code groups and documents or document groups to each other.

The table cells contain:

• frequency count of the number of codings. This can be different from the number of
quotations, if a quotation is coded by multiple codes. Counted is each link between a code
and a quotation.

• word count of the quotations coded by the selected code or code group.

Running an Analysis in the Code-Document Table

In the Home ribbon, select the Analyze tab and from there the Code Document
Table.

Select codes or code groups for the table rows. The selected codes / code
groups are added to the table.

Select documents or document groups for the table columns. The selected
documents / document groups are added to the table.

How to make selections: To select an item, you need to click the check-box in front of it. It is
also possible to select multiple items via the standard selection techniques using the Ctrl/
Cmd or Shift-key. After highlighting multiple items, push the space bar to activate the
checkboxes of all selected items, or right click and chose Check Selected.

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How to read the table

By default, the codes / code groups are displayed in the left column, and the documents /
document groups in the top row.

Left column

• Next to each code, the number indicates how often the code is applied in the entire project.

• Next to a code group, you see two numbers: The first one tells you how many codes are in
the group, the second numbers gives you the number of codings. This is different from the
number of quotations, as multiple codes from the same code group could be linked to the
same quotation.

Top row

• Below a document, you see the total number of quotations in each document.

• Below a document group, you see two numbers: the first one tells you how many documents
are in the document group, and the second number gives you the number of quotations for
all documents in the group.

The additional information you get for each selected row or column item allows you to better
evaluate the numbers inside the table cells. If the value in the table cell is 10, but the code
overall was applied 100 times, this leads to a different interpretation as if the code was only
applied 12 times in the entire project.

Table cells

• The results in the table cells show how often each selected code was (or the codes of a
code group were) applied in each document or document group. Counted are the number of
codings, unless you select to count words (see options).

• If you click on a cell in the table, the quotation content is shown in the Quotation Reader on
the left-hand side.

• Below the table a Sankey Diagram is shown. You can see both at the same time, or view
either the table or the Sankey Diagram. See below.

Code-Document Table Ribbon

Colors: You can choose among three colors for the table cells (blue, red and green), a color map,
and no coloring. If you select a color or the color map, the table cells are colored in different
shades.

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Row Totals: Display the row total table (default).

Column Totals: Display the column total in the table (default).

Normalize: If documents are of unequal length, or document groups of unequal size, the absolute
frequencies might be misleading as a measure of comparison. Indicative are the total number of
quotations in a document or document group (see first row).

If you normalize the data the number of codings are adjusted. As benchmark, the document /
document group column or row with the highest total is used. For example, if you compare two
documents, and the total number of codings for the first document is 100 and for the second
document it is 50, then all codings of the second document are multiplied by 100/50 = 2. See Code
Document Table: Normalizing Data.

Binarize: This option reduces all cell values to 0 and 1. It shows whether a code, or codes of a code
group, occur or do not occur in a document, or a document group. If they occur a black dot is
shown; if not, the cell is empty. This makes it easier to identify patterns in the data.

When you export the table to Excel, the dots are turned into 1s and the empty cells into 0s. This
allows, for example, a discriminant analysis to be carried out in a statistical program.

Absolute Frequencies: The table cells show the number of codings. This is the number of times a
code is linked to a quotation. For single codes the number of codings is the same as the number of
quotations, but for code groups it can differ if codes that are in the same code group have been
applied to the same quotation.

Relative Frequencies:

• Column Rel.-Frequencies: The table cells show relative frequencies based on the column
cells. The total of each column will add up to 100%.
• Row Rel.-Frequencies: The table cells show relative frequencies based on the row cells. The
total of each row will add up to 100%.

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• Table Rel.-Frequencies: Display relative frequencies based on all codes used in the table.
The totals of all row and column codes will add up to 100%.

Count Codings: Count the number of times a code has been applied to a quotation. Please note,
the number of codings can be higher than the number of quotations if code groups are used as you
can apply multiple codes to one quotation.

Count Words: Count the words of the quotations coded by the selected code, or the codes of the
selected code group.

Compress: This is a quick way to remove all rows or columns that only show empty cells. This is the
same as manually deactivating codes or documents that yield no results. Thus, you cannot
"uncompress" a table.

Codes as Rows: Display all selected codes / code groups in the rows of the table.

Codes as Columns: Display all selected codes / code groups in the columns of the table.

Details: You can deactivate the quotation count that is shown after each code/code group, or
below each document / document group.

Export: You can export the table to Excel.

Sankey: Visualize the table as Sankey Diagram. See more in the chapter on Visualizing the Code-
Document Table.

Bar Chart: Visualize the table as bar chart. See more in the chapter on Visualizing the Code-
Document Table.

Show Lists: If you only want to see the table and/or the graphs and not the selection lists,
deactivate this option.

Show Table: If you only want to see the bar chart or the Sankey Diagram without the table,
deactivate this option.

Show Diagram: If you only want to see the table, deactivate this option.

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Refresh: If you make modifications to your codings while the table is open, you can click the
Refresh option to update the results.

View Tab

Show Lists: If you only want to see the table and not the selection lists, deactivate this option.

Refresh: If you make modifications to your codings while the table is open, you can click the
Refresh option to update the results.

Auto size Columns: Adjust the size of the columns automatically so that the full label is shown.

Freeze first Column: Set if you do not want the auto size option to affect the first column.

Set Column Size: You can manually set the column size. 100 means that the column is as wide as
the full label.

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Code-Document Table: Relative Frequencies

Relative frequencies are useful for comparing code distributions across or within documents or
document groups, as percentages are easier to comprehend.

If documents are of unequal length, or if document groups have an unequal number of

members, it is recommended to normalize the counts as absolute counts may distort the
results. See Data Normalization.

Across Group Comparison: Row Relative Frequencies

Code-Document Table showing an example of an across-group-comparison

The table shows data from a survey with open-ended questions where people evaluate the
computer game Minecraft. You can download the project here.

You must read this table from left to right along the rows. It shows the distribution of the selected
codes across the following three document groups:

• parents who do not play Minecraft themselves

• parents who play
• player, who are not also parents

A quick glance of the heat map indicates that people who play (parents or others) mention more
benefits than parents who do not play. The latter group appears more concerned with the
downsides of playing a computer game, especially with the social and emotional dangers. Players
mention very few downsides.

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Whether you need to select row or column relative frequencies depends on which way
around the table is displayed. If documents/document groups are listed as rows and the
codes as columns, you use row relative frequencies for a within group comparison.

Within Group Comparisons: Column Relative Frequencies

The following example is from the sample project: Children & Happiness. Compared are in what
kind of relations the readers wrote about positive and negative experience of parenthood.

As can be seen from the table, the readers from the parenting block write relatively speaking more
about positive aspects of parenting as compared to the readers of the NYTM article.

Total Relative Frequencies

If you select total relative frequencies, the calculation is based on the total number of codings of all
selected codes in the table. Below it is compared who has provided more or fewer reasons for
having or not having children:

Example application of total relative frequencies

Readers of the parenting blog have given 38 / 94 = 40,43% of the reasons for having children and
9/94 = 9.57% of the reasons for not having children

Readers of the NYTM article have contributed 24,7/94=26,32% of the reasons for having children
and 22,26/94=23,68% of the reasons for not having children (the data have been normalized).

Thus, comparatively, the readers of the NYTM articles have given quite a few more reasons for not
having children, which fits the results reported above that they also wrote more about negative
effects of parenting.

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You can display all values: absolute frequencies and all relative frequencies in one table by
selecting all options. It depends on the purpose for which you want to use the table. For
interpreting the data, it is probably easier if you look at each of the relative frequency counts
separately. For a comprehensive report for an appendix, you may want to export the table
with all options included.

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Code-Document Table: Normalization

If documents are of unequal length, or document groups of unequal size, the absolute frequencies
might be misleading as a measure of comparison. If you conduct interviews, and some interviews
are only half an hour long and others 2 hours, the chance someone talks about certain issues and
how often during the interview is higher in the long interviews. Thus, if you were to compare
absolute numbers, the results might just reflect the different durations of the interviews. The same
applies if you analyse reports. If one report is 25 pages long and another 100 and the full reports
are coded, absolute frequencies are not a valid measure for comparison. The total number of
quotations in a document, or a group of documents (see first row) can help you to decide whether
normalization of the data is appropriate.

If you normalize the data the number of codings are adjusted. As benchmark, the document /
document group column or row with the highest total is used. The images below show an example.

The number of quotations in each document is very different, 273 vs. 99. In fact document 3 is also
three times as long as document 4. Therefore, it is not surprising that it contains more quotations.
Interpreting the numerical results based on absolute numbers would be misleading. When
normalizing the data, the quotation count for the selected code for the document with the lower
number of quotations is adjusted; here by the factor 48/14 = 3,428 (rounded at the third digit).

As you can see from the table with the normalized data, this changes the results and also the
interpretation. As you don't have to rely on the numbers when working with ATLAS.ti, you can click
on each cell and read the data behind it, before you then write up the results in a memo.

As normalization often results in uneven numbers, it is useful to work with relative rather
than absolute frequencies. See Relative Frequencies.

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Binarize the Results of a Code-Document Table

At times, you might only be interested to see whether a code occurs in a document or not.

To activate this option, click Binarize in the ribbon of the Code Document
Table.
The table will show black dots if a code or codes from a code group have been
applied to a document or document group. If it has not been applied, the cell is
empty.

The row and column totals count the number of yes / no occurrences. Such a table can for instance
be used for discriminant analysis in a statistical program.

If you export the table to Excel, the Excel table shows 1s and 0s. This allows, for example, a
discriminant analysis to be carried out in a statistical program.

Table exported to Excel:

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Visualizing the Code-Document Table

Sankey Diagram
Video tutorial: Sankey Diagrams in ATLAS.ti Windows

Data Visualization is a great way to simplify the complexity of understanding relationships among
data. The Sankey Diagram is one such powerful technique to visualize the association of data
elements. Originally, Sankey diagrams were named after Irish Captain Matthew Henry Phineas Riall
Sankey, who used this type of diagram in 1898 in a classic figure showing the energy efficiency of a
steam engine. Today, Sankey diagrams are used for presenting data flows and data connections
across various disciplines.

• Sankey diagrams allow you to show complex processes visually, with a focus on a single
aspect or resource that you want to highlight.

• They offer the added benefit of supporting multiple viewing levels. Viewers can get a high
level view, see specific details, or generate interactive views.

• Sankey diagrams make dominant factors stand out, and they help you to see the relative
magnitudes and/or areas with the largest contributions.

In ATLAS.ti, the Sankey diagram complements the Code Co-occurrence Table. As soon as you
create a table, a Sankey diagram visualizing the data will be shown below the table.

Further Reading

• Using sankey diagrams to tell a story with data

• Visualizing customer journey with sankey diagram

• A sankey diagram says more than a 1000 pie charts

• What, Why and How of sankey diagrams

• Using colors effectively in sankey diagrams

As soon as you create a table, a bar chart will be shown in the area below the table. To see a
Sankey Diagram instead, click the Sankey button in the Diagram section of the ribbon.

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If you need more space on your screen for the diagram, you can deactivate the lists and/or the
table in the ribbon. The row and column entities of the table are represented in the Sankey model
as nodes and edges, showing the strength of co-occurrence between the pairs of nodes. In the
Code-Document Table, the connecting pairs can consist of:

• codes - documents
• codes - document groups
• code groups - documents
• code groups - document groups

Edge: For each table cell containing a value, an edge is displayed between the diagram nodes. The
thickness of the edges resemble the cell values of the table. Cells with value 0 are not displayed in
the Sankey view.

The key to reading and interpreting Sankey Diagrams is to remember that the width is
proportional to the quantity represented.

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Layout
The Sankey diagram, similar to the network editor, applies a layout for its nodes and consequently
to the edges connecting nodes to create an easy to comprehend visualization of the data. This
basic layout places the selected entities (nodes in Sankey terminology) into vertical „layers“ with
the row entities placed to the left and the column entities to the right. If nodes have incoming as
well as outgoing links in the currently visible set of nodes, they will be placed in intermediate lanes
or layers.

In many situations, the initial layout already meets the researchers requirements. However, there
are some options to modify the initial layout.

Swapping columns and rows for the table will also affect the Sankey diagram and result in a
180° rotation.

Interactivity
• To display the quotations that are responsible for the co-occurrence of two entities, click on
the connecting edge. This has the same effect as clicking a table cell. You see the quotations
displayed in the Quotation Reader to the right.

• If you hover an edge with your mouse, the numbers that you also see in the table cells are
shown. Be default, these are the number of codings in the selected document or document
group.

• To support finding the correct link, moving the mouse highlights the hovered edges. After
selecting an edge, the unselected edges are dimmed to further increase the visibility of the
edge under consideration.

• Selecting a node will highlight this node as well as all its incoming and outgoing edges. This
makes it easy to spot areas of connectivity.

• You can also use the nodes label for selection. This allows you to do a „single-handed“ multi-
selection which otherwise would require pressing the Ctrl-key.

Removing edges

To unscramble a potentially cluttered diagram, you can remove selected nodes

or edges by pressing the Delete key on your keyboard. You can undo this via
Ctrl-Z.

The same may be accomplished by modifying the selection lists, but this is a bit „heavier“, and it
may not be clear which entities need to be deselected.

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Sankey Diagram Ribbon

Fit to Window: When the Sankey diagram is created (concurrently with the respective tools’ table) it
may display a bit too tiny in its reserved window pane. There are several options to fix this: Switch
off the table view and the selection lists, maximize the project window or float the tool with the
diagram. The Sankey diagram itself will not resize to the freed space automatically. Click Fit-to
Window to fit the current diagram to the available window area.

Refresh Layout: This will also move nodes to their original places if moved in the meantime. The
edges will also be recalculated for best entanglement. This option can also be activated by double-
clicking the diagrams background.

Auto Layout: This option is activated by default. It will instantly recompute the diagram’s layout if:

• Nodes are moved

• Nodes are removed
• Edges are removed

Respect Node Placement: You might not always be happy when the nodes you shifted to other
locations are instantly moved back to their original locations. To prevent this, you either need to
disable the Auto Layout or select Respect Node Placement.

Note, that the Respect Node Placement option will not let you place nodes to arbitrary
positions but will find the nearest lane and relayout the diagram to make it nice looking
again. Shortcut: Double-click the diagram background while pressing the left Shift key.

Rotate Diagram: Sometimes the horizontal left-to-right layout may not always give the most
optimal visualization of your data (depending on available screen space, monitor size). Click this
button to toggle between a vertical (top-down) and the original horizontal layout. Shortcut: Double-
click the diagram background while pressing the left Ctrl-key.

Display Icons: This display the entities type icons preceding the labels. This makes most sense
when the diagram contains multiple types of entities as in the Code Document Table. By default,
this option is not activated.

Link Color Mode: The coloring of the links and edges between the nodes can be set to:

• Use the color of the source node, either the user provided color for codes, or the type
dependent color of other entities.

• Use the color of the target node

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Use a color gradient starting with the source and ending with the target color. This is the
• default. It makes tracking the endpoint of an edge quite comfortable. Shortcut: Double-click
the diagram background while pressing the left Alt key.

• None: Use a gray shade independent of any node coloring.

Short-cut: If you double-click on an edge while pressing the left Alt-key, you switch between
the different color modes.

Print Diagram: Creates an output of the current diagram respecting both the selected background,
and the visual selection state of both nodes and edges. The printout will not contain any
quotations.

Printing can also create high quality PDFs if an appropriate printer driver is installed.

Miscellaneous

The diagram is integrated into the table tools and responds to certain options:

• Compress, that is removing empty rows or columns, will remove corresponding elements in
the diagram.

• Clustering may reduce the number of co-occurrences and thus affects the size of edges in
the diagram.

• Swapping rows and columns reverts the original layout by 180°.

Bar Chart
To visualize the table as bar chart, click on Bar Chart in the Diagram section of the ribbon.

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If you hoover over a bar, the code (code group) - document (document group) pair will be shown.

For the visualization as bar chart, it is often preferable to change the code colors. You may also
want to switch around the rows and the columns. You find this option in the ribbon of the Code-
Document Table.

The table below shows the same comparison as above, only this time each subcode was given a
different color. The subcodes for benefits range from grey to blue; the subcodes for downside are
red to orange.

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There is currently no legend. The one you see in the images are copy & pasted screenshots.
Also, the code colours have to be changed manually. For a more convenient work with the
graphics there will be further options in future updates.

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Code Co-Occurrence Tools

The co-occurrence tools search for codes that have been applied either to the same quotation or
to overlapping quotations. Using these tools you can find out which topics are mentioned together
or close to each other.

The co-occur operator is a combination of the WITHIN, ENCLOSES, OVERLAPS, OVERLAPPED BY

and the AND operator.

By default, the table searches for all co-occurrence, but you can also ask more specifically only for
AND occurrences. An 'AND' occurrence means that two codes code exactly the same quotation.

See available operators for further information.

The results depend on how you have coded the data. If you want to examine the proximity of
certain issues, then you have to code overlapping segments, or create one quotation and apply
multiple codes.

If issues that you want to code occur very close to each other in the data, the
recommendation is to create one quotation and apply two or more codes to it. If these issues
are spread over a long paragraph or section, the recommendation is to create multiple
overlapping quotations so that the precision of coding is higher.

Code Co-occurrences can be displayed in a tree view, see Code Co-Occurrence Explorer, or as a
data matrix, see Code Co-Occurrence Table.

The Explorer in addition to code co-occurrences also displays documents and their codes.

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The Code Co-Occurrence Explorer

Use the Code Co-occurrence Explorer to explore coded data to get a quick overview where
there might be interesting overlaps. If you are looking for specific co-occurrences and for
accessing the quotations of co-occurring codes, the Code Co-occurrence Table is the
better choice.

To open the tool, select the Analyze tab and click Co-Oc Explorer.

The Code Co-occurrence Explorer can also be loaded from the Home tab into the navigator on the
left hand side by clicking on the drop-down arrow of the Navigator button.

The Codes Branch

Open the branches by clicking on the arrow in front the root for Codes.

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The Codes Branch

On the first level of the code branch all codes are listed. If you expand the tree further, you see all
co-occurring codes. On the third level, you can access the quotations of the co-occurring codes.

If you double-click on a quotation, it is displayed in the context of the document.

The Documents Branch

When you open the 'Documents' branch, you see the documents of your project on the first level.
On the next level, you see the codes that have been applied to the document. On the third level,
you see the quotations coded with those codes.

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The Code Co-Occurrence Table

The Co-occurrence Table in comparison to the Code Co-occurrence Explorer shows the
frequencies of co-occurrence in form of a matrix similar to a correlation matrix that you may know
from statistical software.

The aim is to relate codes to each other that have been applied either to the same quotations or to
overlapping quotations. You can find out which topics are mentioned together or are in proximity to
each other. Thus, the results depend on how you have coded the data.

The Co-occurrence Table shows the frequencies of co-occurrence in form of a matrix similar
to a correlation matrix that you may know from statistical software.

To open the tool, select the Analyze tab and from there the Co-Oc Table.

Next you need to select the codes that you want to relate to each other:

Select one or multiple codes from the first list for table columns, and from the
second list for the table rows. You can switch around the rows and codes after
the table has been created.

To select an item, you need to click the check-box in front of it. It is also possible to select multiple
items via the standard selection techniques using the Ctrl or Shift-key. After highlighting multiple
items, push the space bar to activate the checkboxes of all selected items, or right click and chose
Check Selected from the context menu.

The context menu in each of the selection list also allows you to uncheck all selected codes, to
select all codes, to unselect all codes, to invert the selection, or to invert the checked codes.

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Below each table, you can select to see a Sankey Diagram or a Bar Chart that visualize the data in
the table. See below for further information.

The table approach reduces the analysis to a pairwise comparison. If you need a higher
order co-occurrence you can use the category codes instead of the subcodes.

If you want to compare code co-occurrences within subsets of your data, you can set a
document group as global filter

How to Read the Table

• First column / first row: The number below and behind each code shows how often the code
is applied the entire project. This helps you to better evaluate the number of co-occurrences
in the table cells.

• The number in the cell indicates the number of hits, how often the two code co-occur. This
means that the number of co-occurring „events" and not the number of quotations are
counted. If a single quotation is coded by two codes or if two overlapping quotations are
coded by two codes, this counts in both cases as a single co-occurrence.

• If you click on a cell, the quotations of the corresponding row and column codes are
displayed next to the table in the Quotation Reader. The quotation reader here always
displays two lists of quotations: the quotations of the column code, and the quotations of the
row code.

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Code Co-Occurrence Table Ribbon

Colors: You can choose among three colors for the table cells (blue, red and green), the ATLAS.ti
color palette (default), and no coloring. If you select a color, or the ATLAS.ti color map, the table
cells are colored in different shades.

Show count: Show the number of co-occurrences (=number of hits, see above: How to read the
table).

Show Coefficient: The c-coefficient gives you an indication of the strength of the relationship
between the pair of codes. See C-Coefficient for more detail.

Cluster quotations: Activate this option, if you want to count embedded quotations only once. If
code 'A' codes a larger segment and within this segment, there are three quotations coded with a
code 'B', the number of co-occurrences is 3. With clustering activated, the count is 1.

Use AND operator: If you activate this option, the table values are calculated based on an 'AND'
occurrence and not the more general code 'co-occurrence' operator. See the section on Proximity
Operators for further detail.

Rows => Columns: Select to switch row and column codes.

Compress: This is a quick way to remove all rows or columns that only show empty cells. This is the
same as manually deactivating codes that yield no results. Thus, you cannot "uncompress" a table.

Auto Size Columns: Adjust the size of the columns automatically so that the full label is shown.

Freeze first column: Set if you do not want the auto size option to affect the first column.

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Set Column Size: You can manually set the column size. '100' means that the column is as wide as
the full label.

Details: If activated, you see the total number of times the code has been applied to a quotation.
This helps you to better evaluate the numbers in each cell. The interpretation is likely different if
the number of hits is 10 and if each of the codes have been applied 50 or only 15 times.

Export: You can export the table to Excel. + If Show Count is selected, only the number of co-
occurrences are exported.

• If Show Coefficient is selected, only the c-coefficient and not the absolute number of hits
are exported.
• If you have selected both, both are exported.

Sankey: Visualize the table as Sankey Diagram. See more in the chapter on co-occurrence
visualization.

Bar Chart: Visualize the table as bar chart. See more in the chapter on co-occurrence visualization.

Show Lists: If you only want to see the table and/or the graphs and not the selection lists,
deactivate this option.

Show Table: If you only want to see the bar chart or the Sankey Diagram without the table,
deactivate this option.

Show Diagram: If you only want to see the table, deactivate this option.

Refresh: If you make modifications to your codings while the table is open, you can click the
Refresh option to update the results.

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Code Co-occurrence Coefficient

The c-coefficient indicates the strength of the relation between two codes.

This option can be activated in the ribbon of the Code Co-occurrence Table.

The range of the c-coefficient is between 0 and 1:

• 0 mean codes do not co-occur

• 1 means these two codes co-occur wherever they are used

The calculation of the c-coefficient is based on approaches borrowed from quantitative content
analysis. It is calculated as follows:

c = n12 / (n1 + n2 - n12)

n12 = number of co-occurrences for code n1 and n2

The c-coefficient is useful when working with larger amounts of cases and structured data
like open-ended questions from surveys. If you use the c-index, pay attention to the
additional colored hints. As your database is qualitative, the c-coefficient is not the same as
for instance a Pearson correlation coefficient and therefore also no p-values are provided.

Distortion due to unequal frequencies

An inherent issue with the c-index and similar measures is that it is distorted by code frequencies
that differ too much. In such cases the coefficient tends to be much smaller than the potential
significance of the co-occurrence. For instance, if you had coded 100 quotations with code 'A' and
10 with code 'B', and you have 5 co-occurrences, then the c-coefficient is:

c = 5/(100 + 10 - 5) = 5/105 = 0.048

A coefficient of only 0.048 may slip your eye easily, although code B appears in 50% of all its
applications with code A.

If one of the codes of one pair has been applied more than 5 times than the other code, a yellow
dot appears in the top right of the table cell. So whenever a cell shows the yellow marker, it should
invite you to look into the co-occurrences of this cell despite a low coefficient.

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When you hover with the mouse over a cell, a pop-up note displays the ratio of the two
codes.

Out of Range

The c-index assumes separate non-overlapping text entities. Only then can we expect a
correct range of values.

The coefficient can exceed the 0 - 1 range it is supposed to stay with, if there is redundant coding.
Let's take a look at the following example:

• A quotation 1 is coded with codes A and B

• an overlapping quotation 2 is coded with Code B.

Then quotation 1 counts for 1 co-occurrence event and the overlapping quotation 2 for another.
This results in a value of twice the allowed maximum:

c = 2/(1 + 2 - 2) = 2

All cells displaying an out-of-range number (> 1) show a red dot in the top right corner.

In case the c-coefficient exceeds 1, you need to do some cleaning-up and eliminate the
redundant codes. See Finding Redundant Codings .

Summary of Color Indicators

Yellow dot: Unequal quotation frequencies - the ration between the frequencies of the code and
row code exceeds the threshold of 5.

Red dot: The C-index exceeds the 0 - 1 range.

Orange dot: The orange dot is simply a mixture of the red and yellow conditions.

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Visualizing the Code Co-Occurrence Table

Sankey Diagram
Video Tutorial: Sankey Diagrams in ATLAS.ti Windows

Data Visualization is a great way to simplify the complexity of understanding relationships among
data. The Sankey Diagram is one such powerful technique to visualize the association of data
elements. Originally, Sankey diagrams were named after Irish Captain Matthew Henry Phineas Riall
Sankey, who used this type of diagram in 1898 in a classic figure showing the energy efficiency of a
steam engine. Today, Sankey diagrams are used for presenting data flows and data connections
across various disciplines.

• Sankey diagrams allow you to show complex processes visually, with a focus on a single
aspect or resource that you want to highlight.

• They offer the added benefit of supporting multiple viewing levels. Viewers can get a high
level view, see specific details, or generate interactive views.

• Sankey diagrams make dominant factors stand out, and they help you to see the relative
magnitudes and/or areas with the largest contributions.

In ATLAS.ti, the Sankey diagram complements the Code Co-occurrence Table. As soon as you
create a table, a Sankey diagram visualizing the data will be shown below the table.

Further Reading

• Using sankey diagrams to tell a story with data

• Visualizing customer journey with sankey diagram

• A sankey diagram says more than a 1000 pie charts

• What, Why and How of sankey diagrams

• Using colors effectively in sankey diagrams

As soon as you create a table, a bar chart will be shown in the area below the table. To see a
Sankey Diagram instead, click the Sankey button in the Diagram section of the ribbon.

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If you need more space on your screen for the diagram, you can also deactivate the lists and/or the
table in the ribbon.

The row and column entities of the table are represented in the Sankey model as nodes and edges,
showing the strength of co-occurrence between the pairs of nodes. In the Code Co-occurrence
table, the connecting pairs are codes for both rows and columns.

Edge: For each table cell containing a value, an edge is displayed between the diagram nodes. The
thickness of the edges resemble the cell values of the table. Cells with value 0 are not displayed in
the Sankey view.

The key to reading and interpreting Sankey Diagrams is to remember that the width is
proportional to the quantity represented.

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Layout
The Sankey diagram, similar to the network editor, applies a layout for its nodes and consequently
to the edges connecting nodes to create an easy to comprehend visualization of the data. This
basic layout places the selected entities (nodes in Sankey terminology) into vertical „layers“ with
the row entities placed to the left and the column entities to the right. If nodes have incoming as
well as outgoing links in the currently visible set of nodes, they will be placed in intermediate lanes
or layers.

In many situations, the initial layout already meets the researchers requirements. However, there
are some options to modify the initial layout.

Swapping columns and rows for the table will also affect the Sankey diagram and result in a
180° rotation.

Interactivity
• To display the quotations that are responsible for the co-occurrence of two entities, click on
the connecting edge. This has the same effect as clicking a table cell. You see the quotations
displayed in the Quotation Reader to the right.

• If you hover over an edge, you see the number that is also displayed in the table cell, which
are the number of times the pair of codes co-occur.

• To support finding the correct link, moving the mouse highlights the hovered edges. After
selecting an edge, the unselected edges are dimmed to further increase the visibility of the
edge under consideration.

• Selecting a node will highlight this node as well as all its incoming and outgoing edges. This
makes it easy to spot areas of connectivity.

• You can also use the nodes label for selection. This allows you to do a „single-handed“ multi-
selection which otherwise would require pressing the Ctrl-key.

Removing edges

To unscramble a potentially cluttered diagram, you can remove selected nodes

or edges by pressing the Delete key on your keyboard. You can undo this via
Ctrl-Z.
The same may be accomplished by modifying the selection lists, but this is a
bit „heavier“, and it may not be clear which entities need to be deselected.

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Sankey Diagram Ribbon

Fit to Window: When the Sankey diagram is created (concurrently with the respective tools’ table) it
may display a bit too tiny in its reserved window pane. There are several options to fix this: Switch
off the table view and the selection lists, maximize the project window or float the tool with the
diagram. The Sankey diagram itself will not resize to the freed space automatically. Click Fit-to
Window to fit the current diagram to the available window area.

Refresh Layout: This will also move nodes to their original places if moved in the meantime. The
edges will also be recalculated for best entanglement. This option can also be activated by double-
clicking the diagrams background.

Auto Layout: This option is activated by default. It will instantly recompute the diagram’s layout if:

• Nodes are moved

• Nodes are removed
• Edges are removed

Respect Node Placement: You might not always be happy when the nodes you shifted to other
locations are instantly moved back to their original locations. To prevent this, you either need to
disable the Auto Layout or select Respect Node Placement.

Note, that the Respect Node Placement option will not let you place nodes to arbitrary
positions but will find the nearest lane and relayout the diagram to make it nice looking
again. Shortcut: Double-click the diagram background while pressing the left Shift key.

Rotate Diagram: Sometimes the horizontal left-to-right layout may not always give the most
optimal visualization of your data (depending on available screen space, monitor size). Click this
button to toggle between a vertical (top-down) and the original horizontal layout. Shortcut: Double-
click the diagram background while pressing the left Ctrl-key.

Display Icons: This display the entities type icons preceding the labels. This makes most sense
when the diagram contains multiple types of entities as in the Code Document Table. By default,
this option is not activated.

Link Color Mode: The coloring of the links and edges between the nodes can be set to:

• Use the color of the source node, either the user provided color for codes, or the type
dependent color of the entities.

• Use the color of the target node

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Use a color gradient starting with the source and ending with the target color. This is the
• default. It makes tracking the endpoint of an edge quite comfortable. Shortcut: Double-click
the diagram background while pressing the left Alt key.

• None: Use a gray shade independent of any node coloring.

Short-cut: If you double-click on an edge while pressing the left Alt-key, you switch between
the different color modes.

Print Diagram: Creates an output of the current diagram respecting both the selected background,
and the visual selection state of both nodes and edges. The printout will not contain any
quotations.

Printing can also create high quality PDFs if an appropriate printer driver is installed.

Miscellaneous

The diagram is integrated into the table tools and responds to certain options:

• Compress, that is removing empty rows or columns, will remove corresponding elements in
the diagram.

• Clustering may reduce the number of co-occurrences and thus affects the size of edges in
the diagram.

• Swapping rows and columns reverts the original layout by 180°.

Bar Chart
To visualize the table as bar chart, click on Bar Chart in the Diagram section of the ribbon.

For the visualization as bar chart, it is often preferable to change the code colors. You may also
want to switch around the rows and the columns. You find this option in the ribbon of the Code Co-
occurrence Table.

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To create the table below, the color of the two subcodes '1 child' and '2 or more' were changed to
orange and blue. The result is of course the same - for people with two or more children the table
shifts significantly to the right towards the codes coding the positive experiences. Or to put it the
other way around, for those with one child, both positive and negative experiences are reported
with somewhat more emphasis on the negative experiences.

If we change the rows and the columns, so that the number of children is on the x-axis, we get a
more meaningful graph if we change the code colors for the subcodes of positive and negative
effects. The negative effects have colors ranging from yellow to pink, the colors for positive effect
range from green to blue.

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There is currently no legend. The one you see in the images are copy & pasted screenshots.
Also, the code colours have to be changed manually. For a more convenient work with the
graphics there will be further options in future updates.

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Smart and Snapshot Entities

A smart entity in ATLAS.ti is always a query. You can create smart entities for codes and groups.

In the Code Manager you can create smart codes using the operator OR. This is useful if you need
a combination of two or more codes for data analysis. In the Query Tool, a smart code can be used
to store query results. Smart groups can be created in the Group Managers. They are especially
useful for document groups when used as variables. They allow you to create combination of
variables.

The reason for naming such codes and groups smart is because they change along with your
project. If you change any of the codings of a code that is part of a smart code, this will be
reflecting in the smart code when retrieving its quotations. If you add or remove documents that
are members of the groups that make up a smart group, the smart group retrieves those
documents that reflect the current state of your project.

Every time you click on a smart code or smart group, the underlying query is run, and you see the
up-to-date results.

A snapshot entity turns a smart entity into a regular code or code group. You can think of it like a
snapshot you take with a camera - it preserves the current moment. Thus, snapshot entities do no
longer change automatically.

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What are Smart Codes?

Smart Codes are a convenient way to store queries. They are very similar in look and feel to
normal codes, with one important difference: instead of hardwired connections to quotations
smart codes store a query to compute their virtual references whenever needed.

• Smart codes automatically change their behavior during the analysis. If you have a smart
code based on a query like: (Code A | Code B) COOCCUR Code C), and you add or delete
quotations linked to either Code A, B or C, then the smart code will automatically be
adjusted.

• As a smart code is a query, it cannot be used for coding. For the same reason, smart codes
are not displayed in the margin area.

• Smart codes are displayed in the Code Manager. They can be recognized by a gray dot at
the bottom left of the code icon.

• If you double-click on a smart code, you can retrieve all quotations that are the result of the
underlying query.

• You can change the query that is underlying a smart code by editing the query.

• Smart codes can be used in code groups, networks, and, last but not least, as powerful
operands in queries, allowing you to incrementally build complex queries.

• Smart codes can be transferred into a regular code by creating a snapshot code.

What you cannot do with Smart Codes

As smart codes are not directly associated with quotations, certain restrictions apply.

• Coding: You cannot link a smart code directly to a quotation. Therefore, smart codes are not
shown in the list of codes when coding your data. Drag & drop operations from code lists to
other lists are not possible.

• Merging: You cannot merge a smart code with other codes.

• You cannot include a code group in the query for the smart code and assign the smart code
to this code group later. This would create a cyclical structure and is therefore not allowed.

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Working With Smart Codes

Creating an ORed Smart Code in the Code Manager

If you only need a simple OR combination of two or more codes as smart code, the easiest way is
to use the Code Manager.

Open the Code Manager, select two or more codes, right-click and select the
Create Smart Code option from the context menu or the ribbon.
tip
If you wonder why an OR combination is useful rather than just merging the
codes, at times you want to keep the codes as regular codes in the code list. If
you merge codes, only the merged codes remains. For example, if you code
the speakers in a focus group transcript, you can create smart codes for all
male and female speakers without losing the code for each individual speaker.
If you add these attributes to each speaker unit, the margin becomes very
cluttered. Smart codes are not displayed in the margin.

Creating a Smart Code in the Quotation Manager

You can also create smart codes in the Quotation Manager. There you can combine codes using
the Boolean operators AND and OR. See Available Operators for Querying Data > Boolean
Operators.

Use AND to:

• narrow your results

• tell the database that ALL search terms must apply. This means that the smart code only
retrieves quotations that are linked to all codes in the query. In other words, the quotation is
coded with multiple codes.

Use OR to:

• connect two or more similar concepts

• broaden your results, telling the database that ANY of the search terms apply. This means
the smart code retrieves all quotations of all codes in the query. It is additive.

Open the Quotation Manager and select two or more codes in the side panel.
inst
The default operator in the yellow filter bar above the quotation list is 'ANY'
(shown in blue letters). If you want to change, click on it and select the 'ALL'
operator. You need to click next to it, not directly on it.

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inst
To save the results as smart code, click on the Smart Code button in the
ribbon; or right-click on any of the selected codes in the side panel and select
the option Create Smart Code from the context menu.
inst
Enter a name or use the default name and click Create.

Creating a Smart Code in the Q

Open the Query Tool and build a query.

To save the query, click the Save Smart Code button in the ribbon, enter a
name and click Create.

Editing a S
If you want to see the query that is underlying a smart code, of if you want to modify the query,
you can edit the smart code.

Open the Code Manager, select the smart code and in the ribbon click on the
button Edit Smart Code.
This opens the query tool where you can review and modify the smart code.
See How to build a query.

You cannot delete a code, if it is part of a smart code query. If you want to remove a code
that is part of a smart code query, you first must delete the smart code. If you do not want
to lose the results stored by the smart code, you can turn it into a snapshot code before
deleting it.

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What are Smart Groups

Smart Groups are very similar in look and feel to normal groups, with one important
difference: instead of hardwired connections to their members, smart groups store a query
to compute their virtual references whenever needed.

Although also an option for code, memo and network groups, the most common application for
smart groups are smart document groups. They allow you to combine two or variables. For
instance gender and location. This requires that you have document groups for the basis variables.
Here for gender: male and female and for location: urban and rural. If you need the combination of
gender and location more often, a good way to do this is to create smart groups:

• female respondents from urban areas

• female respondents from rural areas
• male respondents from urban areas
• male respondents from rural areas

For creating smart groups Boolean operators are used. See Available Operators for Querying Data
> Boolean Operators for further information.

A reason for creating a smart group is to apply them as global filter. See Applying Global
Filters For Data Analysis. Another application is to add them to a network and display
document group - code connections.

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Working With Smart Groups

A reason for creating a smart group is to apply them as global filter. See Applying Global
Filters For Data Analysis. Another application is to add them to a network and display
document group - code connections.

Creating a Smart Group

To create a new smart group, open a Manager and select two or more groups.
Click on New Smart Group in the ribbon, or right-click select this option from
the context menu.
inst
Accept the suggested name or enter a new one, and click Create.
tip
Smart entities can be recognized by the little gray circle at the bottom left of
the icon.

Editing a Smart Group

Smart groups can only be edited in their respective group managers.

Go to the Home ribbon, click on the drop-down of the appropriate entity and
select [ ] Groups.
inst
Select the smart group you want to edit and click Edit Smart Group in the
ribbon.
This opens the Smart Group Editor that looks similar to the query tool.

The following operators are available:

OR: combines all selected groups and forms a larger group AND: creates a smart group consisting
of the intersection of the selected groups like 'female respondents from urban areas'. ONE OF
(Exactly one of the following is true): creates a smart group only containing members that are
unique to each group and do not occur in any of the other selected groups. Example: In the sample
project Evaluation of a computer game, respondents evaluate the game in different ways. If you
want to find those respondents who either evaluate the game as being creative or educational (and
not both), you can use the one of operator.

IMAGE

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NOT (None of the following are true): creates a smart group excluding the members of the
selected group. Example: The sample project children and happiness contains two document
groups that have been created based on the issues coded in the data. These are: documents that
contain codings on positive and negative effects of parenting. There are some documents that only
contain codings on positive effects, others that only contain codings on negative effects, and yet
some that contain both. If you want to find only those documents that contain codings on positive
effects, you can create the following smart document group:

NOT negative effects AND positive effects.

IMAGE

See how to build a query for further information on how to understand and modify the query
of a smart group.

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What are Snapshot Codes and Groups?

Snapshot Codes
A snapshot code transforms a smart code into a regular code. This code preserves the current
state of a smart code at the moment of its creation, like taking a photograph that captures the
moment, and creates direct links to all quotations.

• A snapshot code is displayed in the margin area.

• A snapshot code can be used for coding.

You can create a snapshot code from a smart code. This can be useful for data analysis when you
build queries.

Another application is to use this option for fixing code systems when code groups have been used
as categories. This often leads to underdeveloped code systems, long list of codes and limited use
of the further analysis tools. To fix this, you first need to turn all code groups into smart codes
using the query tool. Then you create snapshot codes from these smart codes, transforming the
code groups into regular codes. In the next step, the members of the code groups can be turned
into sub codes by adding prefixes and merged as appropriate. See Building a Code System.

Snapshot Groups
A snapshot group transforms a smart group into a regular group. This group preserves the current
state of a smart group at the moment of its creation, like taking a photograph that captures the
moment, and creates direct links to all members.

Application: It can for example be useful if you want to remove documents from a project that are
part of a smart group. As long as they are part of the smart group, this is not possible. In order not
to lose the combination of documents as defined by the smart group, you can turn it into a
snapshot group, delete the smart group and then delete the document(s) that you no longer want
from the project.

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Creating Snapshots

You can create snapshots from smart codes and smart groups.

Creating a Snapshot Code

Open the Code Manager and select a smart code. Click on the button Create
Snapshot in the ribbon.
The default name for the snapshot code is the name of the smart code plus
the suffix [SN 1]; [SN 2] if you create second snapshot code of the same smart
code and so on.

Creating a Snapshot Group

Open the Group Manager either by selecting the option in the ribbon of the
respective manager, or from the drop-down of the entity type button in the
Home ribbon.

Select the smart group and then Create Snapshot from the ribbon.

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Working with Global Filters

Global filters are a powerful tool to analyze your data. As compared to local filters that you can
invoke in each manager, global filters have an effect on the entire project.

Currently, all groups can be set as global filter.

Creating a Global Filter

Creating a global filter means creating a group.

Code Groups as Global filter

• In the Project Explorer, and the Code Browser only the codes of the code group set as global
filter are shown.

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• When coding only the codes of the code group set as global filter are shown.

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In the margin area only the codes of the code group set as global filter are shown.
•

• In the code manager only the codes of the code group set as global filter are shown.

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• In all selection lists of all analysis tools only the codes of the code group set as global filter
are shown.

• Code groups as global filters are very useful in networks when you use the options: Add
Neighbors and Add Co-occurring Codes. Then only the codes of the code group set as
global filter are added.

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In a network, all codes that are not in the code group set as global filter are faded out.
•

Document Groups as Global Filter

Document groups as global filter affect the list of documents and quotations. Thus, the list of
quotations shown in the quotation manager or as results of queries is reduced to those documents
that are in the filter.

• When retrieving quotations by double-clicking on a code in the code manager, the quotation
reader will only show quotations from the documents that are in the filter.

• In the Code-Document Table, it allows you to add a layer to the analysis. If for instance you
compare the frequency of codes by respondents with different educational levels, you can
set a document group as global filter to refine the analysis to only male respondents.

• If you run a Code Co-occurrence Analysis it will apply to all data in your project. If you want
to restrict the analysis, to only a particular group of respondents or type of data, you can set
a document group as global filter.

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In a network, all documents that are not in the document group set as global filter are faded
• out.

Memo Groups as Global Filter

• Memo groups as filters affect the list of memos you see in the memo manager and all
selection lists.
• Only memos that are in the memo group set as global filter are shown in the margin area.
• In a network, all memos that are not in the memo group set as global filter are faded out.

Network Groups as Global Filter

• Network groups as filters affect the list of networks you see in the network manager and all
selection lists.
• In the margin area, only networks that are in the network group set as global filter are shown.
• In a network, all networks that are not in the network group set as global filter are faded out.

Setting a Global Filter

Global filters can be set in the Project Explorer on the left and in each manager.

Right-click on a group and select the option Set Global Filter.

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In the ribbon of the

Managers, you can also set and remove global filters in the Search & Filter tab.

Display Of Global Filters

If a global filter is set, all affected managers, browsers, lists and tools show a colored bar on top
indicating which filter has been set.

• global document filters are blue.

• global quotations filters are orange.
• global code filters are green.
• global memo filters are magenta.
• global network filters are purple

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Activating / Deactivating Global Filters

While a global filter is active, you can temporarily deactivate it by clicking on

the check-box in the global filter bar you see above each filtered list or table.

Changing a Glob

To change a global filter, right-click on a different group of the same type and
set it as global filter. This will automatically deactivate the currently active filter.

Removing a Global Filter

To remove a global filter, click on the x on the right-hand side of the global
filter bar. Another option is to right-click on the group you have filtered and
select Clear Global Filter from the context menu.

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Creating a Global Filter

Creating a global filter means creating a group.

• Document groups as global filter, filter documents and their quotations.

• Code groups as global filter, filter codes.
• Memo groups as global filter, filter memos.
• Network groups as global filter, filter networks.

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Analysing Code Distributions

Code distributions are displayed in the Document Manager and in the Code Manager in the form of
bar charts. In the document manager you will see a bar for each code. The higher the bar, the more
often the code was used. In the Code Manager each bar stands for a document. Within the bar you
can see how the codes are distributed in the document.

After you've encoded the data, a look at the code distribution gives you a feel for the data. Which
topics were mentioned more or less frequently, by whom, is there a difference between different
groups of respondents? How are the topics distributed?

Code Distribution across Documents

In the first image below, you see the distribution of three categories: benefits, downsides and
features of the computer game Minecraft across all documents. In the second image, the data have
been filtered a) by respondents who evaluated the game positively, and b) by respondents who
evaluated the game negatively. You can see very quickly that there is a difference. Respondents
who evaluated the game negatively did not mention any benefits (green bars).

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Code Distribution by Documents

In the image below you see the distribution of the various high level topic within each document.
We see for instance that case 23 and case 25 talk about a wider variety of topics than the other
respondents. In order to generate this graphic, each category has a different color and all
subcodes within a category are also colored with the same color.

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In the image below, the focus is on two categories, benefits and downsides. In order to be able to
differentiate between the various subcodes of a category, each subcode has a different color. If
you analyse interview data for instance, this is a great way to go through your data, category for
category and compare the respondents' answers. You see who talked about benefits or downsides,
strategies or consequences and about which aspects of those major themes they talked about.

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With a click on a bar, you can retrieve the coded data per code for each respondent.

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Setting a Global Filter

Global filters can be set in the Project Explorer on the left, and in each Manager.

Right-click on a group in the Document Group section of the Project Explorer

and select the option Set Global Filter.
In the ribbon of the Managers, you can also set and remove global filters in the
Search & Filter tab.

Display Of Globa
If a global filter is set, all affected managers, browsers, lists and tools show a colored bar on top
indicating which filter has been set.

• global document filters are blue.

• global quotations filters are orange.
• global code filters are green.
• global memo filters are magenta.
• global network filters are purple

Activating / Deactivating Global Filters

While a global filter is active, you can temporarily deactivate it by clicking on

the check-box in the global filter bar that you see above each filtered list or
table.

Changing a Global Filter

To change a global filter, right-click on a different group of the same type and
set it as global filter. This will automatically deactivate the currently active filter.

Removing a Global Filter

To remove a global filter, click on the x on the right-hand side of the global
filter bar. Another option is to right-click on the group you have filtered and
select Clear Global Filter from the context menu.

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Removing / Changing / Activating / Deactivating

a Global Filter
If you change a global filter, the currently active filter is automatically reset (see below).

Removing a Global Filter

Click on the x on the right-hand side of the global filter bar.

Another option is to right-click on the group you have filtered and select Clear
Global Filter from the context menu.

Changing a Glob
To change a global filter, right-click on a different group of the same type and
set it as global filter. This will automatically deactivate the currently active
filter.

Activating or Deactivating Global Filters

While a global filter is active, you can temporarily deactivate it by clicking on

the check-box in the global filter bar you see above each filtered list or table.

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Global Filters in the Code Co-occurrence Table

The images below show two code co-occurrence tables. The first one shows the relationship
between the attitude towards having a child and reported effects of parenting for the entire data
set. The second table shows the same codes, but only for one data source.

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Global Filters in the Code Document Table

The images below show two Code Document Tables. The first table shows various reasons for not
having children across respondents with different educational levels. The second table adds a
second variable (gender: male) and shows the results for all male respondents across different
educational levels.

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ATLAS.ti Networks

Video utorial: Visualizations in Building the Understanding

Visualization can be a key element in discovering connections between concepts, interpreting your
findings, and effectively communicating your results. Networks in ATLAS.ti allow you to accomplish
all three of these important objectives. These small segments of your larger web of analysis are
modeled using the network editor, an intuitive work space we also like to think is easy on the eye.

The word network is a ubiquitous and powerful metaphor found in many fields of research and
application. Flow charts in project planning, text graphs in hypertext systems, cognitive models of
memory and knowledge representation (semantic networks) are all networks that serve to
represent complex information by intuitively accessible graphic means. One of the most attractive
properties of graphs is their intuitive graphical presentation, mostly in form of two-dimensional
layouts of labeled nodes and links.

In contrast with linear, sequential representations (e.g., text), presentations of knowledge in

networks resemble more closely the way human memory and thought is structured. Cognitive
"load" in handling complex relationships is reduced with the aid of spatial representation
techniques. ATLAS.ti uses networks to help represent and explore conceptual structures. Networks
add a heuristic "right brain" approach to qualitative analysis.

The user can manipulate and display almost all entities of a project as nodes in a network:
quotations, codes, code group, memos, memo groups, other networks, documents, document
groups and all smart entities.

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Nodes And Links

The term network is formally defined within graph theory, a branch of discrete mathematics, as a
set of nodes (or "vertices") and links. A node in a network may be linked to an arbitrary number of
other nodes.

The number of links for any one node is called its degree; e.g., a node with a degree of zero is not
linked at all. Another simple formal property of a network is its order: the number of its nodes. You
may make practical use of the degree of nodes by using it as a sorting criterion in the codes list
window. The column 'Density' in the Code Manager represents the degree of a code.

Directed and Non-Directed Links

Links are usually drawn as lines between the connected nodes in graphical presentations of
networks.

Furthermore, a link between two nodes may be directed or not. A directed connection is drawn
with an arrow. With directed links, source and target nodes must be distinguished. The source node
is where the link starts, and the target node is where it ends: the destination to which the arrow
points.

Links are created either implicitly (e.g., when coding a quotation, the quotation is "linked" to a
code), or explicitly by the user. See Linking Nodes.

Strictly speaking, code-quotation associations ("codings") also form a network. However, you
cannot name these links, the code is simply associated with a quotation through the act of coding.
In a network you can visualize these links. In ATLAS.ti all unnamed links are referred to as second
class links, all named links are referred to as first-class links.

First-Class Links
First-class links are links based on relations. They are entities by themselves, with names, authors,
comments, and other properties. They are available for:

• Links between two codes. These include:

◦ links between two category codes

◦ links between two subcodes (within or across categories)
◦ links between a subcode and its own or other category codes

• Links between two quotations. The latter are called hyperlinks. See Working With Hyperlinks.

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Second-Class Links
Second-class links are links that do not have individual properties; These are:

• links between quotations and codes

• all links to memos

• all links between a group and its members

• all hierarchical links:

◦ links between categories and their subcodes

◦ links between folders
◦ links between folders and categories
◦ links between folders and independent codes
◦ links between folders and subcodes
◦ links between folders

If you change hierarchical links in the network, this has an effect on the hierarchy of codes
and folders in the entire your project!

Why Groups Cannot be Linked

Groups cannot be linked as by definition, they are not mutually exclusive. You can add a document
to as many document groups as you want. This also applies to code groups. A code can be a
member of multiple code groups.

Groups are filters. Code groups are at times regarded by users as a higher order category, which
they are not. See Building a Code System for further detail.

In order to compare and analyze documents by certain criteria like sociodemographic

characteristics, you add them to document groups like gender::male / female, family status::single /
married / separated / divorced, etc. This allows you also to combine certain criteria, e.g., to run an
analysis for all female respondents that are married. See Working with document groups and
Working with Smart Groups.

Likewise, the purpose of code groups is to be used as filters. A useful filter could be all codes of a
category, but also all codes that are relevant for a certain research questions, or all codes that
could be classified as coding a strategy, or a consequence or a context across different categories.

So you might have a code group containing codes A, B, C and D, and another code group
containing codes B, D, E and F. If you now were to relate these two code groups to each other, you
end up with circular or illogical relations.

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Relations
ATLAS.ti allows you to establish named links to more clearly express the nature of the relationships
between concepts. With named links, you may express a sentence like "a broken leg causes pain"
by two nodes (the source node "broken leg" and the target node "pain") connected with a named
link ("causes" or "is-cause-of").

The name of a link is displayed in the network editor as a label attached to the link midway
between the two connected nodes.

Six pre-set relations are available in ATLAS.ti. These standard relations can be substituted,
modified, or supplemented by user-defined relations.

Link vs. Relation

It is important to understand the difference between a relation (or a link type), and the link itself:
There is only one "is part of" relation, but potentially many links that can use it.

If you take a look at the Code-Code Link Manager below, you can easily see how it works:

Another way to think of links and relations is to view links as instances of relations. Links are
informed about the characteristics of relations, which define their styles. If a characteristic of a
relation is changed (e.g., line width, color, symbol), these changes are propagated to all links using
it.

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ATLAS.ti Default Relations

The default relations that come with the software are listed in the table below. C1 and C2 are
source and target nodes, respectively.

short symbolic
Relation Name width color property
name name
is associated
R == 1 Black Symmetric
with
is part of G [] 1 Black Asymmetric
is cause of N => 1 Black Asymmetric
contradicts A <> 1 Black Symmetric
is a Isa 0 2 Black Asymmetric
noname 1 Black Symmetric
is property of P *} 1 Black

Some of these characteristics directly affect the display of links, while others affect processing
(e.g., search routines, automatic layout). A link between concepts is displayed in a network editor
by a line with the relation's label. You can choose from three different labels (name, short and
symbolic). The relation property affects the display a relation. All asymmetric relations are
symbolized in the network editor with an arrow pointing toward the target code. Symmetric
relations are displayed as a line with two arrows pointing to both ends of the link.

The following properties are user-definable: the labels, the width and color of the line linking two
nodes, the property, and the preferred layout direction.

The preferred layout direction affects the layout of a network when opening an ad hoc network.

Formal Properties - Some Definitions

Symmetric Relationship

A relation R is symmetric if it holds for all A and B that are related via R. A is related to B if, and only
if, B is related to A.

Examples:

• A is married to B (in most legal systems)

• A is a fully biological sibling of B
• A is a homophone of B

QDA Examples:

• walking the talk is associated with role model

• having a clear vision is related to performance orientation
• communicating well is associated with empowerment

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Asymmetric Relations

A graph is asymmetric if:

• for every edge, there is not an edge in the other direction, then the relation is asymmetric
• loops are not allowed in an asymmetric digraph

If x has a relation R to y, but y does not have a relation R to x.

Examples:

• Martin is a child of Marilyn: If Martin is the child of Marilyn, then Marilyn cannot be the child
of Martin.

QDA Examples:

If we use the same example as above, but instead define the relation results in being an
asymmetric one, then you do not infer that nice weather is necessarily related to you being a happy
person, or that you being a happy person has any effect on the weather. The later would be the
case if you used a symmetric relation.

The relations in the following example are defined as asymmetric relations: Supportive environment
motivates learning & development results in higher job satisfaction. This does not imply that a
supportive environment results in higher job satisfaction.

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Relation Manager
The Relation Manager is used to review the properties of existing relations, to edit existing
relations, or to create new relations. You can switch between relations for code-code links and
relations for hyperlinks. As the column information and the ribbon options are the same for both,
below you find only one description. For further information see Working With Networks.

You can access the Relation Manager from within networks or via the drop-
down option of the Links button in the Home ribbon.

Usage: Number of times it is used in the project.

Style: Preview of line: direction, color, width and property (directed, non-directed)

Layout: Automatic layout direction if you open a network on an entity.

Short: Short name as an alternative to the full name. You can either display full names, short names
or the symbolic name for all relations in a network.

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Symbol: Symbolic name as an alternative to the full name. You can either display full names, short
names or the symbolic name for all relations in a network.

Formal Property: The formal property of a relation: symmetric or asymmetric. See About Relations.

Relation Manager Ribbon

From left to right:

New Relation: Select to create a new relation.

Duplicate Relation(s): Duplicate a relation, e.g., if you want to create a new relation based on an
already existing relation with a few modifications.

Rename Relation: Select a relation and rename it.

Delete Relation(s): Select on or more relations that you want to delete.

Line Color: Select the line color.

Line Width: Select the line width.

Line Style: Select the line style(solid or dashed).

Layout Direction: Select the layout direction. If you open an ad-hoc network, the layout directions
are used to position the nodes in the network.

Formal Property: Select the property for the relation. Options are: symmetric (non-directed) and
asymmetric (directed). This is further explained in the section About Relation

Filter: You can filter relations based on the following options: created today, created this week,
created by yourself, or all relations that have a comment. An additional option is to invert the filter.

Excel Export: You can export the information you see in the manager as Excel table.

View Tab
As the View tab is the same in all manager, it has been described here Entity Manager.

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The Network Editor

The network editor offers an intuitive and powerful method to create and manipulate network
structures. It favors a direct manipulation technique: You can literally "grab" codes, quotations,
memos, or other entities using your cursor and move them around the screen as well as draw and
cut links between them.

Networks have certain important characteristics:

• Networks can be given names under which they are stored and accessed inside the project.
• Networks can be commented.
• Networks are displayed and edited in the network editor.
• Networks allow individual layouts of the nodes.
• As a node, a single entity can be a member of any number of networks.
• An entity, e.g. a specific code, can only appear once in any network.

Networks allow for a flexible but logically consistent display of links and relations, so there are a
few constraints to keep in mind:

• If code A is linked to code B using the relation is associated with, then every network that
contains code A and code B will necessarily include the relation is associated with between
the two.
• Furthermore, as only one link can exist between any two nodes at any given time, no network
will display any other relation between those two nodes.

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If you want to link code A and code B in different ways in different networks, you need to work with
"dummy" codes that modify a relation. For example:

A specific context X results in emotion A leading to behaviour B, then linking A to B directly would
be false:

Emotion A ---- leading to ----> Behavior B

However, you can express it like this:

Emotion A ---- if ----> context X -----leading to -----> Behaviour B

'Context X' is a dummy code as it did not already exist in the code system. It needed to be added in
order to express a relationship that emerges while you were working with and interpreting the data.

In order to visualize such relationships, you have the option to create new codes in the network
editor. These will show up in your list of codes with 0 groundedness and a density of 1 or more,
depending on their connectedness in the network.

Node Types
The following object classes can be displayed and edited as nodes within the network editor.

Codes as Nodes

Codes are probably the most prominent objects in ATLAS.ti networks. They provide the main
ingredients for models and theories.

Memos as Nodes

Memos in networks are often an important supplement to code networks.

Several theoretical memos can be imported into a network to map out their relationship. The visual
layout provides comfortable territory for moving from memo to memo, in order to read and
contemplate each individually and the relationship(s) between them.

Documents as Nodes

Documents as nodes are useful for case comparisons paired with the option to add code
neighbors.

Documents as nodes make a nice graphical content table for graphical documents when selecting
the preview.

The icons for document nodes vary by media type.

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Quotations As Nodes

Quotations and codes have one thing in common, which is different for the other entities. They can
link to each other (quotations to quotations and code to codes) with fully qualified "first class" links.
See Nodes and Link.

The inclusion of quotations in a network supports the construction and inspection of hyperlink
structures. The icons for quotation nodes vary by media type.

Groups as Nodes

Displaying groups, and their members in networks are useful to present all members that are part
of the group. The links between a group and its members are depicted by a dotted red line. The
line property cannot be changed.

Network as Nodes

Networks as nodes allow the inclusion of networks in other networks. They cannot be linked to
anything, but via the context menu you can open the network in a separate network editor.

If you double-click on a network node, its comment is displayed and from there you can click to
open it. This is for instance useful if you are running out of space on your screen. Instead of trying
to represent everything in one network, you can create several networks that build on each other.
Via a network node in a network, you can continue to tell the story you want to tell.

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Network View Options

The display characteristics of the nodes can be altered in a variety of ways.

To change the node or link style, select the View tab in a network editor.

Overview: If you select this option, a schematic overview of the network is shown.

Fit to Window: This option adjusts the network to fit the size of the currently opened network
editor.

Grid: The grid helps you to position nodes.

Snap: Snapping allows an object to be easily positioned in alignment with grid lines, guidelines or
another object, by causing it to automatically jump to an exact position when the user drags it to
the proximity of the desired location.

Link Label: You can define three labels for each relation:

• (relation) name
• short name
• symbolic name

See Creating & Modifying Relations. Depending on what you want to see in your network, you can
switch the label that is shown. If you change to a different label, this applies to all relations in the
network.

Node Styles: Nodes can be displayed in four different styles:

• simple
• flat (default)
• gradient
• shadow

Instead of describing the various looks, go ahead and try out each style and select the one that
you like best or that is most suitable for the task at hand.

Some of these options you also find in the Layout/Style section in the main Network ribbon.

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Style
Comments: If activated the comments of all nodes that have comments are displayed.

Code-Document Connections: At times it is interesting to see which codes have been applied to a
document, or a document group. When coding the data, you apply codes to quotations, which are
part of documents, but you do not directly apply codes to a document. Therefore, there are no
direct links between documents and codes. In order to see those connections, you need to activate
this option.

Code-Document and Code-Document Group connections are shown as blue lines.

Preview: You can activate a preview for documents, quotations and memos. Audio and video
documents or quotations can be played in the preview window. If you only want to see the preview
of selected entities, right-click the entity and select the Preview option from the context menu.

In ATLAS.ti Windows, there is no preview for audio and video quotations in networks.

Frequencies: If activated it displays the groundedness and density of code and memo nodes in the
network.

• Groundedness: It shows how many quotations are linked to a code or memo.

• Density:

◦ Number of code - code connections.

◦ Number of codes and memos a memo is connected to.
◦ Number of codes a quotation is coded to.

Show Node Icons: The node type icon can be switched on and off for all nodes. The small image
used as a node icon increases the distinctiveness of the nodes, especially when a mixture of node
types exists in a network. Nonetheless, when space runs low, you may prefer to switch off the
icons.

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Network Editor - Layout And Routing Options

You can select among twelve automatic layout options. The results of the automatic layout
procedure are typically quite usable and provide a good starting point for subsequent manual
refinement. They can be combined with four routing options that are responsible for an optimal
placement of the links.

The Layout and routing options are available from the Network Editor via the main Network
Tab, and the View Tab. By moving nodes to different positions, you can modify an initial
layout created by the automatic layout procedure. For precision placement of nodes, use the
Grid and Snap option under the View Tab.

Layout Options

Perpendicular Layout: Orthogonal layouts allow the edges of the graph to run horizontally or
vertically, parallel to the coordinate axes of the layout. It produces compact drawings with no
overlaps, few crossings, and few bends.

Orthogonal Tree Layout: Same as the standard perpendicular layout, but larger subtrees are
processed using a specialized tree layout algorithm, which is better suited for tree-like structures.

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Circular Layout: The circular layout places the nodes on a circle, choosing carefully the ordering of
the nodes around the circle to reduce crossings and place adjacent nodes close to each other. It
emphasizes group and tree structures within a network. It creates node partitions by analyzing the
connectivity structure of the network, and arranges the partitions as separate circles.  The circles
themselves are arranged in a radial tree layout fashion. This algorithm suits social network analysis
quite well.

Circular Single Cycle Layout: This is similar to the circular layout, only subgroups are not created
and all nodes are placed on a single  circle. Useful for creating an  overview and for shallow
hierarchies.

Organic Layout: The organic layout style is based on the force-directed layout paradigm. When
calculating a layout, the nodes are considered to be physical objects with mutually repulsive forces,
like, e.g., protons or electrons. The connections between nodes also follow the physical analogy
and are considered to be springs attached to the pair of nodes. These springs produce repulsive or
attractive forces between their end points if they are too short or too long. The layout algorithm
simulates these physical forces and rearranges the positions of the nodes in such a way that the
sum of the forces emitted by the nodes, and the edges reaches a (local) minimum. Resulting
layouts often expose the inherent symmetric and clustered structure of a graph, they show a well-
balanced distribution of nodes and have few edge crossings.

Radial Layout: When applying the radial layout style, the nodes of a graph are arranged on
concentric circles. The layout calculation starts by conceptually reducing the graph to a tree
structure whose root node is taken as the center of all circles. Each child node in this tree structure
is then placed on the next outer circle within the sector of the circle that was reserved by its parent
node. All edges that were initially ignored are re-established, and the radii of the circles are
calculated taking the sector sizes needed by each whole subtree into account. This layout style is
well suited for the visualization of directed graphs and tree-like structures.

Hierarchical Layout: The hierarchical layout style aims to highlight the main direction or flow within
a directed graph. The nodes of a graph are placed in hierarchically arranged layers such that the
(majority of) edges of the graph show the same overall orientation, for example, top-to-bottom.
Additionally, the ordering of the nodes within each layer is chosen in such a way that the number of
edge crossings is small.

• Hierarchical Layout (Top-Bottom): Prefers to place nodes downwards from top to bottom
along directed links.

• Hierarchical Layout (Bottom-Top): Prefers to place nodes upwards from bottom to top along
directed links.

• Hierarchical Layout (Left-Right): Prefers to place nodes from left to right along directed links.

• Hierarchical Layout (Right-Left): Prefers to place nodes from right to left along directed links.

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Tree Layout: The tree layout is designed to arrange directed and non-directed trees that have a
unique root node.  All children are placed below their parent in relation to the main layout direction.
A child-parent relation in ATLAS.ti is defined via a transitive. Before applying the layout all nodes
compromising a strict tree are removed and added after the tree layout by connecting them with
curved edges. Tree layout algorithms are commonly used for visualizing relational data. The layout
algorithm starts from the root and recursively assigns coordinates to all tree nodes. In this manner,
leaf nodes will be placed first, while each parent node is placed centered above its children.

Random Layout: Randomly places the nodes every time this layout is invoked.

Routing

The positions of the nodes in the network are not altered by rerouting the edges.

Orthogonal Routing: This is a versatile and powerful layout algorithm for routing a diagram's edges
using vertical and horizontal line segments only. The positions of the diagram's nodes will remain
fixed. Usually, the routed edges will not cut through any nodes or overlap any other edges.

Poly Line Edge Routing: Polyline edge routing calculates polyline edge paths for a diagram's edges.
The positions of the nodes in the diagram are not altered by this algorithm. Edges can be routed
orthogonally, i.e., each edge path consists of horizontal and vertical segments, or octilinear.
Octilinear means that the slope of each segment of an edge path is a multiple of 45 degree.

Organic Routing: This algorithm routes edges organically to ensure that they do not overlap nodes
and that they keep a specifiable minimal distance to the nodes. It is especially well suited for non-
orthogonal, organic or cyclic layout styles.

Straight Routing: Draw the links between nodes as straight lines without any consideration of node
and edge crossing.

The routing layout is not saved. If you close the network and open it again, the routing is lost,
and you have to select a routing option again. If you are happy with the layout and want to
keep the network as it, you need to export it.

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Basic Network Procedures

Two methods for creating networks are available. The first one creates an empty network, and you
begin to add entities as sequential steps. The other method creates a network from a selected
entity and its neighbors.

Creating a New Network

In the Home tab open the drop-down menu for New Entities and select New
Networks.

Enter a name for the network and click Create. Another option is to open the
Network Manager with a click on the Networks button and select New
Network in the ribbon of the Network Manager.

Adding Nodes to a Network

You can add nodes via the option Add Nodes or via drag-and-drop.

Adding Nodes Using the Selection List

Select the Nodes tab in the ribbon and from there the Add Nodes button.

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Adding Nodes Using the Selection List

Select the Nodes tab in the ribbon and from there the Add Nodes button.

This opens a selection list that is docked to the left-hand side of the network. At the bottom of the
selection list you see the comments of an entity. Use the search fields to find entities faster.

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Select the entity type and then the entities that you want to add to the
network. Double-click to add the entity to a network; or drag-and-drop the
selected entities to the network; or click on the Add button.

Adding Nodes via Drag & Drop

You can add nodes by dragging entities into the network editor from entity managers, group
managers, the margin, the project explorer, or any of the browsers.

Open a network and position it for example next to the Project Explorer.

Select the node(s) you want to import into the network and drag-and-drop
them into the editor.

Selecting Nodes
Selecting nodes is an important first step for all subsequent operations targeted at individual
entities within a network.

Selecting a Single Node

Move the mouse pointer over the node and left-click.

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All previously selected nodes are deselected.

Selecting Multiple Nodes

Method 1

Hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard, move the mouse pointer over the
node and left click. Repeat this for every node you want to select.
Method 2
This method is very efficient if the nodes you want to select fit into an
imaginary rectangle.

Move the mouse pointer above and left to one of the nodes to be selected.
Hold down the left mouse button and drag the mouse pointer down and right
to cover all nodes to be selected with the selection marquee. Release the
mouse button.

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Opening Ad-hoc Networks

An ad-hoc network is when you open a network on an entity. This will show the entity in a network
with all the directly linked neighbors, except when you open a network for a document or multiple
items. In the latter two cases, only the selected entities open in a network. More nodes can be
added to such networks using different techniques. See Adding Nodes To Network and Adding
Neighbors.

Select an entity in the margin area, a manager, the project explorer or any
browser, right-click and select Show in Network. Another option is to select the
Open Network button in the ribbon after selecting one or more entities in a
manager.

The nodes are initially placed using a default layout procedure, but can be rearranged manually or
using any of the other layout procedures. See Layout And Routing.

Below you see an ad-hoc network of a folder containing three categories and their subcodes
(Hierarchical layout: left-to-right):

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Each time a network is opened on a selected entity, a new network is created. There is no
need to save it, as you can easily display it at any time by opening it again. If, however, you
rearranged the nodes and want to preserve the new layout, or if you add or remove nodes,
then you need to save it explicitly: To do so, select Save in the Network ribbon and enter a
name for the network. Saved networks can be selected from the Project Explorer, the
Network Manager, and the Networks Browser.

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Linking Nodes and Entities

There are several ways to link nodes:

Linking via Drag & Drop

Select a node. A white dot appears in the top left corner of the node. Click on
the white dot with the left mouse button and drag the mouse pointer to the
node that you want to link.

Release the left mouse button on top of the node. If you link codes to codes or
quotations to quotations, a list of relation opens. Select a relation.

The two nodes are now linked to each other. In case you linked two codes or two quotations to
each other, the relation name is displayed above the line.

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If none of the existing relations is suitable, select New Relation Type and create a new
relation. The new relation will immediately be applied to the link.

Linking Two Nodes Using the Ribbon Icon

Select a node in a network and click on the Link button in the ribbon.

A black line appears. Move the end on top of another node and left-click.

If you link codes to codes or quotations to quotations, a list of relation opens.

Select a relation.

You need to use the method for linking if you want to link more than two nodes at a time.

When you link two codes to each other, the Density counts goes up. For instance, if six
source codes are linked to one target code, the density for the target code is 6; If the source
codes have no other links, then their density count is 1. The density count for memos counts
the connection to other memos and codes. If a memo is linked to two codes and one other
memo, its density is 3.

Linking Three or More Nodes

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Select all nodes that you want to link to one other node. See Basis Network
Procedures > Selecting Nodes for further information on how to select multiple
nodes.

In the ribbon, click on the Link button. A black line appears. Move the end on
top of the node you want the other nodes to be linked with and left-click. If you
link codes to codes or quotations to quotations, a list of relation opens. Select
a relation. Only one relation for all links can be selected.

Editing a Link

Move the mouse pointer to the line and left-click. The selected link label will be
displayed boxed.

Right-click and open the context menu, or select the available options in the
ribbon.

• Open Network: opens a new network for the two nodes linked by this link.

• Edit Comment: Use the comment field to explain why these two nodes are linked-

• Flip Link: Use this option if you want to change the direction of a transitive or asymmetric
link.

• Cut Link: removes the link between the two nodes

• Change Relation: Select a different relation from the list of available relations or create a new
one and apply it.

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For second class links that do not have a name, only the cut link option is available.

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Cutting Multiple Links

Select one or more nodes (= source) whose connections to another node (=

target) you want to remove.

Click the Cut Links button in the ribbon and move the mouse pointer over the
target node. If you do the target node is boxed, and the links to be cut are
colored in orange. Click the left mouse button on the target node.

The links between nodes in a network are real connections between the entities. Therefore,
creating and removing links should not be regarded as solely "cosmetic" operations. Links
make permanent changes to the project.

Linking Codes to Codes, Quotations to Quotations, Memos to

Memos in Managers and Browsers
Quotations, codes and memos can also be linked to each other in the Manager, the Project
Explorer, or the respective entity browsers.

Select one or more source items in the list pane of the Manager, in the
respective sub-branches of the Project Explorer, or in the entity browsers and
drag them to the target item in the same pane.

Select a relation from the list of relations in case you link two codes or two
quotations, or select New Relation Type and create a new relation.

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Linking Entities of Different Types

When you code your data reading through a document, listening to audio data, viewing an image or
video file, you are linking codes to quotations. This can also be done via drag & drop from the
Project Explorer or any of the entity browsers to the list of codes or quotations in a manager.

This also applies to linking memos to codes, or memos to quotations.

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Creating & Modifying Relations

User-defined relations are available for code-code and quotation-quotation links. All other links
cannot be named.

New relations are created in the Relation Manager. You can define how a relation should look like in
terms of color, width and line style. Further you can select the layout direction and the property.
The property defines whether a relation is directed (transitive, asymmetric), or non-directed
(symmetric). See About Relations.

Creating New Relations

Go to the Home tab, click on the drop-down arrow in the Links button and
select Relations. Another option is to select the Relation Manager button in the
ribbon of a network.

There are two Relations Managers, one for code-code relations and one for hyperlinks (quotation-
quotation relation):

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On the left-hand side in the ribbon of the relation manager, select either Code-
Code Relations or Hyperlink Relations.

Click on the button New Relation.

Enter a name for the relation, select a color and a property. Then click Create.
If you need more information on relation properties, see About Relations.

New relations are stored together with the project in which they are used. Thus, you can
create a unique set of relations for each project.

Editing Existing Relations

To modify an existing relation, open the Relation Manager for codes or

quotations (see above).

On the left-hand side in the ribbon of the relation manager, select either Code-
Code Relations or Hyperlink Relations.

Select the relation that you want to modify and change its properties like the
line color, the line width, the line style, layout direction or property. You can
also rename the relation. You find all options in the ribbon of the Relation
Manager.

If the relation you are modifying is already in use by the currently loaded project, the changes will
take immediate effect and are stored along with the project when saving it.

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Analytic Functions in Networks

The Network tool is an analytical tool in itself. You will learn a lot about your data by building
conceptual networks. The two options that we would like to present here are:

• Add Neighbors
• Add Co-occurring Codes

These two options are the visual equivalent of the Code-Document Table and the Code Co-
occurrence Table.

For both options it is often useful to set a global filter first as otherwise too many items are
imported. This results in a very crowded network that might look nice but is of little analytical value.
See Applying Global Filters.

Add Neighbors
The add neighbors option allows you to construct a connected network step-by-step. It imports all
direct neighbors of the selected nodes into the network.

• When applying it to document nodes, it is the visual equivalent to the Code Document Table.
ATLAS.ti draws a blue lines between the codes, and the documents / document groups in
which they occur.

• When applying it to hyperlinks, it allows you to bring into a network all connected quotations.

• When applying it to codes, you can successively bring in connected codes to support data
modelling and theory building.

How to add neighbors

Select one or more nodes, right-click and select the option Add Neighbors
from the context menu and then the type of entity that you want to import.

You also find the 'Add Neighbors' option in the Nodes ribbon of the network editor.

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For documents when adding codes, make sure that Show Code-Document Connections is
selected under the View tab in the ribbon.

Depending on the entity type, possible neighbors are:

• Documents
• Quotations
• Codes
• Memos
• Groups

The option all common imports all those that are applicable.

Application: Comparing Cases

Adding code neighbors to a document node, or a document group node allows creating case-
based network. You can ask questions like: Which of the codes have been applied in which
document or document groups. ATLAS.ti draws a blue lines between the codes, and the
documents / document groups in which they occur. Make sure that Show Code-Document
Connections is selected in the View options.

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When you have applied lots of codes to a document, it is useful to set a global filter when
adding codes. Otherwise, your network will be too crowded, and it will be difficult to
interpret it or to see any meaningful pattern. See Applying global Filters.

Add Co-occurring Codes

The add co-occurring codes option is the visual equivalent of the Code Co-occurrence Tools. It
allows you to explore code co-occurrence spatially, which is different from looking at numbers in a
table, and different from exploring code co-occurrence in a Sankey diagram. The recommendation
is to use these functions in combination to look at data from different perspectives in the sense of
a triangulation.

Co-occurring codes are those that code the same or overlapping quotations. When importing co-
occurring codes, ATLAS.ti checks all five possible ways that a code can co-occur:

• quotations coded with a code A overlap quotations coded with a code B

• quotations coded with a code A are overlapped by quotations coded with a code B

• quotations coded with a code A occur within quotations coded with a code B

• quotations coded with a code A enclose quotations coded with a code B

• quotations coded with a code A code the same quotations coded with a code B

See Available Operators > Proximity Operators.

Select one or more codes in a network editor, right-click and select Add Co-
occurring Codes. This option is also available from the Nodes ribbon.

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tip
In order to achieve meaningful results, it is often useful to set a code group as
global filter first. Think about which concepts you want to relate to each other
and add those to a code group. See Applying Global Filters.

Below you see a network with global filter setting. Only the full colored nodes pass the filter. It
helps you to focus on what is relevant in your network:

If you have no idea which codes co-occur, using the Code Co-occurrence Explorer is a good
starting point. If you have a more specific idea which codes do co-occur, the Code Co-
occurrence Table, and the "Add Co-occurring Codes" option in networks become more
useful.

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Exporting Networks
Networks can be saved as graphic file, or exported as XPS or PDF file, or printed.

Saving a Network as Graphic File

Open the network.

In the ribbon of the network, select the Export tab and then Export Bitmap.

When saving the file, you can choose among the following graphic file formats:

• *.png
• *.jpg
• *.gif
• *.tif
• *.bmp

Saving a Network in the Microsoft XPS format

The XPS format is Microsoft’s alternative to PDF.

To save a network in the Microsoft XPS format, select the Export XPS option.

Saving a Network in PDF format

If you want to create a PDF file, a PDF writer needs to be installed on your computer (e.g. Adobe).

To create a PDF file from your network, select the Print option and chose your
PDF Writer as printer.

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Network Editor - Further Options

Changing Code Color

Select a code node. In the main network ribbon, click on the dropdown arrow
below the color palette and select a color.

Merge Codes

Select all code nodes that should be merged into another code. If you select
multiple code notes, hold down the Ctrl-key.

Select the Nodes tab and click on the Merge button. Move the mouse pointer
to the node with which you want to merge the selected code(s). You will see a
light green frame around this node. When you left-click on the node, all the
other selected code nodes will be merged.

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Duplicate Codes
A duplicated code is an exact clone of the original code including color, comment, code-quotation
links, code memo links and code-code links. Duplicating a code can be a useful option to clean up
or modify a code system.

Select one or more codes in a network, select the Nodes tab and from there
Duplicate Code(s) option. Duplicated codes have the same name plus a
consecutive number, i.e. (2).

Create Groups
You can also create groups in networks. As everywhere else in the software, a group consists of
entities of the same type. Thus, you can create a document group base don document nodes, a
code group based on code nodes, a memo group based on memo nodes, and a network group
based on network nodes. It is not possible to create a group that contains different entity types.

Select one or more nodes of the same entity type and click the New Group
option in the Nodes tab.

Enter a name for the group and click Create. The group will be added to the
network, and the linkages to its members are displayed.

Traversing Hyperlinks in Networks

To expand the hyperlinks you see in a network, or to see which other entities are linked to a
hyperlinked quotation, you can import its neighbors:

Right-click on a hyperlink and select Import Neighbors > Quotations.

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Team Work
The kind of team work supported is asynchronous shared coding and analyzing. This means if you
have a lot of data you can spread the coding work across different team members. Each team
member codes parts of the data, and the work of all coders is put together via merging the various
subprojects.

Each team member needs to work on his or her copy of the project. The location where the
project data for each user is stored can be selected. However, this is always a personal, not
a shared space. See Working with ATLAS.ti Libraries.

When working on a team project, team members must not edit documents (unless everyone
works in different documents). If team members edit the same documents, these cannot be
merged; instead they are duplicated. If document editing is necessary, this needs to be done
by the project administrator in the Master project!

Workflow

1. The project administrator sets up a Master project. See Creating a New Project.

2. The project administrator adds documents to the project and possibly a list of codes.

3. The project administrator saves the project and exports it. This means creating a project
bundle file

4. All team members import the project bundle file and begin their work.

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To combine the work of all team members, each team member creates a project bundle file
5. and sends it to the project administrator.

6. The project administrator merges all subprojects, and creates a new Master file.

7. The project administrator exports the new Master file and distributes it to all team members.
See Transfer Projects.

8. The team members continue their work.

This cycle continues. If new documents need to be added to the project, this needs to be done by
the project administrator. A good time for doing this is after merging and before creating the new
Master file.

You find step-by-step instructions here:

• for project administrators

• for team members

Important to Know

• If all team members should work on the same documents, it is essential that only the project
administrator is setting up the project adding all documents. Otherwise, the documents are
duplicated or multiplied during the process of merging. See Adding Documents.

• Team members must not edit documents. If they do, the edited documents cannot be
merged, and you end up with duplicates. If document editing is necessary, this needs to be
done by the project administrator in the Master project!

• The location of where ATLAS.ti stores project related data can be determined by each user.
See Working with ATLAS.ti Libraries.

• Document libraries CANNOT be shared. Each person always works with her/his own copy of
the data set within her/his own environment of ATLAS.ti.

Our support team will reject any repair requests that are caused by attempts to share
libraries.

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User Accounts
ATLAS.ti automatically creates a user account based on the name that you use on your computer.

To check who is currently logged in:

Select the Tool tab and select Manage Users.

The currently logged-in user is displayed in bold letters:

Change the Current User

Select the Tool tab and select Manage Users.

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Select the User you who should be indicted as creator /modifier in the project
from this moment onward and click Set as Current User.

Creating a new user account

A reason for creating a new user account is if two persons on a team have the same name, or if you
want to use a different name than the automatically assigned name.

Select the Tools tab and select Manage Users.

Click on the button New User, enter a name and click Create.

After creating a new account, select the Switch User option from the ribbon to log in using the new
name.

Switching user accounts

Select the Tools tab and select Switch Users.

Select another user from the list.

When merging projects that come from different computers and that use the same
username, the username will be duplicated, e.g., Tom and Tom (2). This means you can still

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USER ACCOUNTS 489

distinguish the two users. However, it may be a bit cumbersome to always remember who is
who.

Merging Users
Reasons for wanting to merge users:

• If you are using two computers, and you import a project from computer A into computer B,
this results in the duplication of your own username. ATLAS.ti adds a (2) behind the duplicate
username.
• You want to run and inter-coder agreement analysis and realize that there is something
wrong with the usernames of the coders.

To merge two users drag the username that you want to get rid of onto the
username that you want to keep.

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Setting Up a Team Project

When you work in a team with shared document and codes, you need to start with a
MASTER project that contains all documents and codes that you want to share with your
team. See Work Flow. If all team members start independently, you end up with duplicate
documents and codes after merging the projects.

The instructions are organized by the various tasks involved when working in a team. Below you
find operating instructions for project administrator. For team member instructions, see Tasks for
Team Members.

Tasks of the Project Administrator

Creating and distributing the project

If you open ATLAS.ti, select the New Project button from the Welcome Screen.

Alternatively:

If a project is already open, select File > New > Create New Project.
Inst
Enter a project name and click Create.

Next, add everything that should be shared by the team:

• add documents. See Adding documents to a project.

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create document groups. See Working with groups.

•
• add codes and code groups. You can prepare a list of codes including code descriptions,
code groups and colors in Excel and import the Excel file. See Importing A List Of Codes.

If a common set of codes and code groups is to be used, they must be added to the project
at this stage. If each team member were to add codes and code groups individually to each
subproject, all codes and groups are multiplied during the merge.

To save a project, click on the Save icon in the Quick Access toolbar, or select
File > Save (Short-cut: Ctrl+S).
Inst
To export the project for distribution to all team member, select File > Export.
See also Project Transfer.
Inst
Distribute the project bundle file to all team members: e.g., via email, a folder
on a server that everyone can access, or also via a cloud link or cloud folder.

The project bundle file shows the ATLAS.ti icon, has the file extension .atlproj and can be read by
both ATLAS.ti Windows and Mac.

The default name of the bundle is the project

name + author and date. Renaming the bundle does not change the name of the project contained
within the bundle. Think of the project bundle file as a box that contains your ATLAS.ti project plus
all documents that you want to analyze. Putting a different label on the outside of the box will not
change the name of the project file, which is contained inside the box. Ask each team member to
change the name of the project file when importing the project bundle, i.e. adding their name or
initial to the project name, so that the projects of the various team members can easily be
identified.

Project bundle files can be shared via a cloud services like Dropbox, OneDrive, GoogleDrive,
etc. Another option is to upload the project bundle file to a server of your choice and send a
link to all team members so that they can download the file.

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Team Project: Tasks for Team Members

As a team member you must not edit documents in a team project. If you do, the document
cannot be merged later on, instead it will be duplicated. If text needs to be modified, this
needs to be done in the Master Project by the project administrator.

ATLAS.ti automatically creates a user account based on your computer login when you start
ATLAS.ti.

Check your username before you start working. Is this the name you want to
use in the team project? If not, modify the name or create a new user account
and log in with the new account. See User Accounts.

As team member, you receive a project bundle from the project administrator.

Save the project bundle file on your computer, or personal space on a server.

Open ATLAS.ti and select the Import Project button. If another project is
currently open, select File > New > Import Project.
inst
Rename the project by adding your name or initials to the project name. This is
important for the project administrator later when he or she merges the
projects of all team members. If you forget this step, see below how you can
rename a project after having imported it.

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If this is the second or third time around that you import the Master project,
the project name with the added coder name/initials already exists. ATLAS.ti
will recognize this and offers the following two choices:

• Keep current project as a snapshot.

• Overwrite existing project.

As you previously exported your project to send it to the project administrator, you already have a
backup of your project. Therefore, it will be OK in most cases to overwrite the existing project.

Make the appropriate choice and click Import.

After you have done some work on the project, you need to send it back to the project
administrator for merging. This is what you need to do:

Select File > Export > Project Bundle. See Project Transfer.
The name of the exported bundle file will include your user name and the date,
e.g. 'Project X_Tom (TM 2020-04-30)'.
Continue the cycle of project exchange and merging between project
administrator and team members as needed.

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Renaming Projects after Import

If you forgot to rename the project when importing it, you can change the name after it has been
imported. You need to do this in the opening screen after starting ATLAS.ti or after closing all
projects.

On the opening screen, right click on the project that you want to rename and
select Rename Project.

If the project is already open, you need to close it to return to the opening screen.

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Merging Projects
The Master project is the project into which another project, called the Import project is merged.
The Master project has to be loaded first before invoking the Merge Project option.

The default option is to unify all entities that are identical, and to add all other items that do not yet
exist in the Master project.

You can only merge ATLAS.ti desktop and ATLAS.ti Web projects if the projects contain
different documents and codes. When merging entities, they need to have the same ID and
this is only given if you start with a common Master project. As it is currently not possible to
import a Desktop project into the Web version, you cannot share a Master project with a
person using the Web version. Thus, even if you add the same documents and codes to both
Desktop and Web project, the IDs for all entities will be different. When you merge these
projects, all entities will be duplicated because they have different IDs rather than merged.
Codes can be manually merged by the user, but you cannot merge documents manually.

Identical Entities Explained

When an entity is created in ATLAS.ti - regardless if it is a document, a code, a quotation, a memo,
a network, a group, or a comment - this entity receives a unique ID, comparable to a fingerprint.

When merging projects, ATLAS.ti compares the IDs of the various entities. If they have the same ID,
they are unified. If the ID is not the same, they are added. Thus, the name of an entity is not the
decisive factor.

For example: If a user Tom has created a code with the name sunshine, and a user Anne also has
created a code with the same sunshine in her project, these two codes are not identical as they
have been created on different computers and in different project. Therefore, they will have a
different ID.

If you merge Tom's and Anne's project, the merged project will contain two codes: sunshine and
sunshine (2). If the meaning of both codes is the same, and you want to keep one sunshine code
only, you can merge the two codes manually. See also Housekeeping below.

Groups are Additive

A Group B with documents {1, 2, 3} in the Master project merged with a Group B containing
documents {3, 4} in the Import project will result in Group B= {1, 2, 3, 4} in the merged project.

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Entities with and without Comments

If there is a code C in the Master project that has no comment, and a code C in the Import project
that has a comment, the merged procedure will add this comment to the merged project.

In the case of an unsolvable conflict - code C in the Master project has a comment, and code C in
the Import project also has a comment - the user can define which of the two conflicting entities
will win.

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If the comment of the Master project should be kept, you need to select the option Keep. If the
comment of the Import project should be kept, you need to select the option Override.

Currently you can only decide for all conflicts whether the Master project should "win", or the
import project.

Handling of Deleted Entities

It is not possible to "subtract" entities.

If one team member has deleted a code or some codings, and these entities still exist in another
project, the merged project will contain those codes or codings again.

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If you want to clean up a project, this is best done in a fresh Master-project after merging and
before distributing the new Master-file to all team members.

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How to Merge
The Merge Tool reunites projects that were originally divided for analytical or economic reasons. It
brings together the contributions of different members of a research team.

Before you merge, the recommendation is that you import all project bundle files first and
take a look at the projects. If a conflict arises during the process of merging, you need to
decide whether to keep the version in the Master or the Import project. If you do not know
what is contained in import project, you cannot make an informed decision. Principally, it is
possible to merge project bundle files without importing them prior to merging.

To begin the merge process:

Open the Master project.

Select File > Merge.

You have the option to select either a project, or a project bundle file.

If you have previously imported the bundle files of all team members, select
Merge Project, otherwise Merge Project Bundle.

Select a project from the list offered by ATLAS.ti, or load a project bundle file.

If you have a long list of projects, just enter the first few letters of the project name into the
Search field.

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You have the option to create a snapshot of the current project before merging. There may be
times, when you want or need to go back to an older version of your project. The default name for
snapshot project is: project name (Snapshot--date-time).

After selecting a project or project bundle, click on the Merge button.

ATLAS.ti checks the two projects for identical and different items. After this process is completed,
you see a Pre-Merge Summary.

If there are no conflicts, you can proceed with merging the two projects by
clicking Merge.

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If there are conflicts between the Master project, and the project that you import, you can solve the
conflict in two ways:

• Keep: the Master project 'wins', and the changes made in the Import project are ignored.
• Override: the version in the Master project will be overridden, and the changes made in the
Import project 'win'. If all team members have been coding different documents, merge
conflicts are unlikely to occur.

A conflict could arise, for instance, if someone changed the code colour, comment or code name.
As project administrator, you will have to decide whether to accept these changes or not. In the
example below the code color for a number of codes and two code labels are different in the
Master and Import project. The project administrator has decided to keep the changes from the
import project and selected Override. All entries in the column Import are shown in bold as this is
what will be used in the merged project.

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You currently cannot chose for each conflict how to solve it. All conflicts need to be solved
by either selecting the strategy 'keep', or the strategy 'override'.
inst
After merging, check the final merge report, and the merged project for plausibility. If you are
satisfied with the results, save the project. If not, you can always select Undo.

If applicable, continue with merging the next subproject or project bundle file.

A common mistake is that team members set up their own projects, adding documents and
codes. This will result in duplicated documents and codes after merging. Issues around
duplicated codes you can solve yourself by merging those codes (see below Housekeeping).
You can however not merge duplicated documents. Please follow the recommended
workflow described under Team Work.

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Housekeeping
After merging all projects, the project administrator may need to perform some housekeeping work,
such as:

• cleaning up the code list

• adding or modifying code groups
• adding a memo with information for the team
• adding new documents and document groups

Merging Duplicate Codes

You need to do some housekeeping if you find duplicate codes in the merged project. This can
happen, for instance, if team members independently have added codes that have the same name.
As these codes have been created in different projects, they have different IDs, and therefore they
are added, not merged. The naming convention for duplicate codes is as follows:

• code A
• code A (2)

Duplicate codes can be merged as follows:

Open the Code Manager. Highlight the codes that you want to merge, right
click and select the Merge Codes option from the context menu, or click on the
Merge Codes button in the ribbon.

Merging Users

If you realize that usernames have been duplicated during the merge process, you can merge them
as follows:

Select the Tools tab and from there Manage Users.

To merge two users drag the username that you want to get rid of onto the
username that you want to keep.

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Inter-coder Agreement (ICA)

You can test inter-coder agreement in text, audio and video documents. Image documents
are not supported. This also applies to image quotations in text PDF documents.

As you need to start from a common Master project when setting up a project for ICA
analysis, you cannot check for inter-coder agreement if one of the coders is using the Web
version. All coders need to use the desktop version (Mac or Windows). For a more detailed
explanation, see Merging Projects.

Why It Matters
The purpose of collecting and analyzing data is that researchers find answers to the research
questions that motivated the study in the first place. Thus, the data are the trusted ground for any
reasoning and discussion of the results. Therefore, the researchers should be confident that their
data has been generated taking precaution against distortions and biases, intentional or accidental,
and that the mean the same thing to anyone who uses them. Reliability grounds this confidence
empirically (Krippendorff, 2004).

Richards (2009) wrote: "But being reliable (to use the adjective) beats being unreliable. If a
category is used in different ways, you will be unable to rely on it to bring you all the relevant data.
Hence, you may wish to ensure that you yourself are reliably interpreting a code the same way
across time, or that you can rely on your colleagues to use it in the same way" (p. 108).

There are two ways to rationalize reliability, one routed in measurement theory, which is less
relevant for the type of data that ATLAS.ti users have. The second one is an interpretivist
conception of reliability. When collecting any type of interview data or observations, the
phenomena of interest usually disappears right after it has been recorded or observed. Therefore,
the analyst's ability to examine the phenomena relies heavily on a consensual reading and use of
the data that represent the phenomena of interest. Researchers need to presume that their data
can be trusted to mean the same to all of their users.

This means "that the reading of textual data as well as of the research results is replicable
elsewhere, that researchers demonstrably agree on what they are talking about. Here, then,
reliability is the degree in which members of a designated community agree on the readings,
interpretations, responses to, or uses of given texts or data. [...] Researchers need to demonstrate
the trustworthiness of their data by measuring their reliability" (Krippendorff, 2004, p. 212).

Testing the reliability of the data is a first step. Only after establishing that the reliability is
sufficiently high, it makes sense to proceed with the analysis of the data. If there is considerable
doubt what the data mean, it will be difficult to justify the further analysis and the results of this
analysis.

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ATLAS.ti's inter-coder agreement tool lets you assess the agreement of how multiple coders code a
given body of data. In developing the tool we worked closely together with Prof. Klaus
Krippendorff, one of the leading experts in this field, author of the book Content Analysis: An
Introduction of Its Methodology, and the originator of the Krippendorff's alpha coefficient for
measuring inter-coder agreement.

The need for such a tool as an integrated element in ATLAS.ti has long been evident and has been
frequently requested by users. By its nature, however, it could not and cannot be a magic "just click
a button and hope for the best" solution kind of tool. If you randomly click on any of the choices
that ATLAS.ti offers to calculate an inter-coder agreement coefficient, ATLAS.ti will calculate
something. Whether the number you receive will be meaningful and useful depends on how you
have set up your project and the coding.

This means if you want to test for inter-coder agreement, it requires at least a minimal willingness
to delve into the basic theoretical foundations of what inter-coder agreement is, what it does and
can do, and what it cannot do. In this manual, we provide some basics, but this cannot be a
replacement for reading the literature and coming to understand the underlying assumptions and
requirements for running an inter-coder agreement analysis.

Please keep in mind that the inter-coder agreement tool crosses the qualitative-quantitative divide.
Establishing inter-coder agreement has its origin in quantitative content analysis (see for instance
Krippendorff, 2018; Schreier, 2012). If you want to apply it and want to adhere to scientific
standards, you must follow some rules that are much stricter than those for qualitative coding.

If you want to develop a code system as a team, yes, you can start coding independently and then
see what you get. But this approach can only be an initial brainstorming at best. It cannot be used
for testing inter-coder agreement.

A good time for checking inter-coder agreement is when the principal investigator has built a stable
code system and all codes are defined. Then two or more additional coders that are independent
of the person who developed the code system code a sub-set of the data. This means, this is
somewhere in the middle of the coding process. Once a satisfactory ICA coefficient is achieved,
the principal investigator has the assurance that his or her codes can be understood and applied
by others and can continue to work with the code system.

Literature

Guba, Egon G. and Lincoln, Yvonna S. (2005). Competing paradigms in qualitative research, in
Denzin, N. and Lincoln, Y.S. (eds) The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, 191–225. London:
Sage.

Harris, Judith, Pryor, Jeffry and Adams, Sharon (2006). The Challenge of Intercoder Agreement in
Qualitative Inquiry. Working paper.

Krippendorff, Klaus (2018). Content Analysis: An Introduction to Its Methodology. 4th edition.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

MacPhail, Catherine, Khoza, Nomhle, Abler, Laurie and Ranganathan, Meghna (2015). Process
guidelines for establishing Intercoder Reliability in qualitative studies. Qualitative Research, 16 (2),
198-212.

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Rolfe, Gary (2006). Validity, trustworthiness and rigour: quality and the idea of qualitative
research. Methodological Issues in Nursing Research, 304-310.

Richards, Lyn (2009). Handling Qualitative Data: A Practical Guide, 2nd edn. London: Sage.

Schreier, Margrit (2012). Qualitative Content Analysis in Practice. London: Sage.

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ICA - Requirements For Coding

If you are not yet familiar with the coding process in ATLAS.ti, please see Coding Data

Sources for unreliable data are intra-coder inconsistencies and inter-coder disagreements.

To detect these, the coding process needs to be replicated. Replicability can be assured when
several independently working coders (at least two) agree:

• on the use of the written coding instruction

• by highlighting the same textual segments to which the coding instructions apply
• by coding them using the same codes, or by identifying the same semantic domains that
describe them and code them using the same codes for each semantic domain.

Semantic Domains
A semantic domain is defined as a set of distinct concepts that share common meanings. You can
also think about them as a category with sub codes.

Examples of semantic domains are:

EMOTIONS

• emotions: joy
• emotions: excitement
• emotions: surprise
• emotions: sadness
• emotions: anger
• emotions: fear

STRATEGIES

• strategies: realize they are natural

• strategies: have a Plan B
• strategies: adjust expectations
• strategies: laugh it off
• strategies: get help

ACTOR

• actor: partner
• actor: mother
• actor: father
• actor: child
• actor: sibling
• actor: neighbour

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• actor: colleague

Each semantic domain embraces mutually exclusive concepts indicated by a code. If you code a
data segment with 'emotions: surprise', you cannot code it also 'emotions: fear'. If both are
mentioned close to each other, you need to create two quotations and code them separately. You
can however apply codes from different semantic domains to one quotation. See multivalued
coding below.

Semantic domains are context dependent

At times, it might be obvious from the domain name what the context is. The sub code 'good
listener' in the image above belongs to the context 'Characteristics (of friendship)', and it is not
about conversations with work colleagues. If the context is still unclear and could be interpreted in
different ways, you need to make it unambiguous in the code definition.

Semantic domains need to be conceptually independent

Conceptual independence means:

• a sub code from one domain is only specific for this domain. It does not occur in any other
domain.
• thus, each code only occurs once in the code system

This is also a rule that you should generally apply when building a code system. See Developing a
Code System.

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Therefore, as semantic domains are logically or conceptually independent of each other, it is

possible to apply codes from different semantic domains to the same or overlapping quotations.
For instance, In a section of your data, you may find something on the benefits of friendship, and
some emotional aspects that are mentioned. As these codes come from different semantic
domains (BENEFITS and EMOTIONS), they can both be applied.

Developing the Code System and Semantic Domains

Semantic domains can be developed deductively or inductively. In most studies applying a
qualitative data analysis approach, development is likely to be inductive. This means, you develop
the codes while you read the data step by step. For example, in an interview study about
friendship, you may have coded some data segments 'caring for each other', 'supporting each
other' and 'improve health and longevity'. Then you realize that these codes can be summarized on
a higher level as 'BENEFITS OF FRIENDSHIP'. Thus, you set up a semantic domain BENEFITS with
the sub codes:

• benefits: caring for each other

• benefits: supporting each other
• benefits: improve health and longevity

You continue coding and come across other segments that you code 'learning from each other'. As
this also fits the domain BENEFITS, you add it to the domain by naming it:

• benefits: learning from each other

And so on. This way you can build semantic domains step by step inductively while developing the
code system.

Once the code system is ready, and the code definitions are written in the code comment fields,
you can prepare the project for inter-coder agreement testing. At this stage, you can no longer
expand a semantic domain. See Project Setup.

When developing a code system, the aim is to cover the variability in the data so that no aspect
that is relevant for the research question is left-out. This is referred to as exhaustiveness. On the
domain level this means that all main topics are covered. On the sub code level, this means that the
codes of a semantic domain cover all aspects of the domain, and the data can be sorted in the
available codes without forcing them. An easy way out is to include a catch-all 'miscellaneous' code
for each domain into which coders can add all data that they think does not fit anywhere else.
However, keep in mind that such catch-all codes will contribute little to answering the research
questions.

Rules for Applying Codes

• codes from one domain need to be applied in a mutually exclusive manner.
• codes from multiple semantic domains can be applied to the same or overlapping data
segments.

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Mutual exclusiveness: You can only apply one of the sub codes of a semantic domain to a
quotation or to overlapping quotations. Using the same code colour for all codes of a semantic
domain will help you to detect possible errors.

If you find that you have coded a quotation with two codes from the same semantic domain, you
can fix it by splitting the quotation. This means, you change the length of the original quotation and
create one new quotation, so you can apply the two codes to two distinct quotations.

If codes within a semantic domain are not applied in a mutually exclusive manner, the ICA
coefficient is inflated - and in the current implementation of the tool cannot be calculated!

Multi-Valued Coding: This means that you can apply multiple codes of different semantic domains
to the same quotation. For instance, a respondent talks about anger in dealing with her mother and
mentions that she had to adjust expectations, this can be coded with codes from the three
semantic domains EMOTIONS; ACTOR and STRATEGIES.

Coding with codes from multiple semantic domains will allow you to see how the various semantic
domains are related for other analyses than inter-coder agreement. For example, what kind of
emotions are mentioned in relation to which actor and which strategies are used to deal with them.
For this you can use the code co-occurrence tools. See Code Co-Occurrence Tools.

Instructions for Coders

An important requirement for inter-coder agreement analysis is the independence of the coders.
Thus, the person who has developed the code system cannot be one of the coders whose coding

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goes into the ICA analysis. In addition to the principal investigator who develops the code system,
two or more persons are needed who apply the codes.

The coders will receive a project bundle file from the principal investigator (see Project Setup). It is
recommended to provide the coders with the following instruction:

• When importing the project that you receive from the principal investigator, add your name or
initials to the project name.
• After opening the project, double-check your username.
• Apply all codes of a semantic domain in a mutual exclusive manner.
• If fitting you can apply codes from multiple semantic domains to the same or overlapping
quotations.
• Do not make any changes to the codes - do not alter the code definition, do not change the
code name, or the code color.
• If you do not understand a code definition, or find a code label not fitting, create a memo and
name it 'Comments from coder name'. Write all of your comments, issues you find and ideas
you have into this memo.
• Do not consult with other coders. This is important for your coding to remain unbiased. The
data must be coded by all coders independently.
• Once you are done coding, create a project bundle file and send it back to the principal
investigator.

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How Agreement and Disagreement is Measured

The coefficients that are available measure the extent of agreement or disagreement of
different coders. Based on this measure one can infer reliability, but the coefficients do not
measure reliability directly. Therefore: what is measured is inter-coder agreement and not
inter-coder reliability.

Agreement is what we measure; reliability is what we infer from it.

Suppose two coders are given a text and code it following the provided instructions. After they are
done, they give you the following record of their coding:

• There is agreement on the first pair of segments in terms of length and location (agreement:
10 units).

• On the second pair they agree in length but not in location. There is agreement on an
intersection of the data (agreement; 12 units, disagreement: 2 + 2 units).

• In the third pair, coder 'A' finds a segment relevant, which is not recognized by coder 'B'
(disagreement: 4 units).

• The largest disagreement is observed in the last pair of segments. Coder 'A' takes a narrower
view than coder 'B' (agreement: 4 units, disagreement: 6 units).

In terms of your ATLAS.ti coding, you need to think of your document as a textual continuum. Each
character of your text is a unit of analysis for ICA, starting at character 1 and ending for instance at
character 17500. For audio and video documents, the unit of analysis is a second. Images can
currently not be used in an ICA analysis.

The quotation itself does not go into the analysis, but the characters or seconds that have been
coded. In other words, if each coder creates quotations, it is not a total disagreement if they have
not highlighted the exact same segment. The part of the quotations that overlap go into the
analysis as agreement; the other parts as disagreement.

Another option is to work with pre-defined quotations. So that coders only need to apply the
codes. For more information see Project Setup.

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You can test inter-coder agreement in text, audio and video documents. Image documents
are not supported. This also applies to image quotations in text PDF documents.

Example Application
Why are many business instilling a DevOps culture into their organization? written by: Jessica Diaz,
Daniel López-Fernández, Jorge Perez and Ángel González-Prieto.

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Methods For Testing ICA

“An inter-coder agreement coefficient measures the extent to which data can be trusted to
represent the phenomena of analytical interest that one hopes to analyze in place of the raw
phenomena” (Krippendorff, 2019).

ATLAS.ti currently offers three methods to test inter-coder agreement:

• Simple percent agreement

• Holsti Index

• Krippendorff's family of alpha coefficients.

All methods can be used for two or more coders. As the percent agreement measure, and the
Holsti index do not take into account chance agreement, we recommend the Krippendorff alpha
coefficients for scientific reporting.

Percent Agreement
Percentage Agreement is the simplest measure of inter-coder agreement. It is calculated as the
number of times a set of ratings are the same, divided by the total number of units of observation
that are rated, multiplied by 100.

The benefits of percentage agreement are that it is simple to calculate, and it can be used with any
type of measurement scale. Let's take a look at the following example: There are ten segments of
text and two coders only needed to decide whether a code applies or does not apply:

Example Coding of Two Coders

Segments 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Coder 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Coder 2 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 0

1 = agreement, 0 = disagreement

This is how you calculate it:

PA = 6 / 10

PA = 0.6 = 60%

Coder 1 and 2 agree 6 out of 10 times, so percent agreement is 60%.

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One could argue that this is quite good. This calculation, however, does not account for chance
agreement between ratings. If the two coders were not to read the data and would just randomly
code the 10 segments. we would expect them to agree a certain percentage of the time by chance
alone. The question is: How much higher is the 60% agreement over the agreement that would
occur by chance?

The agreement that is expected by mere chance is 56% = (9.6 +1.6)/20. If you are interested in the
calculation, take a look at Krippendorff (2004, p. 224-226). The 60% agreement now does not look
so impressive after all. Statistically speaking, the performance of the two coders is equivalent to
having arbitrarily assigned 0s and 1s to 9 of the 10 segments, and only 1 of the 10 segments is
reliably coded.

For calculating percent agreement you can add single codes in place of semantic domains.

Holsti Index
The Holsti index (Holsti, 1969) is a variation of the percent agreement measure for situations where
coders do not code precisely the same data segment. This is the case if coders set their own
quotations/. Like Percent Agreement, also the Holsti index does not take into account chance
agreement.

The formula for the Holsti Index is:

The results for Percentage agreement and the Holsti Index are the same when all coders code the
same data segments.

Cohen's Kappa
We acknowledge that Cohen’s Kappa is a popular measure, but we opted for not implementing it
because of the limitations identified in the literature.

"It is quite puzzling why Cohen’s kappa has been so popular in spite of so much controversy
with it. Researchers started to raise issues with Cohen’s kappa more than three decades ago
(Kraemer, 1979; Brennan & Prediger, 1981; Maclure & Willett, 1987; Zwick, 1988; Feinstein &
Cicchetti, 1990; Cicchetti & Feinstein, 1990; Byrt, Bishop & Carlin, 1993). In a series of two
papers, Feinstein & Cicchetti (1990) and Cicchetti & Feinstein (1990) made the following two
paradoxes with Cohen’s kappa well-known: (1) A low kappa can occur at a high agreement;
and (2) Unbalanced marginal distributions produce higher values of kappa than more
balanced marginal distributions. While the two paradoxes are not mentioned in older
textbooks (e.g. Agresti, 2002), they are fully introduced as the limitations of kappa in a

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recent graduate textbook (Oleckno, 2008). On top of the two well-known paradoxes
aforementioned, Zhao (2011) describes twelve additional paradoxes with kappa and suggests
that Cohen’s kappa is not a general measure for inter-rater reliability at all but a measure of
reliability under special conditions that are rarely held. Krippendorff (2004) suggests that
Cohen’s Kappa is not qualified as a reliability measure in reliability analysis since its definition
of chance agreement is derived from association measures because of its assumption of
raters’ independence. He argues that in reliability analysis raters should be interchangeable
rather than independent and that the definition of chance agreement should be derived from
estimated proportions as approximations of the true proportions in the population of
reliability data. Krippendorff (2004) mathematically demonstrates that kappa’s expected
disagreement is not a function of estimated proportions from sample data but a function of
two raters’ individual preferences for the two categories." (Xie, 2013).

In addition, Cohen's kappa can only be used for 2 coders, and it assumes an infinite sample size.
See also the article in our research blog: Why Cohen's Kappa is not a good choice.

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Krippendorff's Family of Alpha Coefficients

The family of alpha coefficients offers various measurement that allow you to carry out calculations
at different levels. They can be used for more than two coders, are sensitive to different sample
sizes and can be used with small samples as well.

Alpha binary
At the most general level, you can measure whether different coders identify the same sections in
the data to be relevant for the topics of interest represented by codes. All text units are taken into
account for this analysis, coded as well as not coded data.

You can, but do not need to use semantic domains at this level. It is also possible to enter a single
code per domain. You get a value for alpha binary for each code (or each semantic domain) in the
analysis, and a global value for all codes (or all domains) in the analysis.

The global alpha binary value might be something you want to publish in a paper as an overall value
for inter-coder agreement for your project.

The values for each code or semantic domain provide feedback which of the codes / domains are
satisfactory in terms of inter-coder agreement, and which are understood in different ways by the
different coders. These are codes / domains you need to improve and test gain, albeit with
different coders.

If you work with pre-defined quotations, the binary coefficient will be 1 for a semantic
domain if only codes of the same semantic domain have been applied, regardless which
code within the domain has been applied.

The value for global alpha binary will always be 1 when working with pre-defined quotations
as all coded segments are the same.

cu-alpha

The cu-alpha/Cu-alpha coefficients can only be used on combination with semantic

domains. They cannot be used to test agreement/disagreement for single codes!

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Another option is to test whether different coders were able to distinguish between the codes of a
semantic domain. For example, if you have a semantic domain called 'type of emotions' with the
sub codes:

• emotions::contentment
• emotions::excitement
• emotions::embarrassment
• emotions::relief

The coefficient gives you an indication whether the coders were able to reliably distinguish
between for instance 'contentment' and 'excitement', or between 'embarrassment' and 'relief'. The
cu-alpha will give you a value for the overall performance of the semantic domain. It will however
not tell you which of the sub codes might be problematic. You need to look at the quotations and
check where the confusion is.

The cu-alpha coefficient can only be calculated if the codes of a semantic domain have
been applied in a mutually exclusive manner. This means only one of the sub codes per
domain is applied to a given quotation. See also Requirements for Coding.

Cu-alpha
Cu-alpha is the global coefficient for all cu-alphas. It takes into account that you can apply codes
from multiple semantic domains to the same or overlapping quotations. See multivalued coding.
Thus, Cu-alpha is not just the average of all cu-alphas.

If codes of a semantic domain 'A' have been applied to data segments that are coded with codes of
a semantic domain 'B', this does not affect the cu-alpha coefficient for either domain A or B, but it
effects the overall Cu-alpha coefficient.

You can interpret the Cu-alpha coefficient as indicating the extent to which coders agree on the
presence or absence of the semantic domains in the analysis. Formulated as a question: Could
coders reliably identify that data segments belong to a specific semantic domain, or did the various
coders apply codes from other semantic domains?

In the calculation for both the cu- and Cu-alpha coefficient, only coded data segments are
included in the analysis.

Calculation of Krippendorff's Alpha

For a full mathematical explanation on how the alpha coefficients are calculated see ICA
Appendix.

The basic formula for all Krippendorff alpha coefficients is as follows:

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alpha = 1 - observed disagreement (Do)) / expected disagreement (De)

whereby 'De' is the expected

disagreement by chance.

α = 1 indicates perfect reliability. α = 0 indicates the absence of reliability. The units and the values
assigned to them are statistically unrelated. α < 0 when disagreements are systematic and exceed
what can be expected by chance.

When coders pay no attention to the text, which means they just apply the codes arbitrarily, their
coding has no relationship to what the text is about, then the observed disagreement is 1. In other
words, the observed disagreement (Do) equals the maximum expected disagreement (De), which is
1. If we enter this in the formula, we get:

α= 1 – 1/1 = 0.000.

If on the other hand, agreement is perfect, which means observed disagreement (Do) = 0, then we
get:

α= 1 – 0 / expected disagreement = 1.000.

To better understand the relationship between actual, observed and expected agreement, let's
take a look at the following contingency table:

In the example above, the tables represent a semantic domain with five codes. The matrices with
perfect and expected agreement/disagreement serve as a benchmark what could have been if
agreement either was perfect or if coders had applied the codes randomly. There are two matrices
for expected agreement/disagreement indicating that statistically speaking there are many
possibilities for a random attribution of the codes.

The black numbers show agreement, the red numbers disagreement.

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In the contingency table for observed agreement, we can see that the coders agree in applying
code 4. There are no red numbers, thus no disagreement.

There is some disagreement about the application of code 2. Agreement is 38% percent. In 2 % of
the cases, code 1 was applied instead of code 2.

There is a bit more confusion regarding the application of code 5. The coders have also applied
code 1 and code 3.

If this were a real life example, you would take a look at the code definitions for code 5 and code 2
and ask yourself why coders had difficulties to apply these codes in a reliable manner. The
coefficient, however, is acceptable. See Decision Rules. There is no need for re-testing.

References
Banerjee, M., Capozzoli, M., McSweeney, L., Sinha, D. (1999). Beyond kappa: A review of interrater
agreement measures. The Canadian Journal of Statistics, Vol. 27 (1), 3-23.

Cohen, Jacob (1960). A coefficient of agreement for nominal scales. Educational and Psychological
Measurement. 20 (1): 37–46. doi:10.1177/001316446002000104.

Holsti, O. R. (1969). Content analysis for the social sciences and humanities, Reading, MA: Addison-
Wesley.

Krippendorff, Klaus (2004/2012/2018). Content Analysis: An Introduction to Its Methodology. 2ed /

3rd /4th edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Zwick, Rebecca (1988). Another look at interrater agreement. Psychological Bulletin, 103, 347-387.

Xie, Q. (2013). Agree or disagree? A demonstration of an alternative statistic to Cohen's kappa for
measuring the extent and reliability of agreement between observer. In Proceedings of the Federal
Committee on Statistical Methodology Research Conference, The Council of Professional
Associations on Federal Statistics, Washington, DC, USA, 2013.

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Sample Size and Decision Rules

A number of decisions have to be made when testing for inter-coder agreement. For instance, how
much data material needs to be used, how many instances need to be coded with any given code
for the calculation to be possible, and how to evaluate the obtained coefficient.

Sample size
The data you use for the ICA analysis needs to be representative of the total amount of data you
have collected, thus of those data whose reliability is in question. Furthermore, the number of
codings per code needs to be sufficiently high. As a rule of thumb, the codings per code should at
least yield five agreements by chance.

Krippendorff (2019) uses Bloch and Kraemer's formula 3.7 (1989:276) to obtain the required sample
size. The table below lists the sample size you need when working with two coders:

• the three smallest acceptable reliabilities α min: 0.667 / 0.800 / 0.900

• for four levels of statistical significance: 0.100 / 0.050 / 0.010 / 0.005

• for semantic domains up to 10 codes (=probability pc):

Example: If you have a semantic domain with 4 codes and each of the codes are equally
distributed (pc = 1/4 = 0,25), and if the minimum alpha should be 0.800 at a 0.05 level of statistical
significance, you need a minimum of 139 codings for this semantic domain. For a lower alpha of
0.667, you need a minimum of 81 codings at the same level of statistical significance.

It applies to 2 coders, and for semantic domains up to 10 sub-codes. If you have more than two

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coders, more than 10 sub-codes in a domain, or an unequal distribution within a domain, you need
to adjust the equation and calculate the needed sample size yourself.

• More than two coders: You need to and multiply Z square by the number of coders.

• More than 10 sub-codes per domain: You need to adjust the value for pc. The value for pc =
1/number of sub-codes.

• Unequal distribution of codings within a domain: By 4 codes in a semantic domain, the

estimated proportion pc of all values c in the population is 0.250 (¼); by 5 codes, it is 0,200
(1/5); by 6 codes 0,167 (1/6) and so on. If the distribution of your codes in a semantic domain
is unequal, you need to make a new estimate for the sample size by using a pc in the formula
that is correspondingly less than 1/4, 1/5, 1/6 and so on.

You can see the corresponding z value from a standard normal distribution table. For a p-
value of 0,05, z = 1,65.

Acceptable Level of Reliability

The last question to consider is when to accept or reject coded data based on the ICA coefficient.
Krippendorff (2019) recommends:

• Strive to reach α = 1,000, even if this is just an ideal.

• Do not accept data with reliability values below α = 0.667.
• In most cases, you can consider a semantic domain to be reliable if α ≥ 0.800.
• Select at least 0.05 as the statistical level of significance to minimize the risk of a Type 1
error, which is to accept data as reliable if this is not the case.

Which cut-off point you choose always depends on the validity requirements that are placed on the
research results. If the result of your analysis affects or even jeopardizes someone's life, you should
use more stringent criteria. A cut-off point of α = 0.800 means that 80% of the data is coded to a
degree better than chance. If you are satisfied with α = 0.500, this means 50% of your data is
coded to a degree better than chance. The sounds a bit like tossing a coin and playing heads or
tails.

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Setting Up a Project for Inter-coder Agreement

Analysis

You can test inter-coder agreement in text, audio and video documents. Image documents
are not supported. This also applies to image quotations in text PDF documents.

When you want to run an inter-coder agreement analysis, you are working in a team. Therefore, you
need to know how to set up a team project, distribute and collect team projects for merging. Please
read the chapter on Team Work for further information. Here, you find the information that is
specific to inter-coder agreement analysis only.

As you need to start from a common Master project, you cannot perform an ICA analysis if
one of the coders is using the Web version. All coders need to use the desktop version (Mac
or Windows). For further information see Merging Projects.

Instructions for the Principal Investigator (PI)

• The PI develops the code system adding clear definitions for each code. This means, the PI
has likely coded the data as well. See also Requirements for Coding. This is the Master
Project.

• Based on the master project, the PI creates a subproject for the ICA analysis. This is easiest
be done by creating a project snapshot. Usually, the coders for the ICA analysis code
10-20% of the material. Another approach is the number of codings you need to achieve a
certain level of significance. See Sample Size and Decision Rules.

• The PI deletes all documents from the snapshot project that coders should not code. See
Document Management.

Option A

Next, the PI can either remove all quotations, so that the snapshot project for the coders only
contain the documents that need to be coded, and the codes with the definitions. The coders then

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need to find and mark text segments they find relevant and apply one or more codes from the list.
This option is best used for longer documents where you are interested in seeing whether other
coders find the same passages relevant for a given topic. For example, you have a number of
reports, and the aim is to identify all segments related to business strategies, labour laws and
gender issues. If this is the question of interest, it is necessary that all coders set quotations
themselves (Option A: Delete all Quotations).

The PI deletes all quotations: Open the Quotation Manager, select all
quotations and click on the Delete button.

The PI saves the project, creates a project bundle file and sends it to the
coders.

Option B

Another option is to leave the quotations in the project, but to remove all
codings. This means, the coders get a project that contains the documents to
be coded, pre-defined quotations and a list of codes. This is useful if the aim is
to see whether different coders understand the codes in the same way and
apply them to the same data segments. This assures that the code system is
replicable and that also others see the same or similar things in the data as the
principal investigator (Option B: Remove all codings).

inst
The PI removes only the codings: Open the Document Manager, select all
documents, click on the Tools tab and from there select Remove codings.
inst
The PI saves the project, creates a project bundle file and sends it to the
coders.

Instructions f
An important requirement for inter-coder agreement analysis is the independence of the coders.
Thus, the person who has developed the code system cannot be one of the coders whose coding
goes into the ICA analysis.

It is recommended to provide the coders with the following instructions.

• As coder, you receive a project bundle file from the principal investigator.

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When importing the project, add your name or initials to the project name.
•
• After opening the project, double-check your username.

• Open the Code Manager and familiarize yourself with the code system. Read all code
definitions.

• Depending on the aim of the analysis and how the project was set up, you either need to set
your own quotations and apply the codes; or you need to apply codes to pre-defined
quotations.

• When applying codes, never apply more than one code from a specific semantic domain to a
single or overlapping quotations. This is referred to as mutual exclusive coding.

• If fitting you can apply codes from multiple semantic domains to the same or overlapping
quotations (multivalued coding).

• Do not make any changes to the codes - do not alter the code definition, do not change the
code name, or the code color.

• If you do not understand a code definition, or find a code label not fitting, create a memo and
name it 'Comments from coder (your name)'. Write all of your comments, issues you find and
ideas you have into this memo.

• Do not consult with other coders. This is important for your coding to remain unbiased. The
data must be coded by all coders independently.

• Once you are done coding, create a project bundle file and send it back to the principal
investigator.

Continues Workflow
• Once the coders are done with they work, they prepare a project bundle file and send it back
to the PI.

• The PI imports the project bundle files from each coder, checks the work of each coder and
reads the memo they have written (if any).

• Next the projects need to be merged. See Merging projects for ICA analysis.

• Then the PI can run the ICA analysis.

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Merging Projects For ICA Analysis

The following instructions assume 2 independent coders. If you work with more coders, you have
to repeat the merge process. You can only merge two projects at a time.

We recommend that you import the project bundle files of coder 1 and 2 before merging
them for inspection. Did the coders do what they were supposed to do? Did they send you
the correct project? Project bundle files can also be merged directly. However, if a merge
conflict occurs you may not know why because you have not looked inside the projects you
are merging.

Open the project of coder 1 and create a snapshot. Name the copy something
like 'Project for ICA XY coder 1 and 2'. Merge the project of coder 2 into this
version of the project.

Close the project of coder 1 and open the snapshot.

Before the project merge, set the project into inter-coder mode:

Select Analyze / Enable Intercoder Mode.

Select File / Merge and select the project of coder 2 to be merged. This is the
import project. Follow the instructions on the screen. There should be no
merge conflicts. For more detail see Project Merge.

When you set up the project correctly and all coders did what they were supposed to do,
then there should be no merge conflict!

After merging in ICA mode, The codings of all coders will become visible.

Open one document and take a look at the margin area. If you see the same
codes applied to the same quotations, this is good. It means the two coders
agree.

Click on the View tab and instead of displaying the code icons, select Show
User.

Now you see coder icons. Each coder is indicated by a different color. Hover over the coder icon to
see the name of the coder.

The ability to see who has coded what in the margin area is useful for some purposes, e.g., if you
want to discuss data segments where coders did not agree. However, there is no need to manually

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check all codings in the margin. For this you can run the inter-coder agreement analysis. See
Running an Inter-coder Agreement Analysis.

A coding is the link between a code and a quotation. In ICA mode, you can see which coder
has applied which code to a quotation.

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Running an ICA Analysis

A good time to have your coding checked by other coders is when you have built a stable
code system and all codes are defined. This means, this is somewhere in the middle of the
coding process. Once a satisfactory ICA coefficient is achieved, the principal investigator
has the assurance that his or her codes can be understood and applied by others and can
continue to work with the code system.

Click the Analyze tab and select the option Inter-coder Agreement.
inst
Click on the Add Coder button and select two or more coders.
inst
Click on the Add Documents button and select the documents that should be
included in the analysis. Only those documents are listed that have been
coded by all selected coders.

Click on the Add Semantic Domain button and add one or more codes to the
domain. Alternatively, you can drag and drop codes from the Project Explorer
or the code list into the semantic domain field.
inst
Repeat this process for each semantic domain.

If you are not sure, what a semantic domain is, you find more information here.

Whether you add semantic domains or only a single code in place of a domain, this has an
effect on the type of analysis you can run. If you only add one code per semantic domain,
you cannot calculate Cu/cu-alpha coefficients. See Methods for Testing ICA.

After you have added coders, documents and codes, your screen looks similar to what is shown in:

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• The documents are represented by a line for each coder and code. If you have added
multiple documents into the analysis, you see a black vertical line that marks the beginning of
the next document.

• The quotations for the code are marked on the line in the same color as the coder icon.

• To the right of each coder line you see some descriptive statistics: The coder Sabine (blue)
has applied the code "activities clubbing / going for a drink" 8 times. The number of
characters that are coded with this code are 1057 out of a total of 172.407 characters in all
three selected documents, which is 0,6%.The coder Susanne (blue) has applied the code
"activities clubbing / going for a drink" 11 times. The number of characters that are coded
with this code are 1331 out of a total of 172.407 characters in all three selected documents,
which is 0,8%.

• If you click on one of the lines, only the quotations of the selected code and coder are shown
in the Quotation Reader on the right-hand side.

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If you click on the line for the semantic domain, all quotations of the semantic domain are
• shown in the Quotation Reader.

You can remove coders, codes or documents from the analysis by clicking on the red x.

Calculating an ICA Co

To calculate ICA, click on the button Agreement Measure in the ribbon and
select one of the four methods.
See Methods For Testing ICA for more detail.

Selecting the Krippendorff's Cu /cu-alpha coefficient for the above example,

yields the following results:

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Tools
The following tools are available:

• The Redundant Codings Analyzer

• Project Search

The redundant codings' analyzer finds overlapping quotations that have been coded with the same
code. You may have coded a long segment, e.g. from paragraph 5 to 15 and then a shorter
segment within this section from paragraph 7 to 8, not realizing you have attached the same code
already to the surrounding segment. This leads to confusing or even false results if you are
counting segments. The redundant codings' analyzer finds these segments, and you can correct it.

The project search tool allows you to search through all entities in your project. You can specify
whether you want to search for a word or expression in all entities, or only in documents, only in
codes, on in memos, only in the names, only in the comments, etc. Search terms can include
regular expressions.

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Project Search
Use the Project Search tool to search for text and patterns in all elements of your project, not only
in the documents that you added. The search can be restricted to certain fields, like name, author,
date, comments, and content. Search terms can contain regular expressions (GREP). See Regular
Expressions (GREP).

To open the tool select Tools and from there the Project Search option.

Select the entities you want to search in. You can also restrict the search to
items created by a specific user.

Enter a search term. If you use regular expression, activate the Use GREP
option. You can also select whether a search term should be case-sensitive or
not.

To start the search, click Enter or the search icon.

The results of the search are listed in an interactive list, where you can click on a specific hit, and
you will be able to see the term within its larger context.

All entities that do not include the search term are grayed out.

When you double-click on a result, it will be displayed in your project.

Searching in Selected Entities

If you only want to search for instance in the comments of codes, click on
Show None and then activate the entity type and elements you are interested
in, e.g. code and comment.

Refining a Search

If you want to refine an existing search, click on the Search tab in the Text Search Result window
and enter a modified search and press Enter or the Search icon.

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Finding Redundant Codings

Redundant codings are overlapping or embedded quotations that are associated with the same
code. Such codings can result from normal coding but may occur unnoticed during a merge
procedure when working in teams. The Codings Analyzer finds all redundant codings and offers
appropriate procedures to correct it. An example of a redundant coding is shown below.

To find all redundant codings, select Find Redundant Codings under the Tools
& Support tab, or open the Code Manager and select the options from the
Tools tab there.
The upper pane lists all codes for which redundant codings were found. The
Redundancy column displays the number of pairs of redundant quotations
found for the codes. If you select one of the codes, the redundant quotations
are listed in pairs, in the middle pane. If you select a pair, you see a preview of
the quotation in the bottom pane. Double-clicking on a listed quotation
displays it in context.

You can correct the redundancy in the following ways:

Unlink from Left Quotation removes he selected code from the quotation shown on the left-hand
side.

Merge Quotations melts the two quotations shown on the right- and left-hand side. All references
to and from the merged quotation are "inherited" by the other. If the two quotations overlap, the
resulting quotation includes all data from both quotations.

Unlink from Right Quotation removes the selected code from the quotation shown on the right-
hand side.

If you hover over a quotation you see some information about the Connectivity of the quotation:
number of connections to codes (=codings), number of connections to other quotations
(=hyperlinks), and number of connections to memos (=memo links). The connectivity information
provides an additional clue about the best action how to resolve the redundancy.

If you see a quotation listed more than once, it means that three or more quotations are involved in
a redundant coding. You will notice that merging one pair of quotations may have the effect that
other pairs are removed from the list as well, as the redundancy assertion does not hold any longer
for the remaining pairs of quotations for this code.

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Creating Reports
ATLAS.ti offers user configurable reports in Word, PDF or Excel format. This means you can decide
what should be displayed in the report. You find a report option in each browser at the top right-
hand side in the ribbon.

If there is no ribbon option, and you want to export quotations from a result of a query, look for the
burger menu:

In addition, predefined reports are available in the Query Tool under the Report button. If you
hover over an option with your mouse, the screen tip explains what each of the report contains.

Tables can be exported as Excel file. See Code Document Table and Code Co-Occurrence Table.

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Create Word / PDF Reports

Creating Report from the Code Manager

If you want a text report of quotations for selected codes, then creating a report form the Code
Manager is the best option.

Open the Code Manager. Select one or multiple codes or set a code group as
filter if you do not want to create a report for all codes.

Select a filter option: If you selected some codes or set a code group as filter,
you can still change and export all codes.

You can group the report by:

By "smartness" means that quotations of smart codes are listed first in the report.

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When you select a grouping option, further options are presented to you, e.g. whether you want to
also export the comment of the code group or document.

If a selected code is in multiple code groups, then the quotations for this code will occur
multiple times in the report.

Next select what should be included in report. When selecting Groups,

Quotations, Memos or Codes, you can select further options. To do so, click on
the small triangle before the item to open the branch. For Quotations for
instance 'Content' is already pre-selected. You may further want to select to
also include quotation comments, other linked codes or memos in the report.

After you made your selections, click Create Report to open the report. It is a
read-only report. You can save it as rtf file or copy and paste it into a Word
document.

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CREATE WORD / PDF REPORTS 540

Creating Reports from the Quotation Manager

Open the Quotation Manager. Select one or multiple quotations or set one or
more codes as filter if you do not want to create a report for all quotations.

Select a filter option: If you selected a few quotations or set a code as filter,
you can still change and export all quotations.

You can group the report by:

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CREATE WORD / PDF REPORTS 541

When you select a grouping option, further options are presented to you, e.g. whether you want to
also include the comment of the code group or document.

Note, if you group by documents or code groups, and a document or code is in multiple
groups, then the quotation will occur twice or more times in the report. The same applies if a
quotation is coded by multiple codes. If you group by codes, the quotation will be listed
under each code that applies.

Next select what should be included in report:

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When selecting Codes, Memos or Hyperlinks, you can select further options.
To do so, click on the small triangle before the item to open the branch.

After you made your selections, click Create Report to open the report. It is a
read-only report. You can save it as rtf or PDF file or copy and paste it into a
Word document.

Below each quotation you see the codes that have been applied.

Document Reports
You may for example print a report that lists all documents with their comments.

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CREATE WORD / PDF REPORTS 543

Open the Document Manager. Select one or multiple documents or set a

document group as filter if you do not want to create a report for all
documents.

Select a filter option: If you selected some documents or set a document group
as filter, you can still change and export all documents.

You can group the report by:

When you select a grouping option, further options are presented to you, e.g. whether you want to
include the comment of the entity you group by.

If you group by document groups and a document is in multiple document groups, the
document will occur multiple times in the report. If you group by codes, then the document
will be listed under each code that applies, and so on.

Next select what should be included in report:

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CREATE WORD / PDF REPORTS 544

When selecting Groups, Quotations or Codes, you can select further options.
To do so, click on the small triangle before the item to open the branch.

After you made your selections, click Create Report to open the report. It is a
read-only report. You can save it as rtf file or copy and paste it into a Word
document.

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CREATE WORD / PDF REPORTS 545

Memo Reports
A useful memo report could be a report of all memos with their comments, or a report of a memo
with all linked quotations.

Open the Memo Manager. Select one or multiple memos or set a memo group
as filter if you do not want to create a report for all memos.

Select a filter option: If you selected some memos or set a memo group as
filter, you can still change and export all documents.

You can group the report by:

When you select a grouping option, further options are presented to you, e.g. whether you want to
include the comment of the entity you group by.

If a selected memo is in multiple memo groups, then the memos will occur multiple times in
the report.

Next select what should be included in report:

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CREATE WORD / PDF REPORTS 546

When selecting Groups, Memos, Codes or Quotations, you can select further
options. To do so, click on the small triangle before the item to open the
branch.

After you made your selections, click Create Report to open the report. It is a
read-only report. You can save it as rtf file or copy and paste it into a Word
document.

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CREATE WORD / PDF REPORTS 547

Creating reports from the other managers works in essentially the same way. Below only the
options are shown that you can select in each manager. The basic idea is that you can flexibly
create any type of report with anyCon type of content that you need.

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CREATE WORD / PDF REPORTS 548

Quotation Manager Reports

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CREATE WORD / PDF REPORTS 549

Document Manager Reports

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CREATE WORD / PDF REPORTS 550

Memo Manager Reports

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CREATE WORD / PDF REPORTS 551

Network Manager Reports

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Creating Excel Reports

In every manager you find a button to create an Excel report. A frequently used report for example
is a Quotation Report by Codes. This is how you can generate such a report:

Report: All Quotations for a Code

Open the Quotation Manager. Select a code in the filter area on the left.

Click on the Excel Export option and select the following options:

• ID

• Select Quotation Name only when you have renamed the quotation.

• Document

• Quotation Content

• Quotation Comment (optional)

• Select Codes if you want to see other codes that have been applied to a quotation

• Reference (start and end position of the quotation in the document)

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CREATING EXCEL REPORTS 553

For further examples see Report Examples

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CREATING EXCEL REPORTS 554

Info Sheet for Excel Reports

All Excel reports have an additional sheet that shows meta information like the type of the report,
the project name, date of export and name of exporting user.

The info sheets for reports based on the Code Document- and the Code Co-occurrence Table, and
Inter-coder Agreement Analysis contain further information.

• abbreviations that are use

• Code Document Table: Information about which relative frequency count is used

• Code Co-occurrence Table: whether the c-coefficient was selected

• ICA reports: coder names

Info Sheet in Excel

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Example Reports

Report: All Quotations for Multiple Codes

Open the Quotation Manager. Select multiple codes by holding down the Ctrl-
key in the filter area on the left.

Click on the Excel Export button and select whatever should be included in the
table:

• Select ID

• Select Quotation Name only if you have renamed quotations.

• Select Document (optional: you may recognize the document by the quotation ID)

• Select Quotation Content

• Select Comment (in case you have been writing lots of quotation comments)

• Select Codes if you want to see other codes that have been applied to a quotation

• Select Reference = start and end position of the quotation in the document

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Activate the Group by Codes option so that ATLAS.ti creates different sheets
for each code in the Excel table.

Report: Code Book

Open the Code Manager and select all codes.

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EXAMPLE REPORTS 557

Click Excel Report in the ribbon and select the following options:

• Code

• Comment

• optional: Grounded (code frequency) / Density (number linkages to other codes)

• Code Group

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Code Book in Excel

Report: Documents and their Codes

Open the Document Manager and select all documents that you want to export
with their codes.

Click Excel Report in the ribbon and select the following options:

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EXAMPLE REPORTS 559

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Excel Report: Documents and their Codes

Report: for Multimedia Data

If you have utilized the quotation level when working with multimedia data and have replaced the
default quotation name with summaries of what can be seen or heard in the multimedia quotation,
this is how you create a useful report:

Select multimedia quotations in the Quotation Manager.

inst
Select the Excel Report button in the ribbon and select the following options:

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EXAMPLE REPORTS 561

The report will show an overview of all the titles you have created for your image, audio or video
segments and the comments you have written. Plus, it provides the exact position within the
multimedia file.

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Exporting Documents
You can export all documents that you have added to an ATLAS.ti project.

• PDF and multimedia files (audio, video, images) are exported in their original format.

• Text documents are exported as Word (docx) files. The formatting of the exported document
may differ from the original, as all text documents are converted to html when they are
imported.

To export documents:

Open the Document Manager and select all documents that you want to
export.

Select the Tools tab in the Document ribbon, and from there the Document
Export button.

To Print a Text Document / Save it in P

Load the document and select the Print button in the ribbon. On the next
window you can select whether you want to print the document or save it in
PDF format.

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DATA EXPORT FOR FURTHER STATISTICAL ANALYSIS 563

Data Export For Further Statistical Analysis

ATLAS.ti is intended primarily for supporting qualitative reasoning processes. On the other hand,
especially with large amounts of data, it is sometimes useful to analyze the data using statistical
approaches. ATLAS.ti can export your data in form of a syntax file for SPSS®, and a generic Excel
format that can be imported into software like R, SAS, STATA as well as SPSS.

The basic components for statistics are cases and variables. The statistic export function in
ATLAS.ti treats codes as variables and data segments (quotations) as cases.

The notion of a "case" here is rather fine-grained and differs from the common understanding of
this term. Usually cases in qualitative research refer to persons, interviews, or documents. We
chose to treat the smallest unit as a case for the statistical export, to ensure that no data is lost.
Broader information, e.g., which document or document group a quotation belongs to, is coded into
the various variables.

In contrast to the dichotomous treatment of codes within ATLAS.ti, you can use codes for further
statistical analysis as ordinal or interval scaled variables by using a specific code-naming
convention.

Scaled vs. Dichotomous Codes

Within ATLAS.ti, a code is always dichotomous, because it either refers to a given quotation ("1"), or
it does not ("0"). Each case (= quotation) can, in respect to the codes, be described as a vector of
0's and 1s. The concept of scaled codes/variables requires a special syntax.

If you for instance want to code for three different levels of evaluating something: very good, good,
neither god nor bad, bad, very bad, A special naming convention (name%value) is necessary to let
ATLAS.ti identify scaled codes from dichotomous codes. When coding the data, the code category
needs to look as follows:

EVALUATION

• evaluation%1 very bad

• evaluation%2 bad
• evaluation%3 neither good nor bad
• evaluation%4 good
• evaluation%5 very good

This notation allows the system to construct one variable from all codes with the same prefix. The
variable name will be "evaluation", and the values for this variable are:

• 1 very bad
• 2 bad
• 3 neither good nor bad
• 4 good
• 5 very good

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Instead of the % as separator, you can also choose a different separator. If so, you need to indicate
this when preparing the SPSS syntax file.

You can use string or numerical values; anything that follows the special symbol is
interpreted as a value.

Keep in mind that ordinal codes only have meaning in the context of the statistic program you are
using. Within ATLAS.ti, the differently valued codes are treated like every other code - as 0 or 1:
has been applied, or has not been applied.

Do not assign more than one scaled variable value to the same quotation. Although ATLAS.ti
permits an arbitrary number of codes to be attached to a quotation, this would not make
much sense with mutually exclusive values of scaled variables. If you do so, the SPSS
generator will simply ignore additional values after processing the first one it finds for a given
quotation. Since it cannot be guaranteed which value will be detected first, this will most
likely produce unpredictable results.

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SPSS Syntax Export

ATLAS.ti can export your coded data in form of an SPSS syntax file as plain ASCII text file. This
allows you to modify the syntax before running it in SPSS.

When transforming your data into numbers, codes and code groups become variables and all
quotations become cases. Additional variables like document numbers, document groups and
document type indicating where a quotation belongs to and document groups allow you to
aggregate your data in SPSS.

Creating a Syntax File

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From the Import & Export tab select SPSS Job.

The SPSS Job Generation Window opens. You have the following options:

• Use separate file: When checked, the data matrix is written to a separate file. This is
mandatory if the size of the matrix exceeds a certain size. SPSS cannot handle large data
sets within a syntax file. For regular size projects, leave this option unchecked.

• Specify the name of the data set. This name is used as the file name and as the FILE
reference from the DATA LIST section. You only need to enter a name here if you generate
separate data files.

• Create a fresh data file during next run can be unchecked if the data has not changed since
it was last created. This may save some processing time.

• Include quotation's author. Check if you want to export an additional variable that indicates
the author for each quotation. This is for example useful if you want to use SPSS to calculate
inter-coder reliability.

• The value separator is % by default, but can be changed to something else. See Naming
Convention For Scaled Codes.

• Create task section. Enable this option if you want templates for procedures included at the
end of the syntax file.

• Create SAVE OUTFILE instruction. Enable this option if you want SPSS to save the data as
*.sav file after running the syntax file.

Specify all desired properties and click Create.

You can now run the file in SPSS, or make some changes to the syntax file
before you run it.

The Syntax File Explained

The output of the SPSS generator is a complete SPSS syntax file containing variable definitions,
optionally the data matrix and some default jobs statements:

VARIABLE LABELS are taken from code and code group names.

VALUE LABELS for variables created from codes are:

• Yes (1) - code is assigned

• No (0) - code is not assigned

Every case (quotation) is described by the codes that are attached it to, the document,the position
in the document (start and end position), author, media type and date of creation.

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Start and End Positions

There are two variables for the start position (SY and SX) and two variables for the end position (EY
and EX) for a quotation. Depending on the media type, they are used for different start and end
coordinates.

Data
SY (start) SX (start) EY (end) EX (end)
Type
Column Column
Text
character, character,
(rich paragraph paragraph
quotation quotation
text)
based based
character character
PDF page count, page page count, page
based based
Audio --- milliseconds --- milliseconds
Video --- milliseconds --- milliseconds
SX and SY EX and EY
indicate the indicate the
position of the position of the
Image
upper left hand lower right hand
corner of the corner of the
image image
Geo --- --- --- ---

Creation Date

The date of creation is shown in the unix timestamp format. You can convert it into human-readable
time by using a converter, for instance: https://www.epochconverter.com/

Variable Labels

An example:

VARIABLE LABELS D 'Document'.

VARIABLE LABELS QU 'Q-Index'.

VARIABLE LABELS SY 'Start y-Pos'.

VARIABLE LABELS SX 'Start x-Pos'.

VARIABLE LABELS EY 'End y-Pos'.

VARIABLE LABELS EX 'End x-Pos'.

VARIABLE LABELS TI 'Creation Date'.

VARIABLE LABELS C1 'Audio'.

VARIABLE LABELS C2 'just a name'.

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VARIABLE LABELS C3 'Evaluation'.

VARIABLE LABELS C4 'Buddha'.

VARIABLE LABELS C5 'Code name with more than 40 characters'.

VARIABLE LABELS C6 'Fish'.

VARIABLE LABELS C7 'Geo Code'.

VARIABLE LABELS C8 'Octopus'.

VALUE LABELS C1 to C2 1 'YES' 0 'NO'.

VALUE LABELS C3 0 'NO' 1 'bad' 2 'good' 3 'not so good'.

VALUE LABELS C4 to C8 1 'YES' 0 'NO'.

VARIABLE LEVEL C3 (ORDINAL).

Document Type Declaration.

IF (D = 5) MediaType = 1.

IF (D = 4) MediaType = 2.

IF (D = 6) MediaType = 3.

IF (D = 1) MediaType = 4.

IF (D = 3) MediaType = 5.

IF (D = 2) MediaType = 6.

VALUE LABELS

• 1 'text'
• 2 'PDF'
• 3 'graphic'
• 4 'audio'
• 5 'video'
• 6 'geo'

Treatment of Code Groups

Code groups in SPSS jobs count how many of the codes in the code group have been assigned to
the quotation.

Code groups are named: CG1, CG2 and so on.

Calculation: COMPUTE CG1 = C10 + C11 + C12 + C13 + C14 + C15.

VARIABLE LABELS CG1 'name of code group'.

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Scaled codes are ignored in the computation of code groups variables. See Export for further
Statistical Analysis.

Treatment of Document Groups

For each case (= quotation) there is a document and document group variable. If the document a
quotation is part of also belongs to a document group, the value for the document group is 1.

Calculation: COMPUTE DG1 = 0. IF (D = 5 or D = 4) DG1 = 1.

VARIABLE LABELS DG1 'DG_Document group name'.

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Generic Export for further Statistical Analysis

If you are using statistical software like SAS, STATA or R; or do not want to run a syntax file in SPSS,
you can create a generic export. The generic format needs to be imported using the Excel import
option of the software you are using.

To prepare a generic export, select the Import & Export tab and from there
Statistical Data.
The exported file contains the following data:

• CASENO: each quotation is a case

• D: document number

• Document name: name of the document

• Media type: type of document

• quote_start: start position of a text quotation

• quote_end: end position of a text quotation

• start_time: start position of

• end_time: end position of an audio- or video quotation

• SY / SX / EY / EX:coordinates of an image quotation

• DG_name: quotation occurring in a document of the document group

• code: assigned / not assigned to the code

• CG_name: assigned / not assigned to a code of the code group

To import the data for instance to RStudio, select File/Import Data Set in RStudio.

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QDPX - UNIVERSAL DATA & PROJECT EXCHANGE 571

QDPX - Universal Data & Project Exchange

The QDPX data format allows for full project exchange with other CAQDAS packages. This is a
major step toward a new degree of freedom in research and opens new dimensions for all
practitioners of qualitative data analysis.

"We are very excited to see that - after fifteen years of ATLAS.ti being the only manufacturer
to steadfastly champion universal data exchange - other software makers are now coming
around to seeing the benefit of not holding users' data hostage any longer.
ATLAS.ti responded to the wishes of researchers early on by offering an open, application-
independent export format for universal use. This long-standing commitment to academic
openness and the free flow of ideas is now being recognized as an important value in itself.
I am convinced that being able to move projects seamlessly between different applications
will be of great benefit to the research community. We are extremely proud to have been
pioneers of this movement, and we are looking forward to the many advancements it will
bring!" Thomas Muhr, March 18, 2019.

What is QDPX
ATLAS.ti is a founding member of the Rotterdam Exchange Format Initiative (REFI), the consortium
that designs and governs the interoperability standard QDPX. At the heart of the matter, QDPX is an
XML-based structured data format that permits not only long-term product storage and product-
independent archival of qualitative research projects, but also aims at the exchange of projects
between different software products.

ATLAS.ti has long championed the idea of universal exchange of qualitative research data between
different applications and was the first manufacturer to introduce a full XML project export in their
software as early as 2004. The idea of a universal data export was always a very obvious feature
for us, considering the immense value that is added to data that have been processed, analyzed,
and structured in the qualitative analysis process.

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In the past fifteen years, we have demonstrated through many exemplary applications the
additional value the data has when used and re-purposed through direct transformation into
visually oriented presentations formats like web pages, printable reports, or ebooks, or other data
formats like .rtf, csv, or sql. Despite the wide spectrum of these sample applications, they barely
scratch the surface of what further powerful uses will still be possible in the future.

The most immediate benefit of QDPX quite obviously lies in the fact that it enables users of various
QDA software products to migrate their research projects between different packages. As more
manufacturer join the initiative and implement the new standard, its usefulness to researchers will
doubtlessly grow exponentially.

Why is QDPX Great for You?

Find below some general arguments for QDPX and descriptions of some of its practical benefits:

• Because I don't like to be locked in a specific QDAS solution, particularly if there are problems
with it; I don't want my data to be held hostage. Interoperability nudges me through the point
of sale because I'm less worried that I'll be stuck in something I don't like.
• Now I can move to another software for reasons beyond my control (e.g., funding, new
employer, new mandates).
• The data and coding may be the same, but I want to use different types of output/
representation/visualisation that are available in one program but not another.
• I'm working on my dissertation, and I want to use software XY. My committee members,
however, are more familiar with software Z. No problem. I'll just transfer my data over at a few
key phases, so they can understand and comment on the database, or the output and
reports. Moreover, I might be able to demonstrate why software XY was the better choice for
my project.
• As a researcher who has become familiar with a particular CAQDAS package as a result of
the product that is available to me through a site license at my institution, I need to be able to
continue working with my research data in a different product if I move to an institution that
has a different site license.
• Funding bodies increasingly look favorably on proposals that involve multiple research
partners. This poses issues for users working in different institutions, who are familiar with or
have access to different products. As a researcher I therefore need to be able to exchange
my analysis between my product and those of my co-researchers. This will significantly
facilitate collaborative research. For example, I want to collaborate with teams in three
different countries; but they are all experts in a different program. In my grant proposal I want
to be able to say that this is no problem and part of the reason I should be funded.
• Each QDAS package has its own particular strengths. Users often need to be able to
undertake an analytic task which is not supported by their chosen product, or is enabled in a
more appropriate way for their needs in another product. As a researcher being able to move
to an alternative product in order to undertake a specific task would facilitate higher quality
research.

Find further information on the standard, find more information here.

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Exporting a Project in QDPX Format

Select File / Export and then the QDPX Project Bundle option.

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APPENDIX 574

Appendix
The following information has been compiled for the appendix:

• System Requirements

• Language Settings

• Service Packs & Patches - Live Update

• Preference Settings

• Get In Touch

• Useful Resources: Here you find links to the ATLAS.ti website, the Helpdesk, video tutorials,
manuals in PDF format to download, the research blog and publications on the use of
ATLAS.ti, including an article by Prof. Krippendorff about the implementation of inter-coder
agreement in ATLAS.ti.

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Language Settings
ATLAS.ti recognized the language or your Operating System and will set the language accordingly.
Currently, the following user interface languages are available:

• English
• German
• Spanish
• Portuguese
• Simplified Chinese

For all other OS languages that are not listed above, the default language is English.

Changing the Display Language

To change the user interface language, select File > Options > Application
Preferences > Display Language.

System Requirements
The system requirements are:

• macOS 10.13 High Sierra or higher

• min. 8 GB RAM

• 10 GB space on the hard drive

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Options

Application Preferences

You have the following options:

• Changing the Display Language

• Change the location where ATLAS.ti stores data. See Switching Libraries.
• Manage Models for the embedded AI tools. See Named Entity Recognitionand Sentiment
Analysis.

Project Preferences

The following settings are available:

• You can specify which lists and managers should be automatically opened when starting the
program
• For lists and the Project Explorer you can specify whether they should be opened docked, or
floated, or whether ATLAS.ti should remember their last state.
• For Managers you specify whether they should be opened docked, or floated, or whether
ATLAS.ti should remember their last state.
• For multimedia files you can specify whether the previews for documents, quotations or
hyperlinks should automatically begin to play.
• When creating multimedia quotations a quotation is immediately created when selecting a
data segment. If you prefer to create quotations manually, you can change the behaviour
here.

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Service Packs & Patches - Live Update

Program updates (patches and service packs) are regularly available to update your installation.
The program downloads and installs these service packs automatically.

Provided you have administrative rights to your computer, ATLAS.ti checks for new service packs
upon start up (this requires an Internet connection). If a new service pack is found, you will be
informed and asked to install it.

To update ATLAS.ti manually, go to File > Options > ATLAS.ti > Check for
Updates.

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Useful Resources
The ATLAS.ti Welcome Screen contains links to manuals, sample projects and video tutorials. The
News sections informs you about current developments, updates that are released, interesting
papers we have come across, use cases, and our newsletter.

The ATLAS.ti Website

https://atlasti.com/

The ATLAS.ti website should be a regular place to visit. Here you will find important information
such as video tutorials, additional documentation of various software features, workshop
announcements, special service providers, and announcements of recent service packs and
patches.

Getting Support
https://support.atlasti.com

From within ATLAS.ti, select Help > Online Resources / Contact Support. Or access the Support
Center directly via the above URL.

ATLAS.ti 22 - What's New

What's New in ATLAS.ti 22

This document is intended specifically for users who already have experience using the previous
version.

Video Tutorials
If you like to learn via video tutorials, we offer a range of videos covering technical as well as
methodological issues.

ATLAS.ti 22 Video Tutorials

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Sample Projects
You can download a number of different sample projects from our website. Currently English and
Spanish language projects are available. The projects feature different types of data sources:

• text
• PDF
• image
• video
• geo data

.... and different data types:

• interview transcripts
• reports
• online data
• evaluation data
• survey
• literature review

You can use them for yourself to get to know ATLAS.ti, or you can use them for teaching purposes.
If available, also the raw data are provided.

PDF Manuals
ATLAS.ti 22 Full Manual and other documentations.

Research Blog
The ATLAS.ti Research Blog plays a very important role in the development and consolidation of
the international community of users. Consultants, academics, and researchers publish short and
practical articles highlighting functions and procedures with the software, and recommending
strategies to successfully incorporate ATLAS.ti into a qualitative data analysis process. We invite
you to submit short articles explaining interesting ways of making the best use of ATLAS.ti, as well
as describing how you are using it in your own research. To do so, please contact us.

Inter-coder Agreement in ATLAS.ti by Prof. Krippendorff

We have been closely working with Prof. Krippendorff on the implementation to make the original
Krippendorff alpha coefficient useful for qualitative data analysis. This for instance required an
extension and modification of the underlying mathematical calculation to account for multi-valued
coding.. You can download an article written by Prof. Krippendorff about the implementation of the
alpha family of coefficients in ATLAS.ti.

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Publications
• Friese, Susanne (2019). Qualitative Data Analysis with ATLAS.ti. London: Sage. 3. edition.

• Friese, Susanne (2019). Grounded Theory Analysis and CAQDAS: A happy pairing or
remodelling GT to QDA? In: Antony Bryant and Kathy Charmaz (Eds.). The SAGE Handbook of
Current Developments in Grounded Theory, 282-313. London: Sage.

• Friese, Susanne (2018). Computergestütztes Kodieren am Beispiel narrativer Interviews. In:

Pentzold, Christian; Bischof, Andreas & Heise, Nele (Hrsg.) Praxis Grounded Theory.
Theoriegenerierendes empirisches Forschen in medienbezogenen Lebenswelten. Ein Lehr-
und Arbeitsbuch, S. 277-309. Wiesbaden: Springer VS.

• Friese, Susanne, Soratto, Jacks and Denise Pires (2018). Carrying out a computer-aided
thematic content analysis with ATLAS.ti. MMG Working Paper 18-0.

• Friese, Susanne (2016). Grounded Theory computergestützt und umgesetzt mit ATLAS.ti. In
Claudia Equit & Christoph Hohage (Hrsg.), Handbuch Grounded Theory – Von der
Methodologie zur Forschungspraxis (S.483-507). Weinheim: Beltz Juventa.

• Friese, Susanne (2016). Qualitative data analysis software: The state of the art. Special Issue:
Qualitative Research in the Digital Humanities, Bosch, Reinoud (Ed.), KWALON, 61, 21(1),
34-45.

• Friese, Susanne (2016). CAQDAS and Grounded Theory Analysis. Working Papers WP 16-07

• McKether, Will L. and Friese, Susanne (2016). Qualitative Social Network Analysis with
ATLAS.ti: Increasing power in a blackcommunity.

• Friese, Susanne & Ringmayr, Thomas, Hrsg (2016). ATLAS.ti User Conference proceedings:
Qualitative Data Analysis and Beyond. Universitätsverlag TU Berlin. https://depositonce.tu-
berlin.de/bitstream/11303/5404/3/ATLASti_proceedings_2015.pdf

• Paulus, Trena M. and Lester, Jessica. N. (2021). Doing Qualitative Research in a Digital World.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

• Paulus, Trena M., Lester, Jessica. N. and Dempster, Paul (2013).Digital Tools for Qualitative
Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

• Silver, Christina and Lewins, Ann (2014). Using Software in Qualitative Research. London:
Sage.

• Konopásek, Zdenék (2007). [Making thinking visible with ATALS.ti: computer assisted
qualitative analysis as textual practices 62 paragraphs. (http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:
0114-fqs0802124)

• Woolf,Nicholas H. and Silver, Christina (2018). Qualitative Analysis Using ATLAS.ti: The Five
Level QDA Method. New York: Routledge.

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Get In Touch

Reporting A Problem

Select the Help tab and from there Report Problem.

The problem report goes straight to our technical team. Please use this option to report technical
issues.

Be sure to include a description of the problem that allows our technicians to reproduce the issue,
and do not forget to enter a valid email address.

Sending Suggestions
We are interested in reading about your ideas and suggestions you may have. Please feel free to
use this as a wish list. While we cannot grant all wishes, knowing about what you need will help us
to continuously improve the program to fit your needs.

Select the Help tab and from there Send Suggestions.

Stay updated with the latest news on product updates, special offers, new training materials, or
interesting articles and links we find. We are also happy to hear from users via these channels. Stop
by and let us know about your projects and experience with ATLAS.ti!

• Twitter

• Facebook

• LinkedIn

• Instagram

The ATLAS.ti YouTube channel offers a variety of video materials:

• Overview of the software functionality

• Recorded webinars
• Video tutorials that help you to learn the software.

Videos are available in English and Spanish.

22.0.0.215 (03.02.2022) ATLAS.ti 22 Windows - User Manual