Editor’s note: Tim Macer, managing director of U.K.-based consulting firm meaning ltd., writes as an independent software analyst and advisor.

Using computer software to assist with the analysis of qualitative research transcripts from focus groups and in-depths has long been commonplace in the realm of social policy research or academic research. But watch a typical qualitative researcher in the commercial sector at work and a very different picture emerges. This is the world where printouts and highlighter pens rule supreme, and where extra desks, tables and even floor space are commandeered in the pursuit of insight. Only after all the hard work has been done is a computer likely to be used, and then only to write a report in Word or put together a presentation in PowerPoint.

The critical difference in the commercial world is time. The standard computer-assisted qualitative data analysis (or CAQDAS) tools in use by academic qualitative researchers, such as NUD*IST (or N6) and NVIVO, are painstakingly time-consuming in the early stages. They use a code-and-retrieve method, which relies on the user marking up each entire transcript in relation to a classification scheme or code frame before they can start to make any headway on the analysis. Analysis is then carried out effectively by querying the database of marked-up sections of the transcript, where all the relevant fragments can be viewed together, along with other annotations you may have applied. For most commercial research it is overkill. Time, budget and the sheer pace of the businesses driving the research mean it has to be a much shorter track from evidence to insight for the qualitative researcher.

It was a problem that QSR, the Australian software developer behind both N6 and NVIVO, realized needed addressing with a lighter-touch tool modeled on the way commercial researchers work. QSR launched that tool, XSight, in the middle of 2004 and the qualitative analysis and management software product has benefited from two minor upgrades since then.

What makes XSight useful to commercial researchers is that it is modeled largely on the ways most qualitative researchers tend to work. Note that I say “ways,” because different researchers tend to have different methods. Fortunately, this tool is sufficiently flexible to accommodate many of them without tripping up.

It certainly does not attempt to do the thinking for the researcher. This is a common misconception - and perhaps even a source of mistrust of CAQDAS among researchers - that the software is somehow going to perform machine-directed textual analysis and make the deductions for you. It is probably better to think of XSight as a vast transcript organizing and cataloging system with the added benefit of electronic marker pens that provide instant recall of everything marked.

Leap of faith

XSight comes as a standard Windows desktop tool and is very easy to operate. What is harder is getting your mind to work in the rather compartmentalized and task-oriented manner of computer software. It requires a leap of faith that, after working through all the steps, the insights will flow and you won’t have overlooked any revelations. The irony is that, with a little practice, you are less likely to overlook anything with this tool than with the old “paper, marker pen and recall from memory” approach.

Unlike conventional, academic CAQDAS, the focal point with XSight is really the interview guide. At the program’s core are three components: the transcript, the analysis framework (which usually equates to the guide), and commentaries (which are essentially all the things that interest or jump out at you as you go through your transcripts).

The framework is a tree structure of headings and subheadings which you can make as granular as you like. So if “packaging” for a product was your high-level topic, “color,” “images” and “wording” might be the next level down, and within, say, “color” you could list “pink,” “blue,” “white,” then down to “like,” “dislike,” and so on. It pays off going for a pretty detailed analysis frame, as you will be able to pull out all your observations at any level in the hierarchy and aggregate all those below it.

If you set up the framework in advance of the fieldwork, this could be used to supplement the guide, or even replace it, if you provide your moderators with copies of XSight on their laptops. This was how one firm I spoke to had chosen to use it and found it a great advantage, as the guide could be refined during fieldwork, and moderators could do some of the analysis immediately after the group had finished

Amazingly, it will work quite happily without a transcript, if you want to work directly from tape or video. You just set up each interview or group, and don’t bother to import any text, but enter in your commentaries directly.

Articulated trees

If you are working with transcripts, you are likely to pick one, then work through it, slotting in your observations as commentaries into the relevant point into the analysis framework tree. Here, the screen is divided into three main areas: transcript, analysis framework and a space for your comments and observations. When something jumps out at you, you click on the relevant level in your analysis hierarchy and enter some text. Cleverly, there are three different kinds of commentaries: articulations, verbatims and interpretations.

For a verbatim, all you need to do is highlight the section of text and drag it onto the relevant heading in your framework. This usefully creates a hyperlink back to the text, which means, several hundred comments later, you can always see the full context of any verbatim that you pulled out, simply by clicking on the link. Articulations lend themselves to paraphrases and other specific observations you wish to flag; interpretations are your first moves toward the insights you will draw together into the report.

If you have more than one transcript, you can classify them by demographic as this can highlight some of the differences you may be looking for later on in your analysis. Demographics could be the age range of each group, or gender, or geography, or personal attributes if the transcript is of an in-depth interview. You can apply multiple attributes so you could even analyze by day of the week or moderator.

Cut the transcript

If you choose to work directly from audio or video, and forgo getting a text transcript, it pays still to define and classify each group or in-depth interview separately. This way, you just leave the transcript part empty, and simply use the analysis framework to start filling in your commentaries. Of course, you will have to type in any verbatim quotes, but it can make for very fast turnaround overall.

The real power comes once all of the marking-up or coding has been done. Bringing everything together is done through the query window, where you can sift and sort all the responses and use just about any classification or any level of the analysis framework to pull out all the responses for all the groups, or filter them by demographics. This is where the real thinking goes on, and at the bottom of the window, you can open up a document which you can gradually develop into your report.

Reports can be either destined for Word or for PowerPoint. In either it will let you use headings and subheadings in Word, or slides and bullet points in PowerPoint, to organize your report. It seems to work a lot better in Word. In version 1.2, PowerPoint slides are simulated on screen, so you can see exactly how much will fit on each page. Either way, you can drag in the actual verbatims that clients love, without having to retype them and with all the relevant demographics on display.

You can share work to some extent with the tool, but it is not a multi-user tool, and relies on your managing multiple copies yourself then using the merge process to consolidate the results.

Analysis in practice

Roxanne Suprina runs her own qualitative research consultancy, FocusedInsights, in Waltham , Mass. , and has used XSight with considerable success on several of her larger assignments. “Being a researcher in the private sector as opposed to the public sector I typically have to get a report to my clients within two weeks of completing the field work. This means that I need to provide a thorough, insightful and actionable report in very little time so I am looking for ways to do that and not jeopardize the integrity or the value of the deliverables I provide.”

It was the tool’s abilities to help organize her work on larger-scale projects that appealed to her. “Where I have used it most is when I am doing in-depth interviews, or where I am moderating focus groups and I have another moderator with whom I am partnering,” she says. “To try to thoroughly analyze and understand what I have heard across 35 or 40 interviews, conducted over the course of a month, I really need to go back and revisit the transcripts and reorganize and structure it in a fashion that works. XSight has been very helpful for that.”

Typically Suprina works with transcripts, using commentaries to add her thoughts or capture exemplary verbatims. “One of the things I value most about XSight is the ability to capture a quote or a commentary and then track it back to its source,” she says.

Since XSight was released last year, qualitative researchers have generally proved reluctant to embrace the tool. Suprina suspects that price can be a deterrent for the one-person qualitative boutiques that form the backbone of the qualitative industry in the U.S.  , as the product does cost around the $1,000 mark.

She suspects another issue is the wide variation in analysis methods among researchers. “We are all victims of our habits, to some extent. And because of the tight timelines, to go up that steep learning curve is quite a challenge,” she says.

“Also, there are varying degrees of rigor and various styles between researchers. It is really an issue of scale, and how convinced you are of your abilities; of how accurate you think you can be at nailing what you have learned. I don’t ever want the day to come when a client says to me ‘I just looked at some of these transcripts and I am not finding what you found.’ So I do find it reassuring that with this I can rely on going back and really making sure that I am applying some rigor to the process.”

Real thinking

Perhaps it is over-optimistic to think that the more creative, free-spirited and self-confessed technophobes among those practicing qualitative research will find much excitement in XSight. But for anyone interested in reclaiming their office carpet for walking on, as they analyze 40 transcripts, this software can not only de-clutter the office, but potentially the mind too, and claim back some time for the real thinking.