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QualCoder

QualCoder is free software for qualitative data analysis

Copyright Notice
The MIT License (MIT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Colin Curtain
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and
associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction,
including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense,
and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do
so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial
portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS
OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS
BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN
ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN
CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.

1. Edition March 2019
Author: Colin Curtain
ccbogel@hotmail.com

Table of Contents
1 What is QualCoder...........................................................................................................................4
1.1 Why use QualCoder?................................................................................................................4
2 Downloading files and dependencies...............................................................................................5
2.1 Preparatory Downloads.............................................................................................................5
2.1.1 Microsoft Windows...........................................................................................................5
2.1.2 Linux.................................................................................................................................5
3 Starting QualCoder...........................................................................................................................7
3.1 Linux.........................................................................................................................................7
3.2 Windows...................................................................................................................................7
3.3 Backups.....................................................................................................................................7
4 How to use........................................................................................................................................8
4.1 Create a new project.................................................................................................................8
4.2 Settings......................................................................................................................................8
4.3 Files and Cases Menu...............................................................................................................9
4.3.1 Manage Files.....................................................................................................................9
4.3.2 Manage Cases.................................................................................................................10
4.3.3 Import survey..................................................................................................................13
4.3.4 Attributes menu...............................................................................................................14
4.3.5 Coding text......................................................................................................................15
4.3.6 Categories and codes.......................................................................................................16
4.3.7 Coding images.................................................................................................................16
4.3.8 Coding audio and video..................................................................................................17
4.3.9 Codebook........................................................................................................................18
4.3.10 Node graph....................................................................................................................18
4.4 Reports....................................................................................................................................19
4.4.1 Coding Reports...............................................................................................................19
4.4.2 Coding Comparison........................................................................................................21
4.4.3 SQL Statements Dialog...................................................................................................21
4.5 Multiple dialog windows........................................................................................................22
5 Other details about the software.....................................................................................................24
6 Future plans....................................................................................................................................25
7 About the author.............................................................................................................................26

1 What is QualCoder
QualCoder is free, open source software for qualitative data analysis.
With QualCoder you can code text and images, write journal notes and memos. You can categorise
codes into a tree-like hierarchical categorisation scheme. Coding for audio and video is under
development and requires the VLC media player.
Reports can be generated for text coding and for coder comparison using the Cohen’s Kappa
statistic. A graph displaying codes and categories can be generated to visualise the coding hierarchy.
Most reports can be exported at html, open document text (ODT) or as plain text files.
QualCoder is written in python 3 using Qt for the graphical interface. A Sqlite database is used to
store the coding data.
QualCoder is available from https://github.com/ccbogel/QualCoder. There is also a wordpress site
for QualCoder at https://qualcoder.wordpress.com/.

1.1 Why use QualCoder?
Firstly, QualCoder is free. You do not need to pay for a commercial software license. QualCoder is
easy to use and contains the core functionalities required for qualitative analysis. You use Linux.
QualCoder has been developed on Linux and also works on Windows. There are many Free/Libre
Open Source Software (FLOSS) supporters who are willing to use and support FLOSS
development.

2 Downloading files and dependencies
Download the latest QualCoder from GitHub: https://github.com/ccbogel/QualCoder. Unzip the
folder. The main program code is in the QualCoder folder. The Examples folder contains some
example files which can be loaded into a test QualCoder project. There are an install.sh and a
QualCoder.desktop file which are used to create a Linux Launcher.

2.1 Preparatory Downloads
2.1.1 Microsoft Windows
you will need to download and install Python 3 and PyQt5 before using QualCoder. You will also
need the lxml module to import from docx files. The Pillow module is also needed. A Python 3
release can be obtained here: https://www.python.org/downloads/windows/. Finally, you need to
have the VLC media player installed. You can get this from the Windows Store or from their
website: https://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-windows.html
Once a Python 3 release is installed you should be able to install the modules PyQT5, lxml and
Pillow using the following commands in the Windows Command prompt (The prompt is under
Windows System):
python -m pip install pyqt5
python -m pip install lxml
python -m pip install Pillow

2.1.2 Linux
I have created a QualCoder.deb package for easy install on Debian/Ubuntu systems.
If you want to install manually follow these instructions:
This method will create a Launcher. Go to your downloads folder. Make the install.sh script
executable. The example script below assumes you are in your home directory. Open a terminal and
type the following to install QualCoder:
cd Downloads/QualCoder

Run the install.sh file. The install process will ask for your permission to install QualCoder into
the /usr/share directory. It will also download the additional python modules.
./install.sh

The install.sh script will also install the pyqt5sudo apt install vlc qtwayland5, lxml and Pillow
modules as well as the VLC media player. If you do not use the install script, you need to run these
commands to install the modules:
sudo apt install python3-pyqt5

sudo
sudo
sudo
sudo

apt
apt
apt
apt

install
install
install
install

python3-lxml
python3-pil
vlc qtwayland5
qpdf

3 Starting QualCoder
3.1 Linux
If you have successfully run the install.sh script there will be a program launcher. This is shown in
the image below.
Alternatively, using the terminal, move to the inner QualCoder folder and open the qualcoder.py
file:
python3 qualcoder.py

Soon I will create a flatpak installation for easier installation on Linux.

3.2 Windows
In Windows create a shortcut to the qualcoder.py file and double click to open. Alternatively, using
the command prompt, move to the directory and open the qualcoder.py file:
python3 qualcoder.py

3.3 Backups
QualCoder does not automatically create backups. So I recommend that you make a backup copy of
the qda folder each time you plan to work on a qda project. Also make a backup before doing any
substantial changes, such as reorganising codes and categories.

4 How to use
There are a few sample files in the Examples folder. These can be used to test importing files of
different document formats and of importing an image. There are also example files to test
importing case attributes, and for importing a survey.

4.1 Create a new project
Create a new project under the ‘Project’ menu, call it test. The project wil be saved as test.qda.
Test.qda is actually a folder containing subfolders which hold the database and other files.
Additionally, in your home directory QualCoder will create a QualCoder.log file for logging events,
including hopefully all software errors and exceptions and a QualCoder_settings.txt file which will
contain the current coder’s name, preferred fonts and a preferred working directory.
Under the Project menu click on Project memo. This is a memo about your project. Type “A test
QDA project” and click the OK button.
You will notice the main window displays the following, with a menu bar at the top:

The main window displays various changes that are made when using QualCoder.

4.2 Settings
The settings dialog allows you to change the coder name. Multiple coders can code the same text.
Checking the Show IDs box displays ID columns for data stored in various tables.

4.3 Files and Cases Menu
4.3.1 Manage Files
You will usually want to load text files into QualCoder prior to coding. You can import text from
plain text documents, docx, odt, epub and pdf documents. Pdf importing can sometimes be
problematic. Another option is to manually enter text from within QualCoder. You can also load
image files in the following formats: jpg, jpeg, png and gif.
Video (mov, mp4, wmv format) and audio files (wav, mp3 format) can be imported. Loading an
audio or video file will also automatically create a blank text transcript file. This file will have the
same name as the audio or video file, but have a '.transcribed' suffix. Initially, this text transcription
will be empty. You can transcribe the file your self or get the file professionally transcribed and
copy and paste the text into this file.
Filenames should only contain typical filename characters, e.g. a-z 0-9 _ - space (). Otherwise,
when exporting a text file, unusual characters in the file name will cause an error. Exporting is only
available for text files, if you need to copy an image or other media, open the relevant folder inside
the .qda folder to copy the media.
Attributes are variables that can be used to describe or classify the files. These can be added here or
through the Manage Attributes menu option.

As a practical example: Open the Manage Files dialog. In the Examples folder import the following
files: ID1.docx, ID2.odt, transcript.txt and the miguel-henriques.jpg.
You can open an audio or video file to view. This opens two windows, one for viewing the video
and one for the controls and a transcript, shown below. The transcript text file must have the same
name as the video file, but have a '.transcribed' suffix.

4.3.2 Manage Cases
Open the Manage Cases dialog, shown here:

Cases are useful for seeing text and imaged linked to particular cases and for assigning attributes
such as age and gender to interview participants. You can add a memo of notes to each case and
rename a case by double-clicking on a case name.
Practical example: Add the three students (or cases) here by clicking the Add case button. Call each
student: ID1, ID2 and ID3.
Now, add each student’s file to each student. Click on a case, say ID1, then click the Add file to
case button. Select the ID1.docx file. Add the ID2.odt file to ID2 and add the miguel-henriques.jpg
to ID3.
Use the Open file to view and assign text to case button and open file ID1.docx and select case ID1.
You will see the text will be underlined in red which indicates this text is associated with this case.
Now open the transcript.txt file. Notice the transcript begins with a student id inside square brackets
[ ].

Try automatically assigning text to ID1 by selecting case ID1 then clicking the Auto assign file text
button. You will be asked which file or files to assign the case to. Select transcript.txt from the list.
11

Next you need to enter the start and end marks. The start mark will be ‘[id1]’ and the end mark will
be ‘[‘, note this is case sensitive so that is why you use the lower case here.

Now select the case ID1 and see the assigned text.clicking in a code gives a menu of options such as
displaying the memo, or displaying all the case or file text that has been coded with the selected
code.

You can also select a case, manually highlight text, and right-click to mark – or assign -the text to
the selected case.
Importing attributes for the cases. You can import attributes from a CSV file. The first row must
contain the attribute headings. The first column must contain matching case names (for this
example: ID1, ID2, ID3). Note that this is case sensitive. Open the attributes.csv file in the
Examples folder to see how it is laid out.
For this example – delete all the cases shown. Then, import the attributes from the attributes.csv file
through the Import Attributes dialog. You will again need to link the files and file text to each case.
4.3.3 Import survey
This asks for a CSV file to be imported. You can try importing the survey.csv file in the Examples
folder.
Survey files must be in a CSV format, that is comma delimited format, or another delimiter (tabs
are commonly used too). For tab-delimited files type ta, tb, or tab in the Delimiter box so that
QualCoder knows the csv file is tab delimited. The first row must contain the headings for
attributes. The first column must contain the unique identifiers for each survey respondent.
13

QualCoder will determine if the other columns (attributes) are Numeric or Character. QualCoder
cannot determine if an attribute is qualitative data. You must right-click and change the field type
from character to qualitative for those fields that need to be qualitative.

When you click on the OK button, the cases and their attributes will be added. The qualitative
column will be converted to a file which will be named with the column name plus the current date
and time. Each respondent's row will be prepended with [the unique id] so that you can identify
each respondent. Also, the text for each respondent will be automatically linked to the
corresponding case.
4.3.4 Attributes menu
Attributes are variables associated with files or cases. They can be useful to add context to the text
analysis. Open the Manage Attributes dialog. You can add, delete, rename and add memo notes to
attributes.

It is not the intention for QualCoder to perform statistical analyses of the attributes. It would be
preferable to use dedicated statistical software such as R (https://www.r-project.org/) or other such
software.
4.3.5 Coding text
Select Code text from the Coding menu. This is the central dialog for assigning codes to text. Once
text segments are coded, hovering the mouse over the coding shows the code name as a tooltip.
Clicking on the coded segment also shows the code name. Press the View File button to select a file
to open for coding. Create a new code by right-clicking in the left hand window. Codes can also be
assigned a colour by right-clicking on the code and selecting the change code colour option. Other
options from the right-click menu include adding a memo to the code, deleting the code, renaming,
adding a new code, and adding a new category.
Select a code, then select some text. Right-click and mark the text to assign it to the selected code.
Hover the mouse pointer over coded text to see a tooltip of the code. Coded text can be uncoded by
clicking on the text segment and pressing the Unmark button.

Add an annotation (like a memo for a text segment) to a text selection. The text will become bold to
mark the position of the annotation.

You can also automatically code text segments using the Auto Code button. Enter the text you want
to autocode. A dialog asks for one or more files to autocode. All matching text will be assigned the
selected code.
4.3.6 Categories and codes
Categories are used to organise codes. Categories are organised hierarchically in a tree structure.
The cat symbol denotes a category, whereas the writing-paper symbol denotes a code.
You can move codes into categories and move categories into larger categories. You can move
categories and codes out of their current position. Codes and categories can be merged by dropping
a code onto a code or a category onto a category.

4.3.7 Coding images
Images can be coded in a similar way to text coding. Select a code. Left-click and drag to highlight
the area you want to assign to the code. Right-click will open a menu where you can remove the
coding or add a memo. At the bottom of the screen there is a slider control to re-size the image.

4.3.8 Coding audio and video
When coding audio or video, two windows are displayed, shown below. One window has the audio
or video playing. The other window has the controls and a button to begin and end a coded segment.
The controls window shows the codes in the bottom left pane and any transcript is shown in the
bottom right pane.

Once a segment is made using the Start segment/Stop segment button this can be assigned to a code
by right clicking on the relevant code and assigning the segment.

Coding stripes for the coded segments are shown in the upper pane. Hovering the mouse over each
stripe shows the code name, time segment and any memo attached to that coded segment. Right
clicking on a coded segment stripe shows a menu that can be used to edit he memo or delete the
17

coded segment. Coded stripes are shown on various lines so that they do not overlap. An example of
coding stripes and mouse hover is shown below.

4.3.9 Codebook
A codebook is a list of your codes. Each code memo should detail the reasons for the purpose of
each code. The codebook can be exported to a text file. The codebook also shows the frequency of
the codes used (from all coders). Example codebook output is shown below. As codes and
categories are put in a tree like structure the double minus ‘–‘ indicates the subordinate codes and
categories within a category.

4.3.10 Node graph
A graph of categories and codes is displayed. There are several options to change what is shown –
such as Black and White, All or selected categories.
Each code or category can be moved around by clicking near the edge of the box and dragging it
around. Clicking on the text allows you to temporarily change the code or category wording. Rightclicking in a code gives a menu of options such as displaying the memo, or displaying all the case
or file text that has been coded with the selected code.

4.4 Reports
4.4.1 Coding Reports
This dialog gives a list of coded text based on your selections. One or more codes need to be
selected and one or both of coder 1 and coder 2 need to be selected. The Search button will present
the results. If a category is selected all codes in that category are also selected. Multiple categories
can be selected using the mouse and the ‘ctrl’ button. Codes and categories can be sorted to help
find the codes of interest.
Codings can be narrowed down by using the File selection Case selection or Attribute selection
buttons. Only codings within the selected files or cases will be presented. If text is entered into the
Search text field, only codings which contain the matching text will be presented. Codings can also
be narrowed down to case selections using the Case selection button. Note that when case selections
are used, file selections are ignored. Also when file selections are used, case selections are ignored.
The Search Text box also limits the reported codings. The search text looks for any codings in text
that contain the search text. The search text also looks for matching text in memos for coded image
areas and coded audio/video segments. The search text function must be used in combination with
File selection, Case selection or Attribute selection.
The Attribute selection button opens a dialog window where you can select attributes for files and
cases, for example: only interview files for people aged > 60.

If you are creating a report based on Case selection, then the code tree pane is hidden. Instead two
panes are shown. The left pane shows the codings in a list, the right pane shows a matrix with one
case on each row and top-level categories in each column, shown as below:

Each of the three panes can be widened or narrowed by dragging with the mouse on the bar that
splits each section.
Reports can be exported to text, open document (ODT) or html files. Currently case matrices are not
able to be exported.

4.4.2 Coding Comparison
This option shows the similarities and differences between two coders. Select two coders and click
the run comparisons button. This option is only available for coded text, not coded media files. For
each code:
Agreement % shows agreement for a combination of coded and non-coded text characters.
A and B % shows agreement for the only the coded text characters divided by the total characters in
the text.
Not A and Not B % shows the total of the uncoded text divided by the total characters in the text.
Disagree % shows the percentage of all the coded and non-coded text that did not match between
coders. It is the same as 100 – the Agree %.
Cohen’s Kappa is calculated based on the information in Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cohen%27s_kappa

4.4.3 SQL Statements Dialog
This dialog contains three panes. The top pane is where SQL statements are entered and the bottom
pane contains the results of queries. The left pane contains tables and field names. Double-clicking
on a field name adds it to the SQL statement. Results can be exported to a text file. If you are not
familiar with SQL take care as you will be able to update and delete the data as well as select data.
Note: Some Unicode symbols are not converted to plain text and are ignored.

Most table fields are text. The following fields are integer: anid, avid, attrid, caseid,catid, cid, fid,
id, imid, jid, pos0,pos1, x1, y1, width, height.

4.5 Multiple dialog windows
It is possible to have multiple dialog windows open. This is useful if you have run a report, or have
a file open for coding, and you want to enter your thoughts into a journal entry. However there are
some limitations.
Some dialog windows are priority windows, so swapping between windows will not be possible,
these restricted windows are: Management of files, cases or attributes, survey import and
confirmation dialogs (e.g. confirm delete).
The second limitation is that changes in one dialog will not be reflected in the other dialogs. An
example here is adding a code in a coding dialog, the added code will not be shown in other coding
or reports windows. If you do make changes to highlighting and codes and categories, it is
recommended to close and then re-open the other dialog window that you need. This is th ensure
that any changes made show up in the other dialog windows. Similarly, highlighting text on the
same file in two opened dialog will not be reflected in the other window. A warning, if you have
the same journal entry open in two windows, the last window that is closed will be the entry that is
saved.

5 Other details about the software
The qda data folder contains folders for imported documents, images and audio (although audio is
not currently implemented). It also contains the sqlite database, named data.qda, to store coding
data.

QualCoder creates QualCoder.log and QualCoder_settings.txt files in your home directory. The
settings file contains the name of the current coder, a default working directory and choice of font.
The log file records program errors and some user actions.
QualCoder is written in python 3 using Qt for the graphical interface. A Sqlite database is used to
store the coding data.

6 Future plans
Currently QualCoder has only used on Ubuntu, Linux Mint and by a github contributor
(WPFilmmaker) on Lubuntu. Most functionality testing has been performed using Windows 10. In
Windows, reports exported in ODT format are okay, but some images may overlap when the ODT
file opened with Microsoft Word rather than opened with LibreOffice.
Further testing on different operating systems is required.
Some potential plans for the future are to add functionality.
Coding:
•

Possibly add alternative ways to view text coding.

Reports:
•

Some statistics: word count, possibly add bar or pie charts for some attributes.

•

Possibly look at text mining functionality

•

Possibly have an html report with embedded audio/video.

7 About the author
Hello, my name is Colin Curtain and I am a pharmacist and lecturer from Australia. I have many
interests including clinical pharmacy, computer programming, research, statistics and clinical
decision support. I completed a PhD evaluating computerised clinical decision support in 2014.
When doing my PhD I used R as the statistics program of choice. This is where my interest in
qualitative data analysis and the use of RQDA came from, which ultimately led to this project.
Originally when doing my PhD I analysed qualitative survey data via a thematic approach using
RQDA. I then thought this could be reproduced in Python, so I scripted an earlier version called
PyQDA which worked OK at the time. This has been forked and is currently developed by Ronggui
Huang.
I thought I would share QualCoder in the hope that it may help others. This is still an early version
so bugs are possible and functionality could be further extended. I also generally work on Linux
machines, and sometimes Windows, so this software probably needs further tweaking for best use
on Windows. I work on the programming for this in my spare time, it is not my full time job for me.
If and when you use QualCoder and publish your results, I would really appreciate it if you let me
know the bibliographic information of your work.

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