9/16/2010

Hey all, Dedoose is out the door and we've uploaded what we feel is a terrific video where I give a brief orientation to qualitative research methods and then their place in mixed methods research (and how Dedoose facilitates the work). I talk a bit about how Dedoose was inspired by our research teams' experience with qualitative and mixed method research and the evolution of technologies to support the work. We're hoping to expose users to how Dedoose is able to radically redefine the workflow and efficacy of researchers and research teams in all social science disciplines; and at a fraction of the cost of traditional software.

The video is based on data we collected for a market research project looking at people's perceptions regarding a new hotel concept in Las Vegas. One of the things we plan to do is continue producing small video presentations to help educate researchers about how to carry-out rigorous, reliable, and valid mixed methods research, so we'd love to receive feedback on the content we provided and what people feel would be other major needs to address in our fields of work. Here's the URL for the video in case I didn't get it right above: http://www.dedoose.com/resources/videos

So, and perhaps it goes without saying, Dedoose is formally launched, having left the beta period about two weeks ago. We are thrilled with the feature set and were able to vastly improve users' experience with the terrific feedback we received from the beta team and (very) early adopters. Lot's of improvements came on line during just the past few weeks, including an awesome nested chart that exposes patterns in the qualitative data and coding activity broken out by two descriptor variables. For example, show me how males vs females within rural versus urban settings vary on what and how they speak about and weighting on their relative importance of air quality? Or in some analysis we began today, how do adolescents and their parents speak about youth obligations broken out by family income level and the objective number of chores the youth actually do in a typical week? ...these are truly the kinds of questions only mixed methods research can begin to address.

Finally, knowing that the rest of the research world is still working to understand what we are all doing as we build the field of mixed methods research, we've instituted a generous referral program. You don't have to be a Dedoose user to refer someone else, but you'd still receive the reward so we hope you'll consider reaching out to others in your networks who might be interested.

Cheers for now,

Eli