QualCA (pronounced quokka, like the small Australian marsupial) is a lightweight in-browser R Shiny app for extracting and coding texts for qualitative analysis.
This repository contains the R Shiny code that is deployed at https://palm-lab.github.io/QualCA. You can run the ShinyApp locally within R / RStudio, making changes to the underlying code as needed. One advantage of running the app on your local device is that a temporary codebook file is automatically saved as a back-up for any unexpected crashes.
Open the app in R Studio by opening the code file (app.R). A Run App button should appear in the top right of the code editor.
- Organize your corpus as a CSV file, such that the each document is a different row and the document text is contained in one column.
- Upload your corpus CSV to QualCA using the button on the left-side menu. A menu will appear below to select the CSV column that contains the to-be-coded text, in case the corpus contains mutliple columns.
- If you are returning to the QualCA app, you can upload your previously saved codebook CSV using the button on the left-side menu to continue your analysis.
- You can scroll through the documents by pressing the 'previous' or 'next' buttons in the Document Viewer pane of the app. You can also type in a numeric value into the Document # bar to navigate to that document.
- To add an extract to the codebook, highlight the text in the document using your cursor and press the 'Add Selected Text as Extract' button in the Codebook pane. When clicked, the highlighted text will appear in the Extract column, and will be highlighted in blue in the Document Viewer.
- You can then add a Code or Theme to an extract by double clicking on the relevant cell within the codebook table, and typing the new Code.
- A Counter pane in the top-right of the app shows how many extracts are associated with each Code. You can edit a Code by double clicking on it in the Counter, and typing in the new Code. This will change the Code for all extracts associated with the old Code.
- To save your progress, you can click the Download Codebook button in the left-side menu. The Codebook is saved as a CSV file, which you can upload to QualCA on your next visit.
The QualCA app is hosted on Github Pages at https://palm-lab.github.io/QualCA using the shinylive package, and makes use of this helpful StackOverflow answer by user GGamba.
This app was created for an ongoing research project with Carly Stagg, Natasha van Antwerpen and Ella Moeck, who brought knowledge on how to conduct qualitative analysis, shared what would be desirable features, and tested earlier versions of the app.
Clinton Hadinata provided debugging help and useful advice on how to handle overlapping intervals.
William Ngiam created this app while employed as a Lecturer in the School of Psychology at the University of Adelaide.