Q Research Software

We get people in support from time to time that don’t know you can edit categorizations after saving them (or don’t know what it’s called/where is it). Was thinking of how to get this info to them while they are coding (so they don’t leave their window open for HOURS thinking they can’t save like some people do). If not a footnote in the tool maybe something like an auto-closing pop-up dialogue when the tool is opened or Save Categories is clicked.

I’m using “Edit Code Frame (Legacy)” on the “Variables and Questions” tab to code answers to survey questions. The code frame that displays on the right side is not searchable. It’s fine to scan with your eyes for smaller code frames. But if the code frame is over say up to 80 to 100 code names it needs to be searchable, you can’t Ctrl F on Q on these code frames. The only way to do that at the moment is to “import/Export Code Names” and copy and paste this into Word of Excel to search for the code you need. !image-20220705-051941.png|width=1081,height=752! File: Examples of Question Types.Q from the Example Projects in Q’s example folder Variable: Weightsugarhealthconscious Row 336 on the Variables and Questions tab for an example.

User describes this well. Essentially she wants to input a 2-column spreadsheet with text in one column and code in a second column to get Qcodes file. I have historic data in the form of column A (text input) and column B (assigned code) which I want to turn into Qcodes files and keep the codeframe numbering consistent. I imagine this scenario is pretty common when clients are switching from manual coding or different systems. In one of the other automatic coding processes in Q it allows me to enter labels and variations when importing categories, but I think there is an upper limit on the number of new codes and variations it will accept. I'm dealing with codeframes of 1000+ codes so the limit was too small for me. I have been using python to transform this historic data and the pre-existing codeframes and reverse-engineer them into Qcodes files. It would be good to have a way to do this within the software.

User can sometimes code on the wrong file or for some reason need to combine the coding from 2 different files. As they each have different QCodes files, this has to be manually done in a good text editor. Having a built-in way to combine these files for each category would save users time.

Allow users to sort code of codeframe alphabetically when using manual/semi-automatic coding interface

From a user: When I say it would also be amazing if Q automatically coded based on mentions within the verbatim another way of saying it would be to be able to code based on "contains" the word or phrase in the verbatim. I think this is a particular issue when using a code frame to code overlapping (multi) codes. E.g. at the moment if I code "Innovation" as innovative the next month it will automatically code "Innovation as "Innovative" but if someone says "Innovation and quality" I have to code it as "Innovative" and "Quality". Then the next month someone might say "Innovative & Quality" and because it is slightly different it means I have to code "Innovative" and "Quality" again. When people are asked to give words they associate with a brand and there is only one text box, the combinations are literally endless!

When you categorize a text variable as a Pick Any, it will create a variable for each category. The variable names are based on the original "variable name + category label". It would be better for other automations (and tidier) to instead create variable names for these new variables from "original variable name + category value".

From user: I am using the manual coding functionality and the challenge I have is that if I use the find field it doesn’t return back an exact match. E.g. if I ask it to find ‘reliable’ it also gives me ‘unreliable’ which means I then have to code reliable then take unreliable out and code as unreliable. Another example would be ‘class’ and ‘classic’.

It’s a lot easier to code using legacy coding. Even a beginner will know what to do but using R coding is confusing. I have used Q for a lot of years and still found it confusing to code using R. I guess ease of use should be given a priority

The user wishes to be able to use the semi-automatic algorithm for languages like Japanese. The only way to currently do this is to translate the text variable first.