SOFTWARE, METHOD, AND ANALYSIS: REFLECTIONS ON THE USE OF ATLAS.TI IN A DOCTORAL RESEARCH STUDY

Abstract

This paper presents evidence from a user of a computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) referred to as ATLAS.ti on its usefulness and challenges in the content analysis of corporate annual reports (CARs) of top South African companies. The paper illustrates how ATLAS.ti was employed to perform the content analysis of 60 corporate annual reports to determine the extent of human capital disclosures by the top South African companies. Useful reports generated from the “hermeneutic unit” known as “AdePhD” include the primary document list, the code list, the code families, the code summary, the code-primary document list, the codequotation list, and the network views. The reports from this qualitative analysis software facilitated the observations on the frequency of ninety-one human capital disclosure items analyzed from the corporate annual reports of companies in our sample. Findings indicate that the use of ATLAS.ti enabled a faster and robust analysis that would have taken a much longer time if done manually. It also facilitated more coherent results. Nevertheless, the major challenge is the lack of adequate institutional support for users when compared with the level of institutional support available for quantitative data analysis software such as the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS).