Using qualitative analysis software for literature reviews

You’ve probably heard of or even used a reference management software like EndNote, Mendeley or the free and open-source Zotero. However, while these tools are great for doing your references at the end of a project and integrating with Word or LibreOffice, there are still major advantages to using qualitative analysis software like Quirkos.

This video will give you an overview of how to structure either a systematic or literature review, or even just the literature for a project.

To summarise, while most reference management software focuses on the bibliographical data of the source, CAQDAS/QDAS tools focus on the content of the article itself. While they can still store and export information like publication year, author and titles, they allow you to dive into the text of the article itself, and start to cross-reference particular themes and topics within the literature.

And this is where a literature review gets really interesting. Create a coding framework for key questions in your research, and code specific sections of articles or books that cover that topic. Once you have done this across different articles, you will have a quick, easy and referenced way to write the literature review section of a thesis. When you are talking about, for example, different interpretations of the concept of stigma in the literature, you can show quotes from different authors that agree or disagree, and use this to structure the question.

In Quirkos, if you give sources names like (Goffman 1963), copying and pasting quotes from your project file into Word will automatically give you the quote and reference/source name, formatted in just the right way. For more tips and tricks, we've covered systematic reviews on this blog before.

If you'd like to see how Quirkos can take some of the pain out of reference management and literature reviews, you can try the full version for a month with no restrictions. Download the trial today and see for yourself!