Final Thesis: QDAcity Quality Metrics
Abstract: The cloud-based QDAcity platform allows to conduct collaborative research projects applying Qualitative Data Analysis methods and research validation through crowdsourcing. When using Qualitative Data Analysis as a research method, expressive measurements of the quality and maturity of the results are essential to prove the validity of the research Findings. Common measures for validity of ratings are inter-coder agreement metrics, and for measuring the maturity of a qualitative research project, a prevalent approach is to calculate saturation. However, with a high number of raters, inter-coder agreement metrics become inconvenient to evaluate and the calculation of saturation requires a clean documentation of many project variables. The cloud environment of QDAcity can solve both of these problems, because it can efficiently store all ratings and project variables, and thus integrate both metrics more conveniently for the researcher. This thesis presents the implementation of the two inter-coder agreement metrics Krippendorff’s Alpha and Fleiss’ Kappa in QDAcity and a new approach with its implementation of theoretical saturation.
Keywords: Intercoder Agreement, Theoretical Saturation, Qualitative Data Analysis, QDA, QDAcity
PDFs: Master Thesis, Work Description
Reference: Matthias Schöpe. QDAcity Quality Metrics. Master Thesis, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg: 2017.