QDAcity

QDAcity is a web-based application for computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS), developed at the Professorship for Open-Source Software at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU). QDAcity focuses on collaborative projects and supports the coding of textual sources and PDFs, assisted interview transcription, and tools for assessing intercoder agreement.

History

Work on QDAcity began in 2016 in the context of research on requirements engineering at FAU, where qualitative analysis was explored for structural domain modeling. Development continued within the research group, and a publicly available product release followed in April 2024.

Features

QDAcity provides tools for creating and maintaining a code system, applying codes to source materials, and managing project assets. Documents can be imported as text or PDF, and users may code concurrently within shared projects. The software includes an assisted transcription workflow oriented toward interview materials.

Collaboration features comprise shared projects with role-based participation and concurrent coding, with facilities for monitoring coder activity. For reliability checking, QDAcity reports measures of intercoder agreement on overlapping coded segments. The application also supports exporting project data and coded materials for further analysis.

Use in teaching and research

The software and related workflows have been described by its authors in the context of teaching qualitative data analysis and streamlining grading of student assignments.

Technology and availability

QDAcity is delivered as a web application and is accessible on major desktop operating systems via a browser. The software is distributed under a proprietary license.

See also

• Computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software