How does the software design affect or restrict the research process?
NUD*IST design has both procedural and conceptual limitations for the research process, but neither of these restrictions is overbearing. Procedurally, data must be formatted as ASCII text documents (.txt) with hard returns as “text units” and asterisks (*) as sub-headers. This formatting can be time consuming and requires the researcher to make decisions about text units and section units before the data is coded when it is difficult to make an informed decision. Additionally, as with any coding software, using NUD*IST can bind you to having all of your data stored in this format. NUD*IST projects can be imported into NVIVO, but there is still always the risk that the QSR company will fold and ten years from now, you may be stuck with data locked into an archaic format for which no software help is available. Conceptually, NUD*IST coding structure has only two options: unstructured (“free nodes”) or in a tree like hierarchy (“index tree”). This software cannot accommodate conceptual m
