Importing your data: special cases

Importing from other software

We are aware of the initiative to make qualitative coding software interoperable, https://www.qdasoftware.org/products-project-exchange/. Causal Map has quite a different model and at the moment we don’t provide this, but would do if there is a lot of interest.

You can always export all your data at any time using the Download button in the top menu.

Exporting for import into kumu.io

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Exporting for import into NodeXL

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🧪Importing existing causal coding (“links only”)

What to do if you have causal information, for example in the form of edge lists, from some other source (e.g. AI coding of a larger text) which you want to import?

You can import this kind of file too, using the Standard Format Excel upload button.

Your Excel xlsx file should NOT have a tab for factors. Instead it should have a single tab called links, containing two columns called from_label and to_label which contain the names of your factors.

That’s the basic setup. But maybe you also want to provide information about what statement, question or source the link is associated with. In which case, these are your options:

• Optionally, your links tab can also contain other columns as usual, in particular it can contain the column question_id.
• If you include a question_id column, you should include an additional tab called questions containing at least the column question_id and other columns providing information about the questions, e.g. full question text, questionnaire section etc, where relevant.
  
• Optionally, your links tab can also contain a column statement_id.
• If you include a statement_id column, you can optionally include, as usual, an additional tab called statements containing at least the column statement_id and a column text containing the text of your statements.
  • If you optionally include a statements tab, you can optionally also include a source_id column and a corresponding tab called sources with a corresponding source_id column and more columns to provide information like gender, location, or any other information about the source of each statement.
• Optionally, your links tab can also contain a column labelled quote, containing the actual quote which underpins each causal claim aka link.
• Usually, this quote will be a verbatim section of the text in a corresponding additional tab called statements, see above.

Uploading closed question blocks

If you give the app a single set of closed responses like better, worse then it can make tables like below.

image-20211019153918044

It will recode a fixed set of words into + positive, - negative and 0 neutral.

This approach only makes sense if you have one larger set of questions with the same set of fixed reply options.

You supply this data in the form of user-defined fields in the Sources table, whose names contain a *.

You could still, if you want, import a whole bunch of different closed questions with different answer categories as custom fields in the Sources table. So just as you can have gender as a field, you could have “answer to closed question about how often do you go hungry (never/sometimes/often)” as a field. This means you could ask the app to only show the maps of the women, or the people who often go hungry, or the women who often go hungry. The point of the closed questions feature is to organise and provide the answers to a whole block of questions together in one place, to make analsying the data easier.

QuIP-specific: Uploading hybrid format data

This section is specifically about importing from a QuIP-style spreadsheet. This format has many rows, one for each answer, and includes the statements as one kind of answer; you can import statements and additional data from the same fieldwork file. The main differences to a normal import are:

• Rows whose question code does not include a “$” will be imported only as additional data, not as statements.
• A new question ID will be constructed from the question code together with the question text.

Your xslx file must have just four columns, with column headers in this order:

• text, containing the answers
• source_id, containing the respondent ID
• question_id, containing the question ID
• question_text, containing the question text

(Actually the names of the columns does not matter, only the order.)

Your Question IDs may include the following characters:

• A dollar $ to be treated as a statement.

• A star * to be treated as a closed question.

• A hash # to be treated as important additional data.

Otherwise your question will be treated as unimportant additional data. Also it is worth noting that all the columns of the sources table contain metadata about your sources and can for example be used to create filters (e.g. show me a map which only contains statements from people who live alone). Data whose question_code contains a # will also be shown in a few additional key place in the app such as the info panel.

You can mix these, so e.g.

#$* Do you have a house?

Will be treated as a statement and as closed question (part of a block) and as important additional data.

All important additional data, as indicated by the # in the question_id, can be found under the info toggle in your left-hand side panel.

image-20211220153042098

Closed questions, as indicated by the * in the question_id, are imported into the closed questions table and the sources table which you can apply the closed questions preset to.

image-20211220161646312

Plus, the question_code may end with the characters “rank” to mark “ranking organisation” data. [There may be a bug currently such that this data will also be imported only if they are not treated as statements, ie the code should not contain a $].

To upload the QuIP-style spreadsheet click on the purple upload button on the right-hand-side panel.

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QuIP recodes for closed questions - live link

Using this table (which includes spanish) the app recodes your data into + positive, - negative and 0 neutral.

For example:

image-20211019155354881

This data will be displayed in the Tables panel if you select “closed questions.”

Appending hybrid data

Suppose you uploaded hybrid data from file F, and already did some coding, then you receive more data in file G, also in hybrid format.

Find the original file F on your computer (don’ t download from the app!). Paste the data from file G below the existing data in file F, save it as file H, and upload this again. Your existing coding should not be affected; the links and factors you already created will remain.

Caveat: you can’t combine roundtripping and appending hybrid data. If you have tweaked or added to your data from file F by roundtripping (downloading the data from the app then uploading again), any changes to statements, sources or questions will be lost if you later try to append data using this hybrid button. So if you need to tweak your data (statements, sources or questions), either:

• wait until you have completed uploading using the hybrid button and only then tweak with roundtripping
• or, manually tweak the old and new data in file H