Guide to the documentation for TAMS Analyzer

Click here to see the video resources page

    Tutorials & Starting Places

  1. Graphical overview of TAMS
  2. This is a fast introduction to what the main windows in TAMS look like and how some of the important controls operate.

  3. Qualitative Research for Beginners

    The official TAMS tutorial

  4. TAMS Quick Reference

    Best used after exploring the other documentation as a way to quickly recall how to do specific tasks


    Primary Documentation

  1. User Guide
  2. After the tutorial, this is what you should read

  3. Using TAMS Analyzer with Multiple Researchers
  4. This is the follow up to the user guide which shows people using multiuser TAMS Analyzer how to set up a server for mulitple users. Get the required SQL file here

  5. TA4 Update Notices
  6. This documents the features as new versions of TAMS Analyzer is released.

  7. TA3 Update Notices
  8. This collection of over 100pp of update notices is the place to find documentation on most of the reporting and analysis features of TAMS Analyzer.

  9. TA2 Update Notices
  10. If you want documentation of features that have been around awhile (many of the reports and the media player, for instance), this is the place to look.


    Help With Specific Issues

    TAMS comes with a variety of small publications called tamsZines which focus on specfic issues. Early tamsZines were created with Scribus, but more recently I've used ComicLife to create highly graphic guides to specific research activities and TAMS issues.

  1. Structured and unstructured data
  2. Here I explore how tams provides specific tools for dealing with different types of qualitative data

  3. Data Comparison Tables
  4. Data comparison tables is the main report generator for TAMS Analyzer. However, because the elements of the table are linked to results windows, these reports can be used for analytic purposes as well. This tamsZine explains how.

  5. Memoing
  6. Memoing can happen at the code level and as documents organized by themes, this latter approach is explained in this tamsZine.

  7. Creating code sets
  8. This shows how to group codes together into non-related sets which can be used for analysis.

  9. Searching for specific words
  10. In addition to searching for coded text, TAMS Analyzer can search for specific text, either in general, or by paragraphs or sentences that contain that text.

  11. Making frequency charts
  12. This tamsZine shows how to use Excel(tm) with TAMS Analyzer to create bar graphs of code frequencies.

  13. Changing code names and recoding data
  14. Probably the most common question I am asked by TAMS Analyzer is "How do I change code A to code B?" This tamsZine shows how.

  15. Inter-rater reliability tables
  16. TAMS Analyzer can generate IRR measures such as Cohen's Kappa and percent match. Get the example project here

  17. Hot (on the fly) codes sets
  18. One of the great tools for large projects is hot code sets: quick ways to reduce your codes to a small focused group that you want to concentrate on.

  19. Making DOT graphs (brain storm style diagrams)
  20. This older documentation shows how to create graph diagrams (think brainstorm type diagrams) in TA.

  21. Data summary reports
  22. While data comparison tables are the easiest way to get simple counts, sometimes you will need more complex counts, counts that involve different levels of break points. That's what data summary reports are for.

  23. Grouping data in TA
  24. This is less of a how to, as much of an older summary of ways to group data in TAMS Analyzer and the analytic advantages of each. Some of the limits of code sets in particular are out of date. Since writing this documentation I have extended the power of Data Comparison Tables to get counts of your data by code set (rather than the individual codes).

  25. How to user coder signatures to distinguish your codes from another's
  26. This is quite old documentation about signing your codes, i.e., embedding initials in codes that allow others and TAMS to see what you have coded vs. another member of your team.

  27. How to label and analyze contextual data (context codes)
  28. This tamsZine walks through the basics of creating and analyzing contextual information, such as an informant's gender or institutional affiliation.

  29. How to work with PDF files
  30. This tamsZine walks through importing, coding, and analyzing PDF documents.

  31. Setting superuser account name
  32. For multiuser tams, in the past the administrator of the MySQL database had to have user name 'tamsadmin'. This is no longer true, and this zine shows how to change the designated superuser to a different account name.


    TAMS Analyzer Resources by Other People

  1. A tour of TAMS Analzyer on Medium.com by Ashley Hughes
  2. An introduction to TAMS Analyzer by Tabitha Hart
  3. Tabitha Hart's Ethnographic analysis page with lots of TAMS materials
  4. A youtube class lecture by Robert Prue on coding types using TAMS Analyzer
  5. This is a blog entry that has a nice discussion of TAMS in a larger workflow for PhD research by James Ransom