Use of the Software IRAMUTEQ in Qualitative Research: An Experience Report

This article describes the experience of the use of the software IRAMUTEQ to support qualitative research, and thus concepts and some characteristics of the software are addressed to aid in understanding and to illustrate its features. The observations come from two surveys carried out in the city of Curitiba, which were centered on the vulnerability of and the promotion of a healthy lifestyle to adolescent students. The tool enabled the organization of data collected from the participants’ speeches acquired through semi-structured interviews. Both studies went through the same steps in the processing of the data from the interviews because, initially, they were transcribed for the preparation of the corpus of each of the studies so as to be inserted in the software. Categorization of the data was performed using Descending Hierarchical Classification (DHC). This tool allowed us to show and confirm the thematic categories in the same way that it added quality to the presentation and supported the results.