Bringing out the best in Evernote with ATLAS.ti Windows

About Evernote

Evernote is one of the world’s most preferred note taking applications, according to PC Mag (2017), Business News Daily (2016), Mac World (2014) and a bunch of other technology review websites. Using the tagline: “Capture what’s on your mind”, Evernote can be installed on a variety of devices, such as iPad, iPhone, Android, Windows and Mac-based machines. It can hold notes in various formats, such as images, audio/video attachments, reminders, typed texts as well as handwritten data. This article explores how a qualitative researcher can make great use of Evernote up to the stage of analysis of the Evernote data in ATLAS.ti Windows.

Potential of using Evernote in a qualitative research

In conducting qualitative research, we can create notes in Evernote by:

1. Conducting online research – ‘clipping’ websites directly to be saved in Evernote
2. Literature search and review – attaching PDF and Word documents in Evernote
3. Fieldwork data collection – adding images, typed notes and handwritten scribbles in Evernote
4. Interview/focus group – attaching audio/video/images in Evernote
5. Many other ways… The potential is so huge!

How to import Evernote data into ATLAS.ti Windows

A prerequisite is that you have an Evernote account.

If you do not have an account yet, head on to www.evernote.com to create an account. The basic account is free, with an option to upgrade to the paid account for more features. An example of Evernote data in Android.

Importing Evernote data to ATLAS.ti

In ATLAS.ti Windows, choose the Import & Export tab from the main ribbon and select Evernote option, as shown below.

You need to authorize your Evernote account for use in ATLAS.ti. For this purpose, you are asked to log in to our account.

Select Evernote notebooks or notes

Once authorized, you will be prompted to select which Evernote notes to import. Check the notebooks or single notes within notebooks that you wish to import into ATLAS.ti for the purpose of analysis, as shown below.

ATLAS.ti recognizes the folder structure that you have build in Evernote and will group the documents accordingly creating document groups in ATLAS.ti.

Once successful, the imported data from Evernote will appear as documents and document groups in ATLAS.ti:

Analyze the Evernote data

Once all our data from Evernote have been imported to ATLAS.ti, you can then use the many great features of ATLAS.ti to analyze the documents. You can either:

• Build a coding frame or

• Use the auto coding features in ATLAS.ti like concepts search, sentiment analysis, or Named Entity Recognition to explore and categorize the data.

• Compare and contrast documents using The Code-Document Table and visualize differences between cases or groups of documents.

• Look for overlapping meaning and relations in your data using the Code Co-occurrence Table.

• and build conceptual maps using the the ATLAS.ti Network function.

References

• Duffy, J. (2017). The Best Note Taking Apps of 2017. Online, available at http://www.pcmag.com/roundup/347537/the-best-note-taking-and-syncing-apps accessed 10 May 2017.

• Nuckles, B. (2016). 7 Best Note Taking Apps. Online, available at http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/6065-best-note-taking-apps.html accessed 10 May 2017.

• Mathis, J. (2014). The best apps for taking notes. Online, available at http://www.macworld.com/article/2599838/the-best-apps-for-taking-notes.html accessed 10 May 2017.