“To begin at the beginning” is the opening line of the play Under Milk Wood by
Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. So, we also want to start here at the beginning and start
with some information about the history of the analysis software MAXQDA. This
story is quite long; it begins in 1989 with a first version of the software, then just
called “MAX,” for the operating system DOS and a book in the German language.
The book’s title was Text Analysis Software for the Social Sciences. Introduction to
MAX and Textbase Alpha written by Udo Kuckartz, published by Gustav Fischer in
1992. Since then, there have been many changes and innovations: technological,
conceptual, and methodological. MAXQDA has its roots in social science methodology;
the original name MAX was reference to the sociologist Max Weber, whose
methodology combined quantitative and qualitative methods, explanation, and
understanding in a way that was unique at the time, the beginning of the twentieth
century. Since the first versions, MAX (later named winMAX and MAXQDA) has
always been a very innovative analysis software. In 1994, it was one of the first
programs with a graphical user interface; since 2001, it has used Rich Text Format
with embedded graphics and objects. Later, MAXQDA was the first QDA program
(QDA stands for qualitative data analysis) with a special version for Mac computers
that included all analytical functions. Since autumn 2015, MAXQDA has been
available in almost identical versions for Windows and Mac, so that users can switch
between operating systems without having to familiarize themselves with a new
interface or changed functionality. This compatibility and feature equality between
Mac and Windows versions is unique and greatly facilitates team collaboration.
MAXQDA has also come up with numerous innovations in the intervening years: a
logically and very intuitively designed user interface, very versatile options for
memos and comments, numerous visualization options, the summary grid as a
middle level of analysis between primary data and categories, and much more, for
instance, transcription, geolinks, weight scores for coding, analysis of PDF files, and
Twitter analysis. Last but not least, the mixed methods features are worth mentioning,
in which MAXQDA has long played a pioneering role.
This list already shows that today MAXQDA is much more than text analysis
software: the first chapter of this book contains a representation of the data types that
MAXQDA can analyze today (in version 2018) and shows which file formats can be
processed. The large variety of data types is contrasted by an even greater number of