5 Ways to Visualize Your Results in ATLAS .ti

In this article I will show you five ways you can visualize your data in Atlas.ti to come up with an interesting report that a third party would enjoy reading.

We are going to create: 

1. word cloud two
2. Code document analysis
3.  concepts chart
4. hierarchy chart
5. five tables 

My name is Bernard Mugo, I like to refer to myself simply as an academic.

In the past three years, I’ve helped more than 250 PhD students complete their thematic analysis, report their findings and finally be able to be done with their chapter four of their thesis and dissertations.

In the course of helping such a large number of students I have gained invaluable experience on the best practices to use to comfortably conduct thematic analysis and get findings from qualitative data such as interviews.

Now let’s dive into the article and look at ways of visualizing data after conducting thematic analysis in Atlas.ti.

After conducting thematic analysis whether we are using atlas.ti or any other tool we always have to come up with a findings report.

That means that we always have to express our data in a narrative format.

This is the kind of narrative that we can produce.

Now to make our report more attractive to the reader it’s always good to include some visuals.

Now let me go open our previous project in Atlas.ti and let’s have some visuals.

The first visual that we can draw in Atlas.ti is a word cloud.

We can come up with a word cloud for transcripts or even for themes.

 So how do we come up with a word cloud in Atlas.ti?

If you go to the search and code sections at the top menu.

And I click on word frequencies.

Atlas.ti will show you your original transcripts.

If you look at  my documents, you can see I coded student one and student three.

Let me select student one and create a word cloud for it.

You can see in the first transcript that these were the main issues that came out.

This is the word cloud

And in such a word cloud you can remove words we don’t like by right clicking select add to stop words list and those words will disappear.

 Basically, that’s how we clean up the word cloud in Atlas.ti.

And also we can go to the menu then click on export.

 Let’s just save that as document word cloud.

This is the image of the word cloud that we can export in Atlas.ti.

So one of the visuals that we can use in our reports just as I have used in my report after conducting thematic analysis in Atlas.ti is a word cloud.

The second kind of visual that we can develop after conducting thematic analysis in Atlas.ti is the code document analysis.

This one will show us how many codes are there in a given document.

So if we go to codes we can right click go to analysis.

 And show code document analysis.

We get such a document here.

The document shows us the codes that are in certain documents.

So this kind of document shows the codes that came from each participant and also the quotes on the edge.

 Here you can see the quotes.

When you click on a given code you can see the quotes for it.

And then we can always export this by selecting export.

For this I chose Excel.

That is the code document that we just exported after conducting code document analysis.

We can always decide to use this to support the work and how we conducted the coding.

The third kind of visual that we can develop in Atlas.ti is the concepts chart.

 Still in the code section in Atlas.ti I can right click and go to analysis. 

Select concepts.

Now I can go and select all the documents I want as concepts.

Ideally we can get the major concepts across different sections.

This are the major concepts that we came up with.

 This is like a word cloud but it shows the major concepts in a given document.

The fourth type of visual that we can develop after conducting thematic analysis in Atlas.ti is a hierarchy chart.

Hierarchy chart is a visual that we can create on our own because we can draw it in word document.

If I go to insert.

go to smart art.

Go to hierarchy and select a hierarchy chart.

This is the chart I’m telling you about and I can delete sections that I do not like.

Remember this chart is editable in word that is why I like it so I delete that level in the first box.

Then I start to indicate the themes and codes.

Remember I want to visualize the themes and codes into this chart, it’s just a matter of going back to Atlas.ti then click on rename.

Then copy that theme.

I paste that theme in the box here.

That’s the first theme.

And then under that theme we indicate all the codes under that theme in Atlas.ti.

The first code is inadequate textbooks so I copy.

Then past that in my hierarchy chart under the second level.

The second code is lack of enough ventilation so I copy it then paste it in the second box.

Then the third code which is repairing facilities.

And I click on enter on my machine to expand the visual and then I include the fourth code.

The fourth code is untidy classrooms and toilets.

Then I go to design change colors and change everything to black and white.

Then I can press control A to select everything, go back to home.

Then change these to Times New Roman font size 12.

 And basically that’s how we draw a hierarchy chart after conducting thematic analysis in Atlas.ti.

Another visual that we can draw after conducting thematic analysis in Atlas.ti is a table.

 Now for the second theme I want to draw a table.

Let me go to insert in my word document then table.

 I want to draw to show the themes/ codes and their occurrence.

Go back to Atlas.ti and copy the theme then go back to the table and paste it.

  And then number of quotes is four.

 Now let me go and indicate all the codes under that theme and the number of quotes.

So I highlight and copy all the codes, then paste them under the theme in the table created.

 Basically that’s how we can draw or we can creatively draw tables after conducting thematic analysis in Atlas.ti.

 These are some of the few ways we can visualize our data after conducting thematic analysis using Atlas ti.