How to create file of variables

[ChenSamulsion]

Hi, @ko-ichi-h. I continue to read KH Coder 3 Reference Manual. In A.8 [Variables and Headings] (page 78-79), it wrote that we can import additional attributes of the target text as "variables", however, there's no guidance of how to create file of variables. In the closure of A.8.1, it wrote that

For the preparation of a file containing variables, please refer to tips provided on the web page.

But in your web site of KH Coder, there's nothing about preparation of variable files in hyperlink titled Tips. In the Manual, I got that users can create files of variables either by ourselves or retrieve results from cluster analysis or Naive Bayes classifier. Unfortunately, I have no idea about both these methods. Would you please give me some guidance (like what you should have provided in web page that you mentioned)? Thank you!

[ko-ichi-h]

Woops, sorry about that.

I got that users can create files of variables either by ourselves or retrieve results from cluster analysis or Naive Bayes classifier.

Yes, you are 100% right.

But these days, I don't recommend that you create a text file and a variable file separately. Instead, I recommend that you create a Excel/CSV/TSV files that contain both texts and variables. See "Anne.xls" in "tutorial_en" folder. And please follow the English tutorial "khcoder_tutorial_en.pdf". There is variable columns like "part" and "chapter" in addition to the text column. And you can use variable "part" and "chapter" in your analysis.

If you still want to create a separated variable file, just delete "text" column from Anne.xls, then save it as a CSV file. That is a variable file.

[ChenSamulsion]

Thank you very much! Hope I understand you correctly.
(1) the first and optimal choice, store text in Excel (.xls) with variables in adjacent columns, then do Crosstab or other analyses;
(2) the second choice, store text in Notepad (.txt) and create a separate variable file (.csv or tab-delimited txt), then do Crosstab or other analyses; and
(3) as to variable file itself, its nunber of rows must correspond to number of cases (the number of text lines).
I should read more carefully the material about CSV and Excel format files in page 22 & 23. Much appreciated.

[ko-ichi-h]

Yes, your understanding is perfectly correct.

If I were you, I would try creating a Excel/CSV/TSV file like "Anne.xls". The English manual is somewhat getting outdated. So you may have to learn through some trial and errors. Sorry about it.

Please note that when creating a large file, it is better to save it as CSV (*.csv) or TSV (*.tsv) format. KH Coder can't read large Excel files due to some technical limitations. I would save it as CSV or TSV when the file size is more than 50MB.

[ChenSamulsion]

Thank you very much for the reply. You're so kind. I have been interested in qualitative data analysis, content analysis and text mining all the time, albeit available, softwares that support Chinese language are really rare. The enhanced KH coder 3 will help me a lot.