What is REFI and why should I care?
REFI stands for "Rotterdam Exchange Format Initiative" which developed a common standard for interoperability between Qualitative Data Analysis Software:
The REFI-QDA Standard enables interoperability between Qualitative Data Analysis Software (QDAS or CAQDAS) programmes.
Its purpose is to enable users to exchange processed data between the different software.
It is an open standard and any programme can implement it, thus increasing the number of software programmes that can ‘talk’ to one another.
Read more at https://www.qdasoftware.org/
Why should I care?
First of all, OpenQDA intends to be as open as possible, which in turn defines the goal for a maximum interoperability with other QDA software in both directions (import/export).
Beyond that we also decided to follow the REFI terminology for all our domain and database models. This is why in OpenQDA, as well as in this documentation, you will find terms you may not know from other QDA software.
REFI Terminology
The following table shows the REFI terminology used in Openqda, compared to those in other popular QDA software.
REFI term | ATLAS.ti | f4analyse | MAXQDA | NVivo | QDA Miner | Quirkos | Transana |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
CASE | document group / code group | n/a | document variable | case | case | source variable | transcript / document |
CODE | code | code | code | code | code | quirk | keyword |
CODEBOOK | codebook | code system | code system | codebook | codebook | codebook | codebook |
CODING | coding | coding | coding | coding | coding | highlights | coding |
DESCRIPTION | comment | comment | comment | description | description | description | description |
GRAPH | network | n/a | map | map | n/a | n/a | n/a |
LINK | link / relation | n/a | link | link / connector / relationship | n/a | n/a | n/a |
NOTE | comment / memo | memo / comment | memo / comment | annotation / memo | comment / memo | memo | journal / note |
PROJECT | project | project | project | project | project | project | database / quote / clip |
SELECTION | quotation | selection | segment | reference | segment | quote / highlight | quote / clip |
SET | group | n/a | group/set | set | n/a | n/a | collection |
SOURCE | document | text / associated media file | document | file | document | source | transcript / document |
TRANSCRIPT | transcript | text | transcript | transcript | document | source | transcript |
USER | user | n/a | user | user | user | author | user |
VARIABLE | document group / code group | group | variable | attribute | variable | source property | keyword |
REFI as blueprint for Database Model
Beyond terminology, we also decided to model our database according to the models, invented by REFI. See https://www.qdasoftware.org/project for more information.