How to Sort Documents in Word Trends/Code Trends

Posted about 1 month ago by Christoph Haug

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Christoph Haug

MaxQDA's Word Trend function could be useful for visualizing the use of certain terms in the literature over time. However, in order for that to work, it would be useful if the user could influence the order in which the documents are displayed on the x-axis. 


To clarify what I mean, I use this example from the MaxQDA manual:


As far as I can tell, the reason why the documents are ordered chronologically along the x-axis is because of the way they are named, i.e. their name starts with the year of the speech.


Renaming documents like this is, however, not always feasible and it doesn't solve the problem that documents from the same year would need to be combined. 


The easiest way to accomplish this in the case of references that have been imported from a reference manager would be to use the RIS_YEAR variable that each document is automatically assigned, but I cannot seem to find a way to accomplish this. Is it missing or do I have to go via some detour where I create document sets based on the variables or something like that? 

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Khaled Alostath

Khaled Alostath posted about 1 month ago Admin

Dear Haug, 


Thank you for your response. 


In this case, please submit your suggestions and ideas to our specialized teams via this link: https://www.maxqda.com/maxqda-feedback 


Best regards, 

Khaled

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Christoph Haug posted about 1 month ago

I tried this, but it is a very laborious process as you need to manually create a document set for each year. And whenever new documents are added, you need to go through the whole process again. Or is there a way of dynamically updating sets based on the criteria through which they were initially created?


Wouldn’t it make sense to skip the sets and allow users to use variables directly in word trends (or code trends)?

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Khaled Alostath

Khaled Alostath posted about 1 month ago Admin

Dear Haug, 


In MAXQDA, the Word Trends function allows you to analyze word frequencies across multiple documents, which can be useful for visualizing trends over time. 


A potential workaround could be to create document sets based on the RIS_YEAR variable. This way, you can group documents by year and analyze them collectively. 


You can then use these document sets to visualize trends over time. 


Hope this answers your question. 


Kind regards,
Khaled

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