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Tools for preparing qualitative research data

The Qualiservice anonymization tool QualiAnon

In a nutshell: What is QualiAnon?

QualiAnon is a tool developed by Qualiservice in cooperation with Pangaea to support researchers in the anonymization and pseudonymization of research data. It is important to mention straight away that QualiAnon does not automatically make any replacements or work automatically. The aim during development was to provide researchers with a tool that enables them to implement different levels of abstraction in a structured manner. The control lies with the researchers at all times. Replacements can be specified for specific cases and studies, and QualiAnon also separates identification data from other information, such as the original interviews. QualiAnon also enables a global organization of replacement categories and variables for larger data sets, which supports you in flexible anonymization.

You can access QualiAnon via the GitHub repository https://github.com/pangaea-data-publisher/qualianon. If you have any questions, problems or comments, please contact us per email to qualianon@uni-bremen.de

Recommended citation for the tool: Tom Nicolai, Kati Mozygemba, Susanne Kretzer, Betina Hollstein (2021): QualiAnon - Qualiservice tool for anonymizing text data (version 1.0.1). Qualiservice. University of Bremen. Software available at: https://github.com/pangaea-data-publisher/qualianon   

The Qualiservice anonymization tool QualiAnon supports the replacement of sensitive (personal) information in text-based research materials. Users can decide whether to pseudonymize or anonymize texts. The virtual launch of QualiAnon in German and English took place on May 18, 2021. The participation of over 200 people from several countries indicates strong interest in the tool. QualiAnon, developed with funding from the DFG, can now be used free of charge by researchers for the preparation of written materials.

The further development of the Qualiservice anonymization tool was primarily aimed at ensuring that it can also be used outside of a particularly protected working environment of a research data center such as Qualiservice.

Users of the QualiAnon tool can highlight words or text passages and replace it with text pertinent to the category of information, on different levels of abstraction. Standardized lists can be used, and replacements can be made on a case- and study-specific basis. QualiAnon documents the replacements and allows for data exports of varying sensitivity. You can find further information on the slides for the virtual launch in German and in English.

QualiAnon is an open source software. We provide the software, a manual and at a later date also the program code via GitHub. You can find it on https://github.com/pangaea-data-publisher/qualianon and access the repository directly to download the latest version of QualiAnon. You also have access to accompanying materials such as the manual. If you have any questions or problems, please send us an email to qualianon@uni-bremen.de and we will be happy to help you. We also welcome feedback on QualiAnon so that the tool can continue to be developed in a good and meaningful way in the future.

If you would like to stay informed about improvements of the QualiAnon tool, you can subscribe to our news list here.

For further questions, please contact us via qualianon@uni-bremen.de or via our website.