[Air-L] CAT User Survey Starts Next Week

[Stuart Shulman]

Folks,

On Monday, all holders of Coding Analysis Toolkit user accounts and
sub-accounts will receive a 'token' via email from the University
Center of Social and Urban Research. This unique "link" will take you
into a 10-20 minute web-based survey we have spent most of the
semester crafting.

The CAT system has grown steadily from a comparison/adjudication tool,
to a full-fledged coding and analysis system. We are also beta-testing
our new Blog Scraper, which will archive blog posts for you and output
them in CAT-ready format.

https://surveyweb2.ucsur.pitt.edu/qblog/page_login.php
(blog scraper tool)

To complete the survey, you will need to have used and be familiar
with at least some part of CAT. The survey will be open until May 15.
Anyone who has completed the survey and who has uploaded datasets to
CAT (with the exception of friends & family) will be entered in a
drawing for an iPod Nano worth ~$200. We will give away one Nano for
every hundred (or portion of a hundred) completed surveys. If there
are 101 completed surveys, we will give away two Nanos.

At this point there are more than 250 primary account holders and 100
sub-account holders. We see that a core group of about 50 primary
account holders have datasets loaded and sub-accounts created. We
would very much like to increase this number.

This web survey will let us know what direction to take the toolkit
and it will provide fodder for an ongoing study by myself and my PhD
student. If at all possible, please take the time to upload even just
a very small dataset and give CAT a try. Numerous improvements have
resulted from past feedback. We hope you will join the active user
group and take the time to complete the survey.

You can generate a dataset using the blog scraper tool or your can
download sample data and codes at:

http://www.qdap.pitt.edu/data/Sample_Data_Codes.zip

You can also prepare your own data following instructions at:

http://www.qdap.pitt.edu/cat-dataprep.htm

Finally, you can learn about "Loading and Coding Raw Data" via a
narrated tutorial slide show at:

http://www.qdap.pitt.edu/cat-tutorial.htm

This is an exciting time in the history of CAT. We recently added a
second programmer and have seen the system move steadily toward our
goal of making it the best human annotation system out there. With
your help, it will reach that goal.

thanks,
Stu