[Air-L] Beta Testers Invited - The Public Comment Analysis Toolkit (PCAT)

[Stuart Shulman]

We are releasing a free, Web-based toolkit for analyzing public comments. I
invite anyone interested in public comment research or text analysis more
broadly to become a beta tester for the Public Comment Analysis Toolkit
(PCAT), which is actually version 2.0 of the Coding Analysis Toolkit:

http://pcat-help.qdap.net/doku.php?id=why_would_i_use_this_system

We launch officially tomorrow, but the test site is up and operational:

http://pcat-test.qdap.net/app/main.aspx

Starting Friday, you can drop the "-test" from the url. Among the reasons to
try PCAT:

# This is a free service.
# The system is fast, secure and scalable.
# It is based on carefully researched principles of efficiency, accuracy,
validity, usability, and transparency.
# It is equally useful to public and private actors and accessible to all.
# It is very easy to learn and you can't break it.

like CAT, PCAT should be useful to anyone interested in advancing the
science of annotation and replication in text analysis research.

~Stu

-- 
Dr. Stuart W. Shulman
Assistant Professor
Department of Political Science
University of Massachusetts Amherst
200 Hicks Way
Amherst, MA 01003

http://people.umass.edu/stu/
stu at polsci.umass.edu
413-545-5375

Editor, Journal of Information Technology and Politics
http://www.jitp.net

Director, QDAP-UMass
http://www.umass.edu/qdap/

Associate Director, National Center for Digital Government
http://www.umass.edu/digitalcenter/