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Tools for preparing qualitative research data

The Qualiservice anonymization tool QualiAnon

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. The slides for the event can be found here 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. The latest version of the tool, QualiAnon v.1.1.1, has been released on October 5, 2021. If you want to test QualiAnon, feel free to send us a message to qualianon@uni-bremen.de. We will then register you as a user for the GitHub repository and you will get access as well as the possibility to give feedback, ask questions or contribute to the further development of the tool.

If you would like to stay informed about improvements of the QualiAnon tool, you can subscribe to our news list https://mailman.zfn.uni-bremen.de/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/quali-anon. Here you can subscribe and unsubscribe to the list.

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