<h3>Free or cheap tools for systematic reviews, qualitative research, and quantitative research</h3> This wiki page is supplemental to: Peters, G.-J. Y. (2014). [A practical guide to effective behavior change: How to identify what to change in the first place.](https://ehps.net/ehp/index.php/contents/article/download/ehp.v16.i5.p142/7) *European Health Psychologist, 16* (5), 142-155. A lot of software exists that can facilitate conducting research. [This is an overview][15] of free or cheap tools for different types of studies. - **Systematic reviews and meta-analyses:** - The [Systematic Review Toolbox](http://systematicreviewtools.com) lists a *lot* of tools for systematic reviews, many of which are free. Excellent place to start if you're looking for something! - [JabRef][1] is a reference manager, similar to EndNote and Mendeley, but much more convenient for screening records. In JabRef, it is possible to use as many custom fields as you want (to keep track of your screening progress), and you can configure exactly which fields are visible. This makes it very fit for screening with independent screeners, and from blinding screeners from authors, journal titles, etc. JabRef works on all platforms (i.e. Windows, Apple, and Ubuntu). - [LibreOffice][2] is a free office suite that works with the Open Document Format. It has a spreadsheet editor that can be used for extracting data and then preparing it for analysis. - [Metafor][3] is a very powerful package for conducting meta-analysis. It is freely available for the open source statistical program [R][4]. - [Digitize](https://cran.r-project.org/package=digitize) is a tool (like metafor, an R package) to import data from a digital image. Very useful if a paper reports only very little results in the text and you have to derive numbers from figures. - **Qualitive research:** - [VLC][5] is a very versatile media player that can be used for transcribing audio fragments. It has two features that really help out. First, so-called 'global hotkeys' can be configured: key combinations that control the program and that work even when the user is 'in' another program, such as typing in a text-editor. Second, VLC has functions for jumping back (e.g. 3 or 10 seconds). This means that while you type your transcription in e.g. [LibreOffice][2] or [Notepad++][6], you can simply use key combinations to pause the interview and rewind a bit. - For qualitative analysis, no free tools exist. That is, some exist, but most are geared towards a different type of qualitative analysis; they require you to define the to-be-coded fragments in advance (this is a problem of [CAT][7]) or are created for direct coding of audio and video material (e.g. [AQUAD][8]). There is a list of software at the site of the [University of Illinois][9]. One package that is currently under development, and already ready for use for coding, is [QualiCoder][10]. Currently, this is free, and it will remain very cheap, also when it's finished. It allows creation of hierarchical coding structures on the fly. - **Quantitative research:** - [LimeSurvey][11] is a very powerful free online survey system. It supports many question types, exports data directly to SPSS or [R][4], and has advanced tailoring capabilities. - [OpenSesame](http://osdoc.cogsci.nl/) is a program to create experiments for psychology, neuroscience, and experimental economics, which you can use if you need to measure reaction times or have complicated experimental designs. - [PsyToolkit](https://www.psytoolkit.org/) is a free online suite of tools to design and run experimental studies. Since this software runs on a server in the UK, you may have to check whether you're allowed to use it under the GDPR. - [R][4] is a statistical package similar to SPSS, but much more powerful, and, once you got the hang of it, more userfriendly. Since R is an open source programming language, it is easily extensible, and packages have been written that can do almost anything you can think of. [R][4] supports multi-level modeling, structural equation modeling, but also power analyses and confidence intervals for correlation coefficients and other effect size measures. - **All research:** - Whatever you do, it is important to carefully consider how you will publish your data and other resources (see [this paper][12] and [this one][13]). The site you're currently seeing, the [Open Science Framework][14], is a free repository where you can store your resources and data. If there are other useful tools that you think should be added to this list, feel free to contact me! [1]: http://jabref.org [2]: http://libreoffice.org [3]: http://metafor-project.org [4]: http://r-project.org [5]: http://videolan.org [6]: http://notepad-plus-plus.org [7]: http://cat.ucsur.pitt.edu/ [8]: http://aquad.de [9]: http://uiuc.libguides.com/content.php?pid=454781&sid=3726434 [10]: http://qualicoder.com [11]: http://limesurvey.org [12]: http://www.ehps.net/ehp/issues/2012/v14iss4_December2012/14_4_Peters,Abraham,Crutzen.pdf [13]: http://www.ehps.net/ehp/issues/2013/v15iss3_September2013/Fuller_EHP_September_2013.pdf [14]: http://osf.io [15]: https://osf.io/fp8kv/wiki