| 摘要 |
A software-based system for organizing information and conducting thematic inquiry using inductive analysis of material from multiple sources. The user gathers material on a chosen topic from multiple sources and for each source composes ideas that express the key concepts found in the source material. The software automatically pools the ideas from all the sources and presents them in a particular display format supported by a graphical organizing capacity; the goal is to aid the user in abstracting from these ideas a smaller group of distilled ideas which express the themes or commonalities within the pool. The software then presents the distilled ideas in the same display format supported by the same graphical organizing capacity so that the user may abstract a smaller group of ultradistilled ideas which express the themes or commonalities within the distilled ideas. Through this iterative, inductive process the user creates an idea pyramid - a pyramid of progressively distilled thought and thematic expression built on a base of source material. A user can trace back from an ultradistilled idea at the apex, through the associated distilled ideas to the associated ideas in the pool, and from there to the source material from which the ideas in the pool were derived. The system enables the user to discern thematic order in complex and sprawling data from heterogeneous sources. In a network environment, differentiated interaction privileges would permit building around the idea pyramid a web of commentary, amendment, polling, deepening inquiry in a comparable format, etc. |
