ABSTRACT
Computer-assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software (CAQDAS) is no longer in its infancy. In the early 1980s, American sociologists began to appreciate the possibilities for using computers to handle the more mechanical tasks of processing qualitative data even though, by 1984 very few social scientists had access to any programs designed to undertake the tasks envisaged. For qualitative evidence permeates the historian's domain, and must influence the archaeological landscape too. Qualitative Data Analysis (QDA) software has the potential to provide both historians and archaeologists with the tools to interpret evidence qualitatively in a cooperative environment. This chapter examines one project in the historical domain which attempts to evaluate that potential. The Health of the Cecils Project, based at Royal Holloway, University of London, was funded by the Wellcome Trust for three years to study the attitudes to, and the experience of, health care in one of the great aristocratic households of early modern England.
