The management of large amounts of data is an important part of many research efforts. Quantitative data are inputted, stored, manipulated, and analyzed using such familiar tools as spreadsheets, database management programs like dBASE or Paradox, and statistics packages. However, some text based data such as bibliographies, text for content analysis, committee hearing transcripts, and historical information are not easily processed using such software. Statistics packages can handle only single words as string variables, and spreadsheets can usefully manage only short segments of text. Traditional database management programs can store and manipulate longer text segments, but many are limited to roughly three lines of text per entry or field unless they have a feature called a memo field to be discussed below.

When we covered this topic for PS three years ago, we concluded that high end word processing packages should be considered first by most scholars who work with text data. We noted that advanced word processors contain search and sort capabilities that may be sufficient for many needs.