When you’re working on a qualitative data analysis project with a team, it’s essential to know how to import components of one project into other projects. For example, you might split up larger projects between 2 or 3 different coders, then combine your results into one master project to generate reports.

Importing project elements also allows you to reuse work you’ve completed on previous projects. A coding scheme developed for a project involving the analysis of presidential inaugural addresses might turn out to be useful for another project classifying media election coverage.

Qualrus makes it easy to import components from other projects such as codes, scripts and link types, or completely merge two projects into one.

Step 1: Prepare your “donor” project

Your “donor” project contains the components you’re interested in merging with your master project. In order to correctly pull information from this project, you should make sure it is working properly.

The absolute best way to get your donor project ready to is open it up and export it. Go up to File > Export > All project files. This creates a complete working copy of your project and ensures it’s ready for importing.

Step 2: Open Master project and start the Import

With your donor project ready to go, close it and open your Master project (this is the project you ultimately want to contain the combined information).

Select File > Import > …from another project

You will see a window in which you can select the Qualrus project file (*.IQP) to merge with the current project. Select your donor project and click Open.

Step 3: Choose import options

The import window gives you full control over which components you want to import.

The defaults tab allows you to select the types of components you wish to import. The other tabs (Codes, Links, Sources, Segments, Scripts) allow you to designate specific components themselves.

In most cases, you’ll want to import everything, but this is up to you.

This import feature has a built-in validation checking routine to make sure that when important each component all of the other components required for it are also imported. For example, if we wish to import a link between two codes X and Y then we must have code X and code Y in the project.

Keep in mind that if you have an identical source in both your donor and master project that you want to be treated as a single source, the source must have an identical name in each project. Otherwise, Qualrus will treat them as two different sources.

Step 4: Don’t disable verification

When you click OK, Qualrus displays a warning that verification to assure consistency may take some time and gives us the option of turning off verification.

Verification is very important to assure that the knowledge base is consistent, so let’s leave it on by selecting “No” when asked if we want to turn it off.

(Modern computers can handle this without taking too much time.)

Step 5: Double-check and save

When the import is finished, you should see the revised project displayed in the main Qualrus window.

Depending on which components you imported, the project can include sources from the other project, all of its codes, and even the assignments of codes to specific segments.

Double check everything for accuracy and save your new merged project.