Clare Tagg (Tagg Oram Partnership, www.taggoram.co.uk)

Unusually for a qualitative researcher, I have a BA in Mathematics and an MSc in Computer Science. My career includes working as a mathematician for the Bank of England, as a researcher at the London School of Economics and as a lecturer on computer science and management courses at the University of Hertfordshire and the Open University. At the age of 40 I became a full-time student again and began a PhD exploring the human aspects of software development via the longitudinal study of large software developments. During my PhD I became immersed in qualitative research and the use of software so that my PhD took 10 years to complete!

Together with other members of my family, we formed the Tagg Oram Partnership in 1991, to help people effectively exploit information technology. For the last 15 years, I have been a partner specializing in helping research students, university research projects and organizations undertaking contract research to use software to support qualitative research.

My approach with any research team is to consider first the nature of the research (the research question, methodology, goal and timescale) and the researchers (their expertise and research background) and then to show the team how to use software to further their aims. I have worked with The Qualifications & Curriculum Development Agency for many years on a variety of projects and have assisted them with their use of previous versions of QSR software (N4, N5, N6, NVivo7) and Sphinx.

In addition to my work on qualitative software, I also manage software projects which exploit new communication technologies. Together with other members of the partnership I am working on how these may be applied in the research community to support collaborative working and communication of research results.

Contact:
Clare Tagg, Tagg Oram Partnership
Tel: +44 1462 896600 Fax: +44 1462 895777
http://www.taggoram.co.uk