All Our Ideas is a research project to develop a new form of social data collection that combines the best features of quantitative and qualitative methods. Using the power of the web, we are creating a data collection tool that has the scale, speed, and quantification of a survey while still allowing for new information to "bubble up" from respondents as happens in interviews, participant observation, and focus groups.

The number one criteria on any checklist should be that the tool supports your learning objectives. That being said, there are many other criteria to consider. You can download the full checklist (attached) and use it without reading any further. However, if you’re the type of person who prefers to see how a checklist is applied, keep reading to see how I applied this checklist during a search for a specific type of tool.

A comprehensive package for the analysis of social network data as well as other 1-mode and 2-mode data. Can read and write a multitude of differently formatted text files, as well as Excel files. Can handle a maximum of 32,767 nodes (with some exceptions) although practically speaking many procedures get too slow around 5,000 - 10,000 nodes. Social network analysis methods include centrality measures, subgroup identification, role analysis, elementary graph theory, and permutation-based statistical analysis. In addition, the package has strong matrix analysis routines, such as matrix algebra and multivariate statistics.