Develop Software for Ethnographic Research in Drug Abuse

A new approach to data entry, processing, and output is required which exploits the capabilitiesemerging in the microcomputer environment such as voice recognition, voice annotation, and imageprocessing, among others. Phase I objectives will be to develop and demonstrate a prototypeapplication of software for ethnographic research. The goals of the prototype will be to (l) propose anethnographic lexicon and coding schema for use in analysis of drug abuse transcript data from focusgroups; (2) demonstrate the feasibility of processing and analyzing drug abuse ethnographic data usingmicrocomputer based multi-media systems; and (3) demonstrate the feasibility of producing an on-lineprimer of ethnographic research concepts, methods, and findings that can be accessed as an integralpart of the overall system to be developed. If Phase I is successful, Phase II will permit the developmentand potential marketing of the software to ethnographers and other drug abuse researchers.