What Can You Do With Taguette for Qualitative Data Analysis?

Updated

Taguette is an open-source, web-based tool for tagging documents in qualitative data analysis. According to its homepage, you can upload a collection of documents, build a hierarchy of tags, annotate portions of those documents with tags and notes, and later recall and organize those annotations. It is released under a BSD-3-Clause license, and the site invites you to register for free to get started.

The Core Workflow

Taguette's homepage describes four capabilities that map onto a typical qualitative coding cycle:

  1. Upload a collection of documents — your source material becomes the corpus you analyze.
  2. Create a hierarchy of tags — this is your codebook, organized as parent and child tags rather than a flat list.
  3. Annotate portions of documents — you select a span of text and attach one or more tags, plus notes.
  4. Recall and organize annotations later — tagged excerpts can be retrieved and arranged after the initial pass.

The important detail is that tagging happens on portions of documents, not whole files. That makes it a close fit for line-by-line or paragraph-level coding of interviews, field notes, or open-ended survey responses.

What Each Capability Is Good For

Uploading documents

If your analysis starts from a folder of transcripts or notes, Taguette lets you work from that collection directly in the browser instead of juggling separate files. The homepage does not specify supported file formats, so check the user documentation before assuming a particular format will import cleanly.

Building a tag hierarchy

A hierarchy matters when your coding scheme has structure — for example, a parent tag like "motivation" with child tags for "intrinsic" and "extrinsic." Because the homepage describes tags as hierarchical rather than flat, you can revise the structure as themes emerge instead of committing to a fixed list up front.

Annotating with tags and notes

Attaching a note alongside a tag lets you record why you applied a code, not just that you did. This is the difference between a bare code and an analytic memo, and it is useful when you return to the data weeks later.

Recalling and organizing annotations

The value of coding accumulates only if you can pull tagged excerpts back together. Taguette's stated ability to recall and organize annotations is what turns individual marks into something you can compare across documents.

Who This Fits

Taguette suits researchers who want a lightweight, browser-based coding tool and are comfortable with an open-source project. The homepage presents it as free to register and use, and the BSD-3-Clause license means the source is openly licensed.

It is less suited to work that depends on features the homepage does not mention — for instance, statistical analysis, automatic coding, or team permission controls. If those matter to you, verify them in the user documentation before committing.

Getting Started

The homepage points to three entry points: a Guide, a Log in option, and a Register now for free prompt. The practical path is to register, then read the guide before uploading your first corpus, so you understand how tags and documents relate before you build a codebook you have to restructure later.

For issues or questions, the site directs users to GitLab or [email protected]. The current release listed is Taguette 1.5.2-3-gf706e2e.