An explanation of why MRDCL may or may not be the right replacement for Quantum. Hundreds of software platforms now produce crosstabulations (sometimes called crosstabs, tables or tabulations). However, there is a massive difference between what Excel and top-end tabulation software products like Quantum, MRDCL, and Merlin can produce in terms of crosstabs.
I remember in 1995 or thereabouts reading a prediction that proved to be wrong. The prediction was that, within five years, scripting market research analysis would be dead. Here we are in 2020, and complex or high volume market research…
We are frequently asked by potential clients whether QPSMR Insight or MRDCL is the most suitable product for their needs…
Whether you are producing online questionnaires, tabulations or reports, some market research software systems have friendly user interfaces and others use scripting languages. If you choose to buy a system that has powerful scripting, such as the MRDCL, how do you go about learning the language?
I have always admired Quantum as a market research analysis program. It is still powerful enough to process most survey tabulations, but after almost 20 years without development, its position has slipped. Whilst still functionally strong, modern releases of Windows do not support Quantum. The alternatives are few with MRDCL, Merlin and Uncle being the main choices.
EPS is a technique built into MRDCL which allows you to construct your own templates so that you can read instructions stored in an Excel workbook/worksheet that will generate variables, tables or whatever else you want.
When you get a series of support requests where the recipients of the support reply something like “thanks, but that’s quite tedious to script”, you realise you need to show someone a better way.
One of the topics where we receive most support requests for MRDCL is in the handling of numeric fields or the usage of arithmetic. In this article, I will try to cover most of the issues raised and explain how and why MRDCL works the way it does.
There are many market research tabulation or crosstab software packages available, but few handle tables from tracking studies as well as MRDCL. Tracking studies ..usually become easier to manage… however, the data processing, tabulations and reporting often present problems.
If you are considering purchasing MRDCL, one of the questions you are likely to ask yourself is why is MRDCL more expensive than many other tabulation software packages and is it worth the expenditure?
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MRDC Software has been supplying software for market research since 1992. It is known around the world for its leading tabulation software, MRDCL, but has expanded its portfolio of products to have productivity-focused software for data collection, data analysis, reporting and dashboards.
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