We are releasing a free, Web-based toolkit for analyzing public comments. I invite anyone interested in public comment research or text analysis more broadly to become a beta tester for the Public Comment Analysis Toolkit (PCAT), which is actually version 2.0 of the Coding Analysis Toolkit: http://pcat-help.qdap.net/doku.php?id=why_would_i_use_this_system We launch officially tomorrow, but the test site is up and operational: http://pcat-test.qdap.net/app/main.aspx Starting Friday, you can drop the "-test" from the url. Among the reasons to try PCAT: # This is a free service. # The system is fast, secure and scalable. # It is based on carefully researched principles of efficiency, accuracy, validity, usability, and transparency. # It is equally useful to public and private actors and accessible to all. # It is very easy to learn and you can't break it. like CAT, PCAT should be useful to anyone interested in advancing the science of annotation and replication in text analysis research. ~Stu -- Dr. Stuart W. Shulman Assistant Professor Department of Political Science University of Massachusetts Amherst 200 Hicks Way Amherst, MA 01003 http://people.umass.edu/stu/ stu@polsci.umass.edu 413-545-5375 Editor, Journal of Information Technology and Politics http://www.jitp.net Director, QDAP-UMass http://www.umass.edu/qdap/ Associate Director, National Center for Digital Government http://www.umass.edu/digitalcenter/