I'm often asked what tools I use to collect, record and visualise data. I almost always collect data using a semi-structured interview technique. I find the results are richer and allow me to explore areas that a web-enabled survey won't allow. Similarly, I almost always record the answers directly into Microsoft Excel, although this isn't always practical. Quite often I build a database in Microsoft Access and manipulate data as required. My analysis and visualisation tools of choice are UCINET , NetDraw , and NetMiner 3 . Each has its strengths and weaknesses, which I might deal with in another post. Increasingly, however I find myself using NodeXL ; at least to do the hack work.
NodeXL is a free Microsoft Excel 2007 add-in. I blogged about NodeXL some months ago when it was called ".NetMap", however I understand for legal reasons the name was changed to NodeXL. NodeXL is now at build 88 and just gets better and better. It now features zoom and scale, more metrics, better ribbon layout, more filtering options, additional layouts, and better control over the graph pane contents.
Once again I’m running a Network Analysis seminar at the 
