Data Science, Interactive Visualizations, and Generative AI Tools for the Analysis of Qualitative, Mixed-Methods, and Multimodal Evidence

Too many qualitative and mixed-methods researchers are currently being asked to make an impossible choice: either remain outside the world of advanced data science and artificial intelligence, or enter it by learning programming, relying on expensive proprietary platforms, and uploading sensitive data to external servers. This book begins from a different premise: researchers should not have to choose between rigor, accessibility, privacy, and interpretive depth. Data Science, Interactive Visualizations, and Generative AI Tools for the Analysis of Qualitative, Mixed-Methods, and Multimodal Evidence presents an integrated methodological ecosystem for ethical and equity-driven data science in qualitative and mixed-methods research. It is designed for scholars working with textual, relational, temporal, affective, spatial, visual, and multimodal evidence who want access to rigorous data science and AI-supported analytic tools without needing to master programming, pay recurring fees, or surrender control of sensitive materials.

The book introduces a fully local, no-code ecosystem of software tools for analyzing complex evidence across multiple layers of inquiry-from language and structure to time, emotion, interaction, and context. Special attention is given to ISARI (Intelligent Systems for Academic Research Integration), a fully offline, open-source, multimodal brainstorming partner designed to support scholarly memoing, comparison, synthesis, and evidence-grounded writing. ISARI is presented not as a substitute for interpretation, but as part of a broader local analytic environment in which computational outputs remain accountable to researchers’ judgment and to participants’ original evidence.

This is not a book about replacing researchers with AI. It is a book about giving researchers ethical, privacy-conscious, and equity-driven access to advanced analytic tools that have too often remained restricted to those with programming expertise or privileged institutional support. By bringing together interactive visualizations, machine learning, natural language processing, geocontextualization, temporal analysis, relational modeling, and local generative AI, this book offers a practical and forward-looking vision for doing rigorous research without compromising transparency, scholarly control, or data sovereignty. It is intended for researchers, faculty, graduate students, institutional analysts, and interdisciplinary scholars interested in expanding their analytic toolkit while preserving methodological accountability and interpretive authority.