Researchers usually rely on computers to deal with quantitative data-that is, numerical measures- but electronic technology is also assisting us with qualitative data, such as information obtained in observation research. Numerous software programs such as Ethnograph and Nud*ist allow the researcher not only to record his or her observations, like a word processing program, but also to identify common behavioral patterns or similar concerns expressed in interviews. For example, after observing student in a college cafeteria and recording your observations over several weeks, you could then group your observations related to certain variables, such as “soror-ity” or “study group” (Dohan and Sanchez-Jankowski1998).