CACTI

CACTI is a small Windows application whose purpose is to provide a convenient way for helping you analyze the audio files that contain motivational interviews. This audio player is able to process audio data and code the content.

Motivational interviewing is used for identifying and characterizing potential mechanisms of treatment and behavior change. It handles real-time sequential coding of behavioral interactions using the WAV file format.

This is a Java-based tool so you should previously install the working environment on your computer.

The portable running mode helps you run the tool by simply opening the executable file. If you want to uninstall the program from your computer, you simply need to delete the files that you have downloaded from the Internet.

You may store it on any USB flash drive or other portable devices. It doesn’t leave any traces in your Windows registry, so you can run it without administrative privileges.

The GUI looks clean and simple at a first glance. However, some background parsing and coding skills are required in order to make the most out of its capabilities. There’s also support for a help manual that may shed some light upon the features of the program.

The audio files can be added in the working environment using the built-in browse button, so you cannot rely on the drag-and-drop support. It works only with WAV file format.

CACTI gives you the possibility to rate audio-recorded sessions electronically and in real time. You can make use of three modes, namely parsing continuous behavior data from a WAV file into codeable utterances, sequentially coding previously parsed utterances, and assigning Likert-type global ratings.

All CACTI output files may be opened as tab-delimited text or spreadsheet files and imported into statistical software applications for analysis.

Playback controls help you pause or resume the audio file, rewind, remove parses or codes, and extend the previous utterances. Other functions enable you to pick the beginnings and ends of parses or assign codes to pre-parsed utterances.

CACTI comes with a handy suite of features for helping you carry out pre-parsing, sequential coding and assignment of global ratings, and can be used for simplifying the psychotherapy process research.