Using Software in Qualitative Research
A Step-by-Step Guide
NVivo
NVivo is a product of QSR International Pty Ltd.
The software developers were unable to contribute to these pages. They have been compiled by
Ann Lewins, Christina Silver and Jen Patashnick of QDAS http://www.qdaservices.com
NVivo 10 (SP4) provides a flexible range of different ways to handle the analysis of qualitative data - good code and retrieve tools with powerful tools for data visualisation and interrogation. A wide range of multimedia and social media data types are acceptable to NVivo. Certain types of information are auto-processed on import. Functionality can change between Service Packs
Getting started in NVivo.
As you will see in the subsequent pages – there are various types of data which can be imported and some of them are auto-processed as they are imported.
- You can create an empty project and later import multiple media data types
These pages are followed by other tasks of data import, data preparation, organisation, coding and analysis.
Part of these sections are oriented to Case Study A. Young People’s perceptions of Sex Education in Schools and we provide a selection of ideas for processing textual data with some support for multimedia. The aim is to familiarize you sufficiently with the software that you gain a sense of direction with it. We do not attempt to provide comprehensive cover concerning every type of data acceptable to NVivo. Later sections may rely on material oriented to other sample data due to technical issues and time constraints. Note that even though tasks are covered in Chapter order here, once you are working in a software ‘project’ there is no clear linearity or set sequence in the way things have to be achieved.See downloadable working projects and data.
In Chapter 5 to help get you started, we talk about productive things you can do in the early stages of setting up a ‘project’ in software. Experimenting with these processes where relevant in your chosen software will help to become familiar with useful entities in the software. We keep the subject matter of other chapters in mind as the step by step tasks in these pages get deeper into the interpretive and interrogation processes of analysing different media.
Varied approaches to qualitative data analysis inform how we discuss the functions of software. Get Started!