Bar, column, and pie charts can be customized to match your style, and cluster analyses can be run to compare and contrast coding patterns. Researchers can choose to use word clouds and words trees to display frequently appearing words in text and provide surrounding context to the data. The program offers packaged queries and reports including word search and word frequency options, but new queries can be created with the help of a wizard that walks you through each step of query implementation.Ĭreating effortless, high-quality pictorial representation of data might be my favorite feature of this software. Running analyses or queries with NVivo is actually a fun task. You can keep track of your thoughts by creating memos and annotations linked to the data to facilitate insight into your research. Highlighting of previously coded pieces reminds you of work you have already completed and supports reflection of your work to monitor emerging themes. You can simply highlight a section of text and move it into a node of your choosing. One of my favorite features is the “drag and drop” function that allows for quick coding of sections of text. NVivo labels these storage containers as “nodes.” Nodes can represent anything that the researcher wants them to be and grants easy organization and reorganization of themes in the data.
This wide range of data importation makes this software attractive to researchers using various methods of data collection.Ĭoding data around themes is a key characteristic of qualitative research. Bibliographic references can even be imported from EndNote, Mendeley, RefWorks, and Zotero to help manage literature reviews. A cool new feature of version 10 supports the use of Web pages, social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter), YouTube, and SurveyMonkey to directly import data. Almost any form of audio, photo, and video files can be imported along with Excel spreadsheets and Access databases.
docx), Portable Document Format (.pdf), rich text (.rtf), and plain text (.txt) formats. Documents can be imported from Microsoft Word (.doc and. 1 NVivo allows researchers to collect, organize, and analyze these varied data types. Qualitative research encourages varied sources of information including interviews, field notes, video recordings, images, documents, press clippings, and photographs. The task ribbon permits quick completion of tasks and offers a “wizard” to run queries and create reports. The software workspace is fashioned after the Microsoft Office interface, so it will immediately look familiar to users of Outlook, with a panel to the left containing folders and a larger panel to the right containing a project outline above and detailed documents below. What this program does offer is an easy to use format to help you sort, organize, and classify data until you find the answer to the research question you are seeking.įor a complex program, NVivo is very user friendly. While some automatic coding functions exist within this program, the brain behind the process is yours.
Let me answer the question that everyone must be asking themselves: “Is there a magic button I can click to make the program code the data for me?” Unfortunately, NVivo software cannot do all of the work for us.
NVivo 10, released in 2012 by QSR International, can assist researchers carrying out this type of research by offering easy to use tools for organization and analysis of such data.
This type of research affords rich description of data, yet quantitatively trained researchers are often uncomfortable with this type of data analysis. Qualitative research within pharmacy education is increasing in popularity.