To create a new project file and import research materials:

• Open NVivo 
• Select the Blank Project tile and enter the file name, description, and location on your computer for the file.
• From the Import tab, select Files
• Select the files to be imported and click the Import button.

To begin your project in NVivo, see the video below.

What is qualitative data analysis or QDA?

Qualitative data is non-quantifiable data collected from resources such as interviews or surveys that researchers analyze by creating a structured, valid and consistent (reliable) Coding Scheme.

Use the resources below to get started with your QDA.

Understand nodes, cases, relationships, and coding

You code your sources to gather material about a topic and store it in a container called a node. As you explore your sources, you select content and code it at a node. When you open any type of node you can see all the references in one place— allowing you to reflect on the data, develop your ideas, compare attitudes and discover patterns.

NVivo Coding Hierarchy 

Nodes

• Nodes represent themes, topics, concepts, ideas, opinions or experiences.
• For example, you could create the node water quality and as you explore your sources (documents, PDFs, datasets, audio, video or pictures) you could code all references to water quality at the node.

Cases

• Cases represent your units of observation—a case might be a person, place, site, organization or any other entity.
• Cases are a special type of node because you can classify them then assign attributes (variables) such as age, gender or location.

Relationships

• Relationships are where you can record statements or hunches you have developed about how items in your project are connected.
• When you create relationships between case nodes, you can generate sociograms to visualize and analyze the connections between your cases.

For visualizations of each click here.

Use the linked resources below to begin coding your data. 

Queries

Queries provide a flexible way to gather and explore subsets of your data. In NVivo, you can create queries to:

• Find and analyze the words or phrases in your sources, annotations, and nodes. You can find specific words or those that occur most frequently.

• Ask questions and find patterns based on your coding and check for coding consistency among team members.

 Query Types

• Text search

  Finds all occurrences of a word, phrase or concept.

• Word frequency

  Lists the most frequently occurring words or concepts.

• Coding

  Finds content coded at nodes or a combination of nodes and attributes.

• Matrix coding

  Find coding intersections between two lists of items.

• Compound

  Used to combine a text search and coding query, two text search queries or two coding queries.

• Coding comparison

  Compares the coding done by two users or two groups of users.

• Group

  Finds items associated by coding, attribute value, and relationships.

See NVivo's query guide for greater detail.

For more information, watch the video series linked below.

Visualizations

Use NVivo to visualize your qualitative data into word frequency charts, graphs, and much more.

NVivo Visualization Types:

• Charts

  Types include bar column, pie, bubble, heat maps, and radar charts.

• Hierarchy charts

  Hierarchy charts visualize a hierarchy, helping you to see patterns in your coding or view the attribute values of cases and sources.

• Mind maps

  A mind map reflects what you think about a single topic and is usually created quickly or spontaneously.

• Concept maps

  You can use a concept map to map out your ideas or to explore and present the connections in your theories.

• Project maps

  Represents project items and their linkages. 

• Comparison diagram

  Comparison diagrams can show you what two items have in common and where they differ.

• Explore diagram

  Explore diagrams focus on a single project item, showing all of the items connected to that item.

• Cluster analysis

  Find patterns by seeing similarities and differences between files or nodes.

• Sociograms

  Displays social networks as a diagram when you want to see how a particular case is connected to other cases in your project.

Watch this video to create visualizations with NVivo.