RESEARCH METHODS TRAINING DATA ANALYSIS

Transcription

1 RESEARCH METHODS TRAINING DATA ANALYSIS MANAGING QUALITATIVE DATA An Introduction to NVivo Duncan Branley

2 Contents Managing Qualitative Data: Introduction to NVivo... 2 Learning Outcome Targets... 2 Assessment... 2 NVivo Course: Conventions, Practice Files and Other Resources... 3 Typographical Conventions... 3 NVivo Menu Commands... 3 Exercises... 3 Jargon... 3 Pre-prepared Course Files... 3 Versions... 3 How can a Computer Programme Help in Qualitative Research?... 4 What type of data might you want to organise or analyse?... 4 The Core of Qualitative Data Analysis Software: Coding and Retrieving... 4 Starting NVivo and Managing Projects... 5 The Launch Pad... 5 NVivo Projects... 5 Create a Project... 6 The Project Pad... 6 Closing a Project... 7 Opening a Project... 7 Deleting a Project... 7 Saving a Project... 8 Backing Up a Project... 8 Restoring a Backed-up Project... 9 Creating Documents...10 Memos Journal Importing Documents...12 The Document Explorer...13 Using Sets...14 Linking Documents...15 Creating a Link Following a Link DocLinks and NodeLinks...15 DataBites...15 Removing a Link DocLinks and NodeLinks...15 DataBites...15 Coding Documents...16 The Core of Qualitative Data Analysis Software: Coding and Retrieving How to Code How to See What Has Been Coded In an Individual Document...18 Viewing All Text in Your Project Coded at a Node...18 Removing Coding Section Coding Web-pages Warning Creating Nodes Before Coding Document and Node Attributes...21 Querying Your Data: The Search Tool...22 Stage 1 - Search Operations (NV1.3) or Find (NV2.0) One Item Searches...22 Combination Searches...22 Stage 2 - Scope Stage 3 - Handle Results (NV1.3) or Spread Finds (NV2.0) Producing Reports and Profiles...24 Modelling Your Ideas Graphically...24 NVivo Support Within College...25 Further Info Goldsmiths' Research Methods Training NVivo Orientation (versions 1.3 and 2.0)

3 Managing Qualitative Data: Introduction to NVivo Qualitative data is a term that comes from the social sciences, referring to data which is meaningful, but which cannot be counted (countable data being known as quantitative). However its application is not limited to the social sciences - arts and humanities disciplines analyse their texts (in the fullest sense of the term) for various characteristics. For instance, transcribed interviews, play/film scripts and newspaper articles can be analysed in similar ways should you so decide; audio and visual digital files can be analysed too. NVivo is a type of computer software that can support the management of qualitative data and help in their analysis (Computer Aided Qualitative Data Analysis Software or CAQDAS!). The introductory course will give you the opportunity to explore NVivo and see if it could be useful to you in your research. The session will be hands-on. The data analysed in the course are real (ie not dummy data) and in the public domain (from websites and activist alert lists). They concern issues of gender, ethnicity, sexuality and religious identity. Learning Outcome Targets At the end of the session you should be aware of how to: Set up and manage a 'project' in NVivo Create, format and import data files Link data files 'Code' textual data - both 'up' from the data and 'down' from existing analytical categories so understanding that the software does not demand a particular methodological approach Code non-textual data (audio, still image and video files) Query your data Model ideas graphically Produce reports. Assessment Assessment is based on completing exercises successfully during the class. Goldsmiths' Research Methods Training NVivo Orientation (versions 1.3 and 2.0)

4 NVivo Course: Conventions, Practice Files and Other Resources Typographical Conventions There are two typographical conventions which you should be aware of: NVivo Menu Commands Commands from the menu will appear in plain text set off by a bullet point. Each stage of the command is separated by an upward bar ( ). For example, shortly you will be starting NVivo; the commands for this are shown as follows: Start Goldsmiths IS Supported Software NVivo Exercises Exercise n At points during this course there are numbered exercises for you to do. They are shown in boxes just like this in a different font, with the heading Exercise n in bold. Jargon Pre-prepared Course Files Jargon: explanations of jargon will be put in boxes like this with the jargon term(s) in bold. There are some pre-prepared files for you to use during this course (and later if you wish). To access these: Exercise 1 Start Windows Explorer and navigate to i:\sware\qual-data\nvivo\course. Double click the file nvivo-course.exe, click OK and the files will be copied to a folder on your personal network area (n:\qsr Projects). If this folder does not exist already, it will be created automatically The course files need c 1 MB space, but you can delete them later and reinstall them if you find that you are running out of room. Further files are held on the i-drive area. You can also request an increase in your quota from the Computer Services HelpDesk, which should happen within 48 hours of your request. Figure 1: Finding the Course Files Versions Figure 2: Once you have double clicked nvivo-course.exe The version on Open Access PCs is 1.3. This will be updated to 2.0 soon. You can obtain version 2.0 for use at home. Differences are shown in the text (NV1.3 or NV2.0) and by side by side screenshots. Projects can be opened by either version without problem. Goldsmiths' Research Methods Training NVivo Orientation (versions 1.3 and 2.0)

5 How can a Computer Programme Help in Qualitative Research? The main advantages of a computer over an exclusively manual approach include: The ability to sort and query your data very quickly - freeing you up to think about the data. The exposing of 'gaps' in your data, thereby encouraging comprehensiveness. This is particularly so for relatively structured data, but it can also be applied to non-structured data, where asking questions of your data in a structured way can reveal meaningful absences. The main downside is that you have to learn the programme! Fortunately such programmes are becoming increasingly user-friendly (having a similar feel to the main Windows environment) and can be exploited as you see fit - it's unlikely that you'll want to use all the features of a programme in one research project. (NB An important caveat is that you should regard any computer programme as an AID to doing your analysis. You decide on your methodological approach and then use the computer to help you achieve your goals, not the other way round.) NVivo is particularly fully featured - but to get started productively, you need only know the main outlines of the programme and a few basic caveats. Therefore in this course we'll get oriented within NVivo and explore some of its core functions, useful to researchers in the humanities and social sciences. What type of data might you want to organise or analyse? Text files - articles, free-form interviews, structured interviews, reflections on your research, proposals and theoretical and literature reviews. Multimedia files - audio files (possibly from interviews), still image files, video files. Data not in computerised format - non-transcribed interviews, books or newspaper clippings. NVivo can only analyse text files internally. However, you can write textual notes (known as proxy documents ) about multimedia data, which link to computer files containing multimedia data. As long as you have a programme on your computer to 'play' these files, you can generate a multimedia experience of your research. You can create proxy documents for data not in computerised format too. The Core of Qualitative Data Analysis Software: Coding and Retrieving Coding: label sections of your documents with concepts which are meaningful to your project. In NVivo these sections can be from a single character to a whole document. Each section can have many labels allowing concepts to overlap. Retrieving: search for combinations of concepts (relating in a variety of ways) across all or a subset of all of your documents. This finds and collects a copy of the text coded at these concepts all in one new document. Three documents with text passages coded A, B or C. The text from all documents coded is retrieved in a separate document for each code. Figure 3 Schematic view of Coding and Retrieving Goldsmiths' Research Methods Training NVivo Orientation (versions 1.3 and 2.0)

6 Starting NVivo and Managing Projects Start Goldsmiths IS Supported Software NVivo The Launch Pad When you start NVivo this screen appears: Figure 4 The Launch Pad You can click on the buttons on this screen or use the menu at the top - you have a few more options there. As you move the cursor over a button it changes (NV1.3 text goes red, NV2.0 highlighting turns brown). There are tutorial projects included with NVivo which you can use but not save changes to. For this course there is a pre-prepared project called Lambeth which you have already copied to your personal network area and so can save changes you make to it. To open a standard tutorial, click on the button and choose from: Bush Schooling: unstructured data on remote schooling in Australia. Get on with Living: unstructured interviews with people with spinal injury. Violence Prevention: structured interviews from Colorado. NVivo Projects Project - all the internal computer files relating to your current research project (rich text documents and codes). Each project has its own directory. You can only work on one project at a time. Figure 5 The Lambeth Project Viewed in Windows Explorer Figure 5 shows a project in Windows Explorer. Projects have two main sub-folders with further sub- folders: all users: can be used to place files you want to import into NVivo (eg Source Documents) or to link to later on from within NVivo (eg External DataBites). You do not have to, but if you do, when you back up a project (see Backing Up a Project below ) all of these files will be backed up too. This may have file space implications for you, if you are working with large amounts of data. An alternative is to have a separate folder outside of the main project folder. database.nv1: Please be careful: if you try to open the files in the database.nv1 folder and its subfolders, you can corrupt your project. Do not open this folder. There is no need to at all. Goldsmiths' Research Methods Training NVivo Orientation (versions 1.3 and 2.0)

7 Create a Project You have three ways of creating a project: Click on the Create a Project button, Project New Project - OR - Ctrl+N Each of these brings up the New Project Wizard: Figure 6 The New Project Wizard Wizard a sequence of Dialog boxes which you move through by clicking the Next button until at the final one you click the Finish button. It is a guided way for you to give instructions to the program. Dialog (Box) a box which appears on the screen when you select a menu option. Sometimes you have to enter information in boxes and click OK, other times it is only information for you so just click OK Select Typical, give a name and brief description of your project and then click Finish. This will create and open a project in your default folder location. On Open Access PCs this will be n:\qsr Projects. (Selecting Custom gives you flexibility over where you save your project. You don't need to use this.) Exercise 2 Create a new project called Test Project. The Project Pad When you create a project or open a project another window appears the Project Pad with the project name appearing in the title bar. This replaces the Launch Pad since you cannot have more than one project open at a time. Figure 7 The Project Pad The Project Pad has buttons (and in NV1.3 arrows) which illustrate how NVivo supports the research process. The buttons change similarly to the launch pad. To select a button, click on it. You can choose to hide the Project Pad and just use the menu, by clearing the tick from the box or by selecting Windows Project Pad from the menu (this toggles on and off making it hide or reappear). Goldsmiths' Research Methods Training NVivo Orientation (versions 1.3 and 2.0)

8 Closing a Project From the Project Pad you have two options. You can close a project and leave NVivo open so that you can open another project: Click on the Close Project button - OR - Project Close Project Or you can exit NVivo and in so doing close the currently open project: Project Exit NVivo, Alt+F4 - OR - the click on the cross in the top right hand corner. (The last two are standard ways of quitting Windows programs.) When you do this, you will be prompted to save the project before closing it by the following dialog. You have to deliberately choose No to NOT save your work: Opening a Project Figure 8 Close Project Dialog You can only open a project when you don t have one open already (you can tell because the Launch Pad is showing) Click on the Open a Project button, Project Open Project - OR - Ctrl+O This brings up the following dialog (you will have different projects in your list): Figure 9 Open Project Dialog You can choose from the Project Name drop down list by clicking on the arrow to the right and then clicking on the name of the project you wish to open. You can also click on the Choose button to open projects which are either in different folders or which you haven t opened already. Deleting a Project With no projects open (and hence the Launch Pad showing) you can delete a project permanently along with all of the files in the project folder. Project Delete Project - OR - Ctrl+D This brings up almost the same dialog box as the Open a Project option be careful! The only difference in appearance is that the title bar has Delete instead of Open (contrast with Figure 9) Figure 10 Delete a Project Dialog Goldsmiths' Research Methods Training NVivo Orientation (versions 1.3 and 2.0)

9 Saving a Project You can save your project at any time from the Project Pad window. Project Save Project - OR - Ctrl+S NVivo also has an autosave function the default period is every 15 minutes (change by selecting Tools Options Saving and changing the number of minutes). If you had not saved your project and the power went down, you would lose only the work you had done since the last save or autosave. Backing Up a Project It is good practice to save copies of your projects separate from your computer, for instance, on a CD or a Zip disk. There are three ways of doing this. Directly Saving the Folders and Files You could copy the whole of the project folder and its sub-folders (see NVivo Projects above) using Windows Explorer or My Computer. This is not recommended: there are easier ways. Saving a Copy of an Open Project with NVivo In NV1.3 and NV2.0 you can make a backup copy of a project this saves all the files within the project folder. If you have a lot of files linked to from within NVivo (eg in the 'DataBites' folder) this can take up a significant amount of room. You might want to put these files outside of the project folder to avoid this. Project Save Project As... Brings up the Save Project As dialog box: Figure 11 Save a Copy of a Project NVivo will suggest that the name be like the existing project name except that it will append 2 (etc) so that you do not become confused. In Figure 11 the original project name has "-Backup-yy-mm-dd" so that I can tell exactly when this backup was taken. Normally you should have the same name for the project folder as the project (and remember that you can only have one project in each folder). The only box you may have to clear is the "Close the current project and open the new one" ensure it is unticked and you will have a copy, but will carry on working with the existing project. Making a Single Archive File with NVivo In NV2.0 only you can make a single file archive of your whole project. This is the preferred approach because it ensures that you have all of the files copied properly and avoids problems with files when copied onto CDs. Since NV2.0 is the version you receive as members of the College and will soon be available on Open Access PCs, I will not go into the potential difficulties with earlier versions. Once you have created the archive you have to restore it using NVivo too. To back up into a single archive from the Launch Pad menu (ie with no project open) select Project Backup Project... Goldsmiths' Research Methods Training NVivo Orientation (versions 1.3 and 2.0)

10 Choose the project you wish to backup from the dropdown list. Click Backup. If you wish, change the default file location and file name. It can be very useful to have the date of the backup: add it in the form yy-mm-dd (ie year, month and day) and you will readily be able to identify the dates on which you created your backups. Click Save. A backup copy of your project is created and save as a single compressed file with the extension *.qbk. You will see a confirmation message just click OK. Do not attempt to open this file you need to use NVivo s restore function (see next section). Restoring a Backed-up Project From the Launch Pad menu (ie with no project open) select Project Restore Project... Type the name of the file you wish to restore or use the Locate button to browse for files. The project is restored to the default project location. If you wish to change the project location, click Choose and select a folder or type a new folder name. If you wish, change the project folder name. Check the Open project once restored box to open your project straight away. Click OK. The project is restored from the backup copy you made. When the project has been restored successfully you will be advised to click Choose in the Open Project dialog the next time you open the restored project. This is because although the project folder name may have changed the project name itself is the same. If you do not use Choose, you may find that you start working on a different version of the project. You only need to do this once after restoring a project. Always check a restored project to make sure that the data is current or at least what you intend working on. Exercise 3 Make a copy of Test Project, but continue working with the original one (use Save a Copy). Save the project. Close the project. Delete the copy project you created at step 1. Open the Lambeth project and then close it without saving any changes. Goldsmiths' Research Methods Training NVivo Orientation (versions 1.3 and 2.0)

11 Creating Documents Documents are the main containers of data within NVivo. A major attraction of NVivo for qualitative researchers is that your documents can exploit many of the rich text formatting features which word processors possess. Most other CAQDAS packages require you to use only plain text files. The easiest way to create a document is to use the New Document Wizard by clicking on the Make a Project Document button on the Project Pad or selecting Documents New Document Wizard from the menu and following the steps. CAQDAS - Computer Aided Qualitative Data Analysis Software. Figure 12 The New Document Wizard Step 1 As you can see from Figure 12 there are four main ways of creating a document in NVivo. Importing a copy of a text file prepared in a word processor (eg a transcript) is discussed below at Importing Documents. Step 1 New Blank Document Proxy for Non-File Data Proxy for External Files Step 2 Name Description Data Type Data Location Name Description Navigate to file and click Open to select Name is filename and description is file location Step 3 Choose document design Choose document design Comments Lets you type as you would in a word processor (though note that there is no spell check). Memos Represents noncomputerised data which remains outside of NVivo such as pages in a book or recordings on a tape. NVivo can prepare a document with pages or some other form of counter already entered for you representing the structure of the noncomputerised data. Represents computer files which remain outside of NVivo. Some people like to distinguish between their source data and their reflections on it, by classifying their writing as a memo. If you want to do this, please tick the 'Create document as a memo' box on the first screen of the new document wizard. It makes no difference to what you can do to the document, but does enable you to separate memos from non-memos if that is methodologically meaningful to you. Once you've created a document you can change it to or from a memo by selecting Document Inspect/Change Properties and (un)ticking the box. Goldsmiths' Research Methods Training NVivo Orientation (versions 1.3 and 2.0)

12 Figure 13 Step 2 - Naming and Describing a New Document Figure 14 Step 3 - Designing Your Proxy Document Journal Figure 15 The Proxy Document Created from the Above Steps It is good practice to keep a journal of the work you do on your project that way you have a record of your emerging thoughts, of how your taxonomical system evolved, of what you need to do and perhaps interesting things to follow up at a later point. It can be used to reassure yourself that you have been working (and to demonstrate this to your supervisor) and to help you write your thesis explaining and defending the choices you have made. Doing it regularly helps make reflection on your research quasi-habitual. You create a blank document and can use features in NVivo to help you with this: You can change the font, size and colour of your text. Make a note of what you re using different conventions for in the journal so that you know what you ve done later on if you re puzzled! You can automatically insert today s date and time (perhaps to record a start and end time if you feel that you re putting in too many or not enough hours): o Edit Insert Date and Time Exercise 4: Create a Journal and a Proxy Document Open the project you created in Exercise 2 above (Test Project). Create a new blank document to use as a journal for your research thoughts call it Journal. Insert the date and time and type some brief initial thoughts about your project into your Journal. Explore the text formatting features on the Text Editor menu bar. Have some fun! Close the document. Create a proxy document for a taped interview or a book and type in some notes. Goldsmiths' Research Methods Training NVivo Orientation (versions 1.3 and 2.0)

13 Importing Documents You can also create your files in Word (if you use a transcription service they may provide files in this format or you may be copying data from web-pages) and then import them with most of the Rich Text Format features intact. There are a couple of features which will prevent NVivo importing and some which will be ignored: you need to work around these before you can import your files into NVivo. Full details are in Appendix A of the Reference Guide, pp , but instructions for the main things to look out for are shown in step 1 below. Importing is a three-stage process: 1. Open your document in Word and check that your document has none of the following: Tables - the most likely one from regularly word-processed documents. If it does, you need to convert the table to text: Table Select Table then Table Convert Table to Text Pictures or other 'embedded objects' (especially if you've copied a page from the web) Fields (if it's a mail-merged document, for example) You can search for these sorts of things by clicking on the small button in the bottom right hand corner of the Word window or pressing Alt+Ctrl+Home all at the same time. This brings up the following screen, which enables you to choose which of the ten Word objects you want to browse to (as you move the mouse the selection changes). Click on one to select it and then click the double headed arrows (which have turned blue) to search up and down in your document. If you find one of the forbidden objects, then either remove it (possibly replacing with a textual description) or, if it s a table, deal with it as above: Figure 16 Word's Browse Objects Box 2. In Word save the file as in the Rich Text Format (RTF): File Save As Rich Text Format NB This must be a Word or WordPad RTF file - if you use WordPerfect, you'll need to open the file in Word first and then save a copy as a Word RTF file. On rare occasions even Word RTF seems to cause problems in this case open it using WordPad and save as RTF (same menu commands). NB you are saving a copy here, so the original will remain intact. 3. Import into NVivo by opening the New Document Wizard as above - normally accept the defaults for the file name and description unless you prefer not to. You can format the text in your file so that you can use some of NVivo's functions to ease your later analysis. This is particularly useful for interviews, focus groups (both using names) and structured interviews (using question number). You can do this either before you import into NVivo or afterwards. The basic rule is to have your questions or speaker identifiers on one line and what is spoken on the next line/paragraph. You then apply a Heading style to all the questions or speaker identifiers. See Section Coding below for further details. There is a separate workshop on using NVivo with interviews and focus groups. Exercise 5 Import RTF Documents Open the Lambeth project. There are a number of Rich Text Files (ending in *.RTF) created for this course located at: N:\QSR Projects\Lambeth\All Users\Source Documents\RTFs\BBC You don t need to open these in Word first! Import them all at once into your Lambeth project (click on the first one in the listing, hold down the shift key and then click on the last one to select them all together). Goldsmiths' Research Methods Training NVivo Orientation (versions 1.3 and 2.0)

14 The Document Explorer Once you have a document in your project NVivo has a neat way of letting you access it - the Document Explorer. Figure 17 The Document Explorer It looks rather like Windows Explorer (you can use standard Windows multiple select functions Ctrl+Click for discrete documents and Shift+Click for a contiguous block). You can also sort the listing by the column headings. To open a document highlight it and then click the Browse button or right click and select Browse/Edit/Code Document. You have to open each document separately for browsing, but you can have many open simultaneously. It has a folder which contains links to your Recently Used documents and another one for All Documents. By highlighting a document and clicking on the Properties button, Right-clicking and selecting Inspect/Change Document s Properties or pressing Ctrl+R you can: o o o o Change your document to and from a memo. Rename your document (minor technical point: this only affects how it appears within the program, not as a file within the program). Add or edit the description of your document. Group your documents visually by colouring the icons ( Icon Color ). Figure 18 Document Properties Goldsmiths' Research Methods Training NVivo Orientation (versions 1.3 and 2.0)

15 Using Sets You can group documents into sets too (a set contains a shortcut to the document so a document can appear in many sets) in two main ways: Creating a set and then add documents to it: o From the Document Explorer (see Figure 17 The Document Explorer above) either select Tools Create Set (NV1.3 New Document Set) or right-click on the Sets icon in the left hand pane (intersecting red, blue and green circles) and select Create Set from the shortcut menu. Highlighting a document (or documents using multi-select) and dragging it/them to the Sets icon. These operations will all create a new set with the name 'Untitled Set'. You can rename this by: Overtyping when it is created (when creating an empty set only) Selecting the set by left-clicking a set title, o o waiting for a second and then overtyping clicking on the Properties button; selecting Inspect/Change Set's Properties from the Set menu; right-clicking and selecting Inspect/Change Set's Properties from the shortcut; or Ctrl+R All of these can also be achieved by using the Set Editor, which you access: From the Project Pad click the Sets tab and then the Make or Change a Document Set (NV1.3) or Edit a Document Set (NV2.0) button or From the Document Explorer click the Edit Set icon (NV2.0 only) Figure 19 Accessing the Set Editor Figure 20 The Document Set Editor (NV1.3) You can control all aspects of sets from this dialog box. There are two listings of document sets one is active and has a white background, the other has a shaded background. You switch between them by clicking either on the pane itself or the drop down list of set names above it. There are four in-built sets (which you cannot modify), followed by any you create. You can rename a set you have created here by making it active, clicking Rename (NV1.3) or Set Properties (NV2.0), typing the new name in the box and clicking OK. You can also delete a set you have created. You can move a document into and out of a set by selecting it in the active set and clicking on the appropriate button in the middle of the screen. Sets can be useful in grouping your documents together before searching, enabling you to restrict your search to a predefined group of documents. They can also function to help you organise documents with a range of different names, but which you want to treat together. Ordering or grouping like this is a way of starting to analyse your texts so write down what you do and why in your journal. (See Chapter 8 in the Reference Guide for fuller information). Exercise 6 Create a Set of Documents Create a new set called BBC and add all the BBC documents you just imported (sorting the document explorer by 'created' first will make this easier). Close the Set Editor and view your set in the Document Explorer. Goldsmiths' Research Methods Training NVivo Orientation (versions 1.3 and 2.0)

16 Linking Documents You can link files to enable you to track relationships between your differing data sources, helping you to explore ideas and develop hypotheses. There are three buttons on the toolbar which control links: 'DocLinks' link to other documents within NVivo 'NodeLinks' link to your conceptual categories or Nodes (see Coding below) 'DataBites' link to External files, web pages (NV2.0) or Internal Annotations (though these latter cannot be coded and so cannot be used in analysis). Creating a Link It's a three stage process: 1. a) For DataBites and Annotations: select your text (by highlighting). b) For DocLinks and NodeLinks: place the cursor at a point where an icon will be inserted (note the green underlined DataBite button is greyed out when there is no text selected). 2. Click on whichever button is appropriate. 3. Select the file to be linked to. Following a Link DocLinks and NodeLinks Select the link by right-clicking and selecting from the menu. The Document Browser or Node Browser will appear. DataBites Right-click (or hold down Ctrl and left-click) on the link and select Inspect DataBite or Click on it and then click on the toolbar button. External DataBites will launch the application which is the default one for opening that file on the computer you are using. If there is no software to run such a file, it will not be opened. This may happen if you open your project on a different computer from the one you normally use. This does not cause lasting problems to the project installing appropriate software will enable it to be opened from within NVivo. When following a link to an External DataBite NVivo will first check in the current project's All Users\External DataBites folder so it is easiest to put files you wish to link to there. If you have a lot of or large external files though this will increase the amount of space you need to use when backing up your project. If your DataBite files are outside of your project folder, NVivo will also look there second but if you move your project around you may break the link (which is easily rebuildable). Removing a Link DocLinks and NodeLinks Select in the same way as following a link. When you get to the link you ll be offered the chance to remove the link or uncode. DataBites Right click and you get the option to remove the link. Exercise 7 Create Some Links Open the Links document and follow some of the links to get a sense of NVivo s hypertextual facilities. Make a couple of links to different types of files external to the Lambeth project at I:\sware\qual-data\nvivo\course\linking-practice\ Link to another document within the project perhaps your journal? Goldsmiths' Research Methods Training NVivo Orientation (versions 1.3 and 2.0)

17 Coding Documents When you analyse your data one of the main processes is to organise your analytic concepts into categories. These may be ones upon which you have decided before you start analysing your data, they may be ones which 'come up' from the data or they may be a mixture of the two. CAQDAS describes such organising processes as 'coding' - you're labelling parts of your data as instances of concepts. The genesis and development of these conceptual categories themselves can become part of your data in a self-reflexive study. Before CAQDAS appeared on the scene researchers used a variety of means to code their data ranging from using coloured highlights in the text, to marginal glosses. These still required constant review of the texts. So some people made copies, cut them up and filed them in different boxes according to their codes. Others devised yet more elaborate strategies, for example, a pattern of holes was made at the top of a page corresponding to the codes assigned to the text on the page. A knitting needle like device was passed through the holes, the file shaken and those pages with holes all the way through to the top would drop out: you d have separated the pages containing passages coded at a certain category! This was obviously hugely labour-intensive, which restricted the questions you could ask of your data since they had to be well thought out in advance and could not be too complex. Further, opportunities for speculative forays into your data were very limited indeed. CAQDAS follows the same analytical process of coding and retrieving, but has streamlined it enormously, enabling hunches to be explored with more ease increasing the frequency of opportunities for discovering new things about your data. The Core of Qualitative Data Analysis Software: Coding and Retrieving Coding: label sections of your documents with concepts which are meaningful to your project. In NVivo these sections can be from a single character to a whole document. Each section can have many labels allowing concepts to overlap. Retrieving: search for combinations of concepts (relating in a variety of ways) across all or a subset of all of your documents. This finds and collects a copy of the text coded at these concepts all in one new document. Three documents with text passages coded A, B or C. The text from all documents coded is retrieved in a separate document for each code. Figure 21 Schematic view of Coding and Retrieving Goldsmiths' Research Methods Training NVivo Orientation (versions 1.3 and 2.0)

18 How to Code NVivo emulates the manual process of coding texts, by enabling you to highlight text (anything from one character to a whole document) and code it. The two main ways of coding highlighted text are: typing a new code into the speed coding bar (the drop down box at the bottom of the document window) or selecting one of the last ten used from the drop down list and then either pressing enter or clicking the Code button. showing the Coder by clicking on the icon on the right hand side of the bottom of the document window and then dragging an existing code to the highlighted text from the Coder (or the other way round). Once open, the Coder stays open. Figure 22 Document Showing Text Coded at Node Figure 23 The Coder NVivo calls these codes 'Nodes' - this is because the coding is a link to the actual data. It is not a copy of the data and is stored separately from the data. Nodes can thus be used for any number of documents. In NVivo terminology you code at a node. There are three main types of Nodes (notice the different icons used for each of them in the Coder): Free - an uncategorized concept Free nodes are identifiable by the purple bouncing ball icon. Tree - a concept fitting within an hierarchical structure If a node has children nodes then there will be 3 branches under the blue icon If a node has no children, it will just have a thick branch on the top to show its connection upwards Case - an instance of a particular type of thing eg people or institutions. A case type is indicated by a blue case. It is used for grouping individual case nodes. An individual case is indicated by a green case. It must be contained within a case type node When you type a new code into the Speed Coding Bar you often just type a word or two and press enter. If you want to use the very same text you have highlighted as the node because it is particularly expressive you can click on the In-Vivo button to the left of the Speed Coding Bar. This is where the name NVivo comes from and is a term used within Grounded Theory. You are not limited to Grounded Theory in NVivo though, if that is not methodologically relevant. When you create nodes like this they are usually created as Free Nodes. You can convert them into Tree or Case Nodes by cutting and pasting (either using Ctrl-X and Ctrl-V or the right-click context sensitive menus) in the Node Explorer (see Figure 25 below). If you copy the node (rather than cutting it), you will leave the orginal where it is and you will only take the coding as it was when you did the copy. Later coding may be spread between the two nodes, if you continue to use both by mistake they are not live links. Be careful! Relatedly, it is important to not use the same name for nodes to avoid confusion though if you are very careful you can do within a tree node structure. You coding scheme should avoid duplication. You can group nodes into sets in similar ways to grouping documents discussed at Using Sets above. You can also create nodes before coding see Creating Nodes Before Coding below. Goldsmiths' Research Methods Training NVivo Orientation (versions 1.3 and 2.0)

19 How to See What Has Been Coded In an Individual Document Click on a node in the Coder (all the nodes present in the currently open document will be emboldened) and looking in your text for highlighted text (see Figure 22 and Figure 23) or Showing the Coding Stripes in a separate pane to the right of the document (see Figure 24) View Coding Stripes. Figure 24 The Same Document Showing Coding Stripes Viewing All Text in Your Project Coded at a Node Nodes can be browsed in just the same way as documents except you use the Node Explorer from the Project Pad's Node tab. Figure 25 The Node Explorer When you select a node and click on Browse, NVivo retrieves all the text you have coded at that node from all documents in your project. It puts this into a separate window with details of the underlying documents and the location and extent of the passages: Figure 26 A Node Being Browsed Goldsmiths' Research Methods Training NVivo Orientation (versions 1.3 and 2.0)

20 If you want to change the amount of text you can see, right-click and select View Enclosing Paragraph or View Enclosing Section. Notice that the coded text and what encloses it are in different colours. You can do this for an individual passage, by right-clicking on the passage itself. If you want to do it for all text retrieved, press Crtl+A to select all text in the browser window and then right-click. Viewing does not change the text coded, just what you can see while you are browsing the node currently. If you want to extend the text coded, there are two ways you can do it from here. With both you should view as described above first to get an idea of how far you want to extend the coding. The quickest method is then to right-click again and select Spread Passage - you can spread immediately to the whole paragraph, section or document or even a specified number of characters each side. The second method is to highlight text in the Node Browser window and code just as you would code an original document. This gives you more precise control over how far to extend the coding. You can also highlight some of the passage and apply another code to it this refining of codes or codes within codes is known as coding on. The main difference from working with the underlying document is that you cannot edit the text you need to go to the original document for that just right-click and select Browse/Edit/Code Document. This will take you to the exact point in the document where the current coding is. You can also code external files using proxy documents. Removing Coding Sometimes you may code too much of a passage and want to remove the coding from part or all of it. This is relatively easy. You highlight the passage you don't want coded in the Document or Node Browser, select the node and then click the UnCode button in the Document or Node Browser window or on the Coder. Section Coding As mentioned above if you have a structured or semi-structured text, you can use that structuring to automatically code your texts to Tree Nodes. We don t have time to look at this in this introductory orientation (full details are in the Reference Guide pp and 185 and there is another course for managing focus groups and interviews with NVivo where this will be covered), but brief guidelines are: For highly structured texts: ensure that the name or question number is exactly the same in whichever documents you are going to analyse even if there is no response to some. For less structured texts, but where you may have a number of speakers in a focus group: give each one the same header style - if you use a lower level header you can create hierarchised or sub-analyses. You apply a style by selecting the text and then clicking on the drop down style menu (either in Word or NVivo). Each area under a heading becomes a separate section of the file. The headings should be on separate lines (actually paragraphs) to enable automatic coding, rather than the common convention of having the speaker name or question at the beginning of the same line separated by a colon. Web-pages Warning Since web pages can change regularly it s best to download a copy of the page as you find it so that you can refer to it within NVivo use the File Save As option from the browser menu. Make sure that you also retain a note of the web address of the page so that it can be verified and the date you accessed it some bibliographic styles require you to state this. You can either just copy and paste the text (though note that this will lose any formatting on the web page) or use a proxy document to code selected points. Exercise 8 Code A Document, Browse a Node and Refine the Coding Choose one of the BBC files in the Lambeth project and code three passages in it. Look at the Nodes in the document using View Coding Stripes. Browse a node one of those which you used above. Add some extra coding to it to refine the concept remember this is only a practice! Goldsmiths' Research Methods Training NVivo Orientation (versions 1.3 and 2.0)

21 Creating Nodes Before Coding You can create your nodes before you start coding. Some of the literature suggests that doing this imposes your conceptual systems on your data rather than your analysis revealing the concepts in play within the discourses. Creating too stark a bifurcation is probably inappropriate: the craft skill of data analysis is not that clear-cut. NVivo recognises this and enables you to create and edit your nodes at many stages of your data analysis. An important thing to remember is to keep a record (in your journal!) of what you do and why. This will be very useful in creating the 'natural history' of your project. The first step is to sketch out your system on paper thinking about how the codes relate to each other. Is there an hierarchical relationship between them? (Use Tree Nodes.) Are you going to be looking at cases might it be useful to separate these out from more abstract concepts? (Use Case Type and Case Nodes.) There are three ways to create nodes before coding within NVivo: The Create Node dialog box. You select the type of node you want to create and then give it a title. If you want to create a Tree or Case node at a lower level, you need to first select or create the 'parent' node on the left hand side by double-clicking. This will put the parent node in the dropdown list box. You access the Create a Node dialog box: o From the Project Pad click on the Create a Node button or from the menu select Nodes Create Nodes. o From the Node Explorer menu select Tools Create Nodes or Ctrl+N. Figure 27 Create Node Dialog Box Add a node within the Node Explorer. Right-click one of the main headings (Free, Tree or Case) or a node somewhere within the hierarchy of Tree or Case Nodes. On the shortcut menu will be a Create 'x' Node option (where 'x' is appropriate to the type of node you can create). This will create a blank node in the appropriate place: Tree Nodes are ordered by their date of creation, whereas Case Type Nodes are sorted alphabetically (you may need to collapse the hierarchy and reopen it to see this). The Choose Node dialog box. You choose the type of node you want to create from the drop down box labelled Look in:. You then click on the Create button and a new blank node of the appropriate type is created. You then click on this new node and then click on the properties button and name the node and give it a description (which will help you to recall why you created the node). Figure 28 Choose Node Dialog Figure 29 Node Properties Dialog Goldsmiths' Research Methods Training NVivo Orientation (versions 1.3 and 2.0)

22 Document and Node Attributes A distinction can be made between analytical/conceptual and descriptive categorisation. For the latter, NVivo uses Attributes characteristics of a person or thing. For example demographic information such as gender, age etc. You can use this to enhance your analysis and perhaps to add a quantitative dimension to querying your project. If you have attribute-like data in another application (eg variables in SPSS or Excel) you can import all or some of it into NVivo. You can have attributes for documents and nodes (but with differing names). For instance, in the current project there are: Document attributes for Newspaper Title, Coverage, (Political) Leanings and Publication Date (because most documents are newspaper articles) Node attributes for Country, Gender, Organisation, Position, Region (because we have a number of case nodes for people) If we had separate documents for each person (eg single interviews), then we could achieve the same thing by using document attributes. In this study though, each person can appear in several documents. Each and every document or node will have a space in the attributes table, but you do not need to enter anything, if it is not appropriate. There are three system created null values (Unassigned the default, Unknown and Not Applicable - NA). The other values you create yourself. To open the Document or Node Attribute Explorer select Explore All Document/Node Attributes from the Attributes tab on the Document/Node tab of the Project Pad or click on the Attributes button from an Document or Node Explorer. Figure 30 The Attribute Profile in the Node Attribute Explorer This gives you a view of the attributes. You can add or remove documents or nodes and attributes they are only removed from this profile and remain in the project by selecting in the box and clicking the appropriate button to the right. This enables you to generate a focused tabular view of your attributes, which you can print out or export to SPSS, Excel etc. To create or edit an attribute right-click an attribute heading in the Profile or click the button in the Project Pad. You select the attribute and then work on its values: Figure 31 Create an Attribute Figure 32 Create Attribute Values Goldsmiths' Research Methods Training NVivo Orientation (versions 1.3 and 2.0)

23 Querying Your Data: The Search Tool NVivo's querying capabilities depend to some extent on your previous coding - the more you put in, the more you can get out. You start the Search Tool from the Project Pad by clicking on the Search Project Database (NV1.3) or Search (NV2.0) button. This appears most different in the change from NV1.3 to NV2.0, but most of the functionality remains the same. There are three stages in defining a query: Figure 33 NV1.3 Search Tool Stage 1 - Search Operations (NV1.3) or Find (NV2.0) Figure 34 NV2.0 Search Tool Define the search click on one of the looking glass icons (NV1.3) or buttons (NV2.0). There are two broad classes: those which search for one item at a time and those which combine items. At this stage (NV2.0 only) you also state what you want to happen with the results. The default setting may be fine for you a tree node is created under Search Results. You can later move this node to a more appropriate place. In NV1.3 this was done at stage 3. One Item Searches Node Lookup (NV1.3) or Node (NV2.0) is very similar to Node Browsing but in step 2 you control the documents it searches. Attribute Lookup (NV1.3) or Attribute Value (NV2.0) find all documents or text coded by a node with or without the specified attribute value. You need to double-click the Node or Document Attributes folders to expand them, then expand each attribute and then select a value and an operator. Text Search (NV1.3) or Text (NV2.0) finds patterns of text. There are various options to help you focus your text search. You could use it to help you in your coding by finding patterns of text and coding almost automatically. You need to be very careful though that you don t do this uncritically check that what is found is what you expect. Sometimes patterns can fit your criteria, but be irrelevant. Remember NVivo is an aid to analysis, it cannot do the analysis for you! Combination Searches These enable you to pick combinations of the one item searches described above and define the relationships between them. This is sometimes described as theory building or hypothesis testing. Boolean Search Intersection (and) match every one of the items. It narrows and so will find less text. Union (or) match any (at least one) of the items. It broadens and so will find more text. Negation (not) match none of the items. It narrows but may well find a lot of text. Difference (less) this is in two parts. It matches any (at least one) of the items in the first part; then it removes from the result any text matching any (at least one) of the items in the second part. It is like a sequential Union then Negation search. It broadens and then narrows. Goldsmiths' Research Methods Training NVivo Orientation (versions 1.3 and 2.0)

24 Matrix Intersection this combines a number of Intersection searches and produces a matrix display of the results. Each cell is the intersection of its row and header items. Matrix Difference this combines a number of Difference searches and produces a matrix display of the results. Each cell is the text referenced by its row header item less the text referenced by its column header item Proximity Search Co-occurrence (near) matches items near each other you specify what near means. If you are using nodes as your items, this refers to the proximity of the coded passages. Sequence (preceding) matches where the first item precedes the second. Inclusion (surrounding) matches where passages of text referenced by the first item completely surround passages of text referenced by the second Matrix Co-occurrence this combines a number of Co-occurrence searches and produces a matrix display of the results. Each cell is the co-occurrences of its row and header items. Matrix Sequence this combines a number of Sequence searches and produces a matrix display of the results. Each cell is the sequential occurrences of its row and column header items (row items preceding). Matrix Inclusion this combines a number of Inclusion searches and produces a matrix display of the results. Each cell is the cases of its row header item including the column header item. If you're searching for text, the proximity search (ie some text near some other text) is usually better than the Boolean, which requires far tighter relationships than are often found in more 'fuzzy' qualitative data. If you're searching for nodes, then either might be appropriate. Stage 2 - Scope By default you can search all of your documents, but sometimes you might want to search fewer: in which case, you will want to click on Custom Scope (NV1.3) or New * Scope (NV2.0). This enables you to select on either documents and/or nodes using the Set Editor: Remove All Edit List In Set Editor select documents in the active (white) box and either copy them or remove them from the target (shaded) pane. When finished click the search button to be returned to the Search Tool. Assay is a way of testing the shape of your scope before running a search. You may never use it! Stage 3 - Handle Results (NV1.3) or Spread Finds (NV2.0) NV1.3 had these three activities at this stage. NV2.0 only has the spread finds as the third stage. Click on Customize Result and you can finesse the result handling (tick Use Custom Handling too) : Figure 35 Specify Search Results Inspect each find as it is made can be useful if you are doing a text search to help you code. In NV2.0 this is on the main search screen. You decide what to do for each find using dropdown list menus. Spread finds gives you context: otherwise you may end up with just one word for a text search. The options are the same as the other spread coding options you have already encountered. Collect finds into enables you to specify just where you want the results to be coded to the default is a Tree Node created under Search Results. You can later move this node to a more appropriate place. Exercise 9 Create a Query and Browse the Results Create a Query which searches all documents in the Lambeth project for the term Canterbury and returns the paragraph which encloses the term. Browse the node created. Goldsmiths' Research Methods Training NVivo Orientation (versions 1.3 and 2.0)

25 Producing Reports and Profiles Reports can be produced at most stages of NVivo and are context sensitive. You can generate them from the menubar or by right-clicking. You create a report in NVivo, it appears on screen (at which stage you can edit it like any other document) and then you save it. Generally it s best to save it as an RTF file since you preserve most of the formatting present. The default location is All Users\Results though you can choose anywhere to save it. You can then open the file up in Word for further editing or incorporating into a report. You can also create reports to give you a snapshot of your project at a certain time and keep it in NVivo (though you need to remove DocLink or NodeLink icons first to import them in). Profiles are NVivo's name for spreadsheet like reports and can be printed or exported to SPSS or Excel as tabseparated files. Modelling Your Ideas Graphically The modeller enables you to get a map of how your ideas relate to each other. It can be useful for sketching things out, exploring relationships within your project or for presentations too. From the Project Pad select Create and Explore Models (NV1.3), Explore Models (NV2.0), from the menu Analysis Explore Models or Ctrl+M. This brings up the Model Explorer. You can select an existing model or create a new one: from the menu select Model New or click on the model icon. You can add links to your documents, nodes, attributes and other models by clicking on the icons with a plus on them. These links are live click on them and you re taken to the document or node. Each one can only appear once in a model. You can also add: elements such as arrows to describe the relationships between the elements (click on the first item, then the arrow or line and then the second item) text comments, colour and images Properties Appearance select bitmap (only image type supported) You can only include one project in a model, but can have many models in a project. Figure 36 A Model from the Lambeth Project Full details of Models are in the Reference Guide, Chapter 9. Exercise 10 Create and Explore a Model Right-click Bishop Spong and choose Browse in the Initial Thoughts model and see what happens. Create a new model of some of your concepts (nodes) and documents. Goldsmiths' Research Methods Training NVivo Orientation (versions 1.3 and 2.0)