Having many interviews, observations and documents it accumulates to a lot of text data. Can you share basic guidelines and pitfalls on how conduct effective coding using Nvivo? How to identify themes, constructs, trends or relationships in text data? Should it be very detailed or more high-level coding?
Please share your experiences.
Hello Morten, suggest you read a text I found very rich and illustrative on qualitative coding: The coding manual for qualitative researchers by Johnny Saldana published by Sage.
Hope it will guide you.
@Sabine thanks for sharing your approach. I'll watch the videos on Lynda as a starting point.
I've already set up my cases and are in the process of collecting data and doing my transcripts. I'll take your points as inspiration once I start the coding procedure.
@Joanne Thanks for your comment. I've have done coding analysis before, but using a manually process in Excel. So it is more about how coding in Nvivo potentially would differ from a manual process?
@Mohammed. Thanks for sharing the book reference.
Hi Morten
The main difference between manual and NVIVO coding is the management of your files in the so called "projects" and the way you can depict your results (e.g. coding trees with main codes and subcodes).
As you are experienced, you will at a certain point be disappointed, as NVIVO can not replace the "manual" thinking process. At the end of the day, you may want to return to your manual representations of the codes to allow for explanations in full text (papers). But for the process to get an overview (first and second step if you want so), it is great. Another feature allows you to draw codes with kind of venn diagramms. I would recommend you to try it out, it can be resourceful for generating new ideas.
By the way: after my coding process, I put the whole tree (codes and subcodes) in an excel sheet to allow for adding text and keep overview.
Hope that helps you.
Sandra
These are all brilliant answers I hope to save for the data analysis stage of my project
As others have said - really good answers here. Of course it is important, I believe, when designing your research and before you collect any data that you determine how you are going to analyse it. Seems from the way your question is posed that it is as if you need to take time out of your research itself to learn a new piece of software. Do you have time to do that? Will you be using N-Vivo again? I have used N-Vivo and find it useful for large amounts of data but clever use of the MS WORD search facility and MARKUP (for own notes and comments) along with Excel for sorting and comparing can be just as effective if you are familiar with these everyday software packages.
It depends on the objective of your research. Nvivo will help you organise the data but the thinking process of writing the text in the report is yours. It can be really time consuming so, understanding why you are doing the coding is very important. Watch the youtube videos and the Nvivo guide tools/ help files are really handy and can help you to avoid wasting a lot of time when you are stuck looking for what to do-
http://help-nv11.qsrinternational.com/desktop/welcome/welcome.htm
Since there really isn't that much difference among the major qualitative analysis programs, I recommend the attached article by Friese, even though it was written for ATLAS.ti.
If you want something NVivo specific, I recommend Pat Bazeley's book.
I am a novice and just started with NVIVO. Find it very useful in data management and done the initial coding. ~But I am still looking at how to proceed with the second level codes or themes. Thanks for many who share their experiences.
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