Nvivo Free Training for Beginners

You have reached a point in your qualitative research study where you need to analyze your data.

You have also decided to use Nvivo to analyze your interview transcripts.

 Nvivo is one of the most reliable computer assisted qualitative data analysis softwares.

In this article, we are going to explore some basic functionalities of Nvivo.

This will help you perform your first analysis as a beginner.

 I will be using Nvivo 14, which is the current version of the software.

 In this article, we are going to go through seven steps, including:

1. General introduction into Nvivo and its functionalities.
2. Importing transcripts.
3.   Coding.
4. Coming up with themes.
5. Visualizing in Nvivo.
6. Exporting the code list from Nvivo 14
7. Producing the data analysis report.

Introduction to Nvivo

The first thing that we are going to do is to open Nvivo 14.

 So we open Nvivo 14. This is how Nvivo 14 looks like.

Nvivo 14 Screenshot

We’re going to head directly to the new project and create a new project.

I’m going to name this demonstration project and then I click on next.

The Creation of a New Project in Nvivo 14

And then they give you this option here, which is very important, where they allow you, you can either choose to autosave your project or display a reminder to manually save your project every 15 minutes.

 I normally like the second option of manually.

Display Reminder to Remind you to save the Project

So that every 15 minutes, there’ll be a pop up that will show you to save your project.

This is the only guarantee that you don’t lose your project.

 I’ve had some people and some of my clients select the auto save and they’ve lost all their progress or their project.

So, make sure you select the second option, which is the reminder to save your project every 15 minutes.

Now, when you open Nvivo, you’re going to see two menu the one at the top and the one on the left side.

The Left and the Top Menu in Nvivo 14

On the left side we have the files, codes, sentiment, relationship and relationship types. We have the cases. We have the notes. We have the set, visualization and reports.

The Left Menu in Nvivo 14

On the top side menu, we have file, home, import, create, explore, share, and modules that we are going to use for different functionalities.

The Top Menu of Nvivo 14

 Now the main thing that you should note as a beginner is that we are going to use the files area and the codes area on this panel.

The Files and the Codes Section in Nvivo 14

Importing Transcripts

Now, on the file section or highlighting the file section, we can go to the word document that we want to import into Nvivo, then drag it and drop it inside the files section.

And what that does is that it imports.

The Transcript in the Files Section

Coding the Data

Now, after importing the transcript, let’s look at how to do some coding in NVivo.

 So, I double click on the transcript that I just imported.

When we want to do coding, we highlight the code section.

The Codes Section

So we are going to create our codes in this area.

Now this transcription is a focus group discussion among depressed pregnant women in urban low-income areas.

So, let’s just read through some section and let’s try to come up with some codes.

Remember codes are a shorthand interpretative or descriptive label to specific information that may be relevant to the research question.

Codes Description

So, when we are coming up with codes, we are just providing labels to information that is relevant or information that will answer our research questions.

Now let’s read this.

Interviewer: “expectant mothers experience a lot of stress either from family or life. We want to hear from you what pregnant mothers be stressed. Let’s share our experiences so that when we will be presenting, we can know the problem among expectant mothers and find a solution because you are considered a special group. You need not to be stressed. There are different reasons that can result to stress. Let’s share the experiences as everyone here has our own experiences.“

A Section of the Transcript

Remember this is a focus group that was conducted on depressed pregnant women in urban low income.

So, this one will determine or they will provide some reasons or the causes of stress are expressed among the mothers.

A research question that will be explored in this case is what are the causes of stress among pregnant mothers in urban low-income areas.

The Research Question

Let’s do some coding. Let’s have the first respondent.

“How are you? What makes us mothers be stressed is how you live. Maybe you do not have work, you are pregnant. When life becomes a challenge, the husband becomes noisy in the house with arguments now and then. This makes mothers be stressed.“

A Section of the Transcript

“So one of the reasons why pregnant mothers can become stressed in urban low income areas is . Maybe you do not have work and you are pregnant.”

A Section of the Transcript

The first thing I do is to highlight the statement that I want to code, and then I drag and drop it in the code section.

I want to code this as joblessness is one of the causes of stress among pregnant mothers in urban low-income areas.

The Code Joblessness is Created

Then when life becomes a challenge, the husband becomes noisy in the house with arguments now and then.

A Section of the Transcript

So, we can code that as conflicts with spouse.

The Code Conflict with Spouse is Created

And then this makes mothers be stressed. “Other stressing situations is when sick during pregnancy period as you can’t manage yourself.“

A Section of the Transcript

So, this statement can be sickness during pregnancy.

The Code Sickness During Pregnancy is Created

Remember what I’m doing here is I’m just generating initial codes, and then we are going to develop some themes from these codes.

So again, “you have kids, no work, and there is no way you can feed them. This contributes to stress.”

A Section of a Transcript in Nvivo 14

 So another cause of stress is inability to provide for other children.

The Code Inability to Provide for Other Children is Created

Then interviewer: “can we have an example of something that stressed you much?“

A Section of a Transcript in Nvivo 14

“Before I met you have been in much stress. My life was a bit difficult as my husband and his family stressed me. It reached a point of me moving out of the house. This really stressed me as I didn’t know what to do. As I was jobless.“

A Section of a Transcript in Nvivo 14

So actually, this statement, “this really stressed me as I didn’t know what to do as I was jobless.”

You can see joblessness.

If you want to add a statement or a coding reference to already developed code, you just highlight it, drag and drop it into the already existing code.

 So, joblessness, there are two statements now supporting that.

Let’s look at the second respondent here.

“How are you? Stress comes in when you are not getting along with your husband.”

A Section of a Transcript in Nvivo 14

 So, you can see this one says not getting along with the husband. So, conflict with spouse, That can be.

So we drag and drag this statement into the code we already developed. Conflict with spouse.

He cannot purchase food or parent. Instead he runs away. You find yourself lonely, stressed on how you will parent last school fees and there is nowhere you can go to work.

A Section of a Transcript in Nvivo 14

This one can be lack of financial support from spouse.

The Code Lack of Sufficient Financial Support from Spouse is Created

So that’s another reason that contributes to stress among pregnant mothers.

These are some codes that we have developed.

Let’s develop a few more codes before we move on.

“My second stress was my neighbours who usually had issues. Are I vacated? At least now I have sorted work. I’m not going daily and the surrounding has changed.”

A Section of a Transcript in Nvivo 14

 So, it can be poor relationship with neighbours.

The Code Poor Relationship with Neighbours is Created

That’s another cause of stress.

 Let’s have the fourth respondent. “My stress comes from diseases.”

A Section of a Transcript in Nvivo 14

You remember we had a code, sickness during pregnancy.

We can drag that there and actually we can rename this code.

What I’m doing is just right clicking, going to code properties, and we can rename this as illness.

The Code Sickness during Pregnancy is Renamed to Illness during Pregnancy

This is how you rename your codes.

So, illness during pregnancy, and you can see I’ve added another statement there.

 So, there are two statements that contribute to the code of illness during pregnancy.

So, these are some of the codes which are the causes of stress among pregnant mothers.

Those are enough codes that can help us to come up with some themes.

 I want to show you how we come up with some themes using NVivo.

Developing Themes

 After coding we are going to have our codes and we can look at a relationship between the codes.

Codes that have shared meaning, are going to be under a single theme.

For example, if we look, we can see what we could call financial challenges as a theme.

That one will be as a theme. I just right click, go to new code and create a new code, but this code will be a theme. Why?

 Because we are going to drag and drop some codes under financial challenges to make it a theme.

The Theme Financial Challenges is Created

So financial challenges will be a theme that have different codes.

For example, lack of a stable source of income, joblessness, inability to provide for other children, job related, lack of sufficient financial support from spouse.

 All these codes are  financial challenges, which contribute to stress among pregnant mothers.

So we drag and drop all those codes under financial challenges.

The Codes to be Dragged and Dropped into the Theme Financial Challenges

So, this is how we form themes in Nvivo.We find codes that have shared meanings, and form a theme.

Another theme that is emerging here is social issues.

The Theme Social Issues is Created

And also, this theme financial challenges, we can rename it to financial issues.

Now, I’ll develop social issues as a theme also.

Poor relationship with neighbours, that’s a social issue,

Conflict with spouse, that’s a social issue.

Ill drag and drop the two codes into the theme social issues.

The Two Codes are Dropped into the Theme

Now let’s develop another theme.

We create, we right click, we, click on the create new code and let’s call this health issue.

The Theme Health Issues is Created

That was again another prevalent theme that came out.

So illnesses during pregnancy.  We drag and drop that code there.

The Code is Dropped into the Theme

So, illnesses during pregnancy is the health issue that contributes to stress among pregnant mothers in urban low income areas.

We have job related obligations.

The Code Job Related Obligations is Deleted

This one I won’t classify it under any of my themes for now.

Actually, I can decide to delete that code for now.

Remember, the first thing we did was come up with codes and then we look for shared meaning and patterns between the codes to develop themes.

 The three themes that emerged are financial issues, health issues, and social issues.

So financial issues, health issues, and social issues contribute to stress among pregnant mothers in low-income areas.

Again, we press control S to save this. Always remember to keep saving your project so that you don’t lose your progress.

Now, that’s how you develop themes in Nvivo. Remember, this is a kind of inductive way of thematic analysis, because I started with the codes and then the codes helped me come up with themes

Visualizing in Nvivo

The next thing is some visuals.

 So one of the visuals we can draw in Nvivo, for example, we are on financial issues. If I right click here, and I go to visualize, then I go down to hierarchy chart of codes, I will get a tree map.

A Tree Map

And then if you look at the options here. Here on the top where we have a tree map and I click on the down arrow; I click on the second option a sunburst. So, you get a sunburst like this.

A Sunburst

If I click inside the sunburst, I’m going to have this hierarchy chart, which is one of the visuals that you can make in Nvivo.

A Hierarchy Chart

So after you complete developing your code you can visualize your data using a hierarchy chart like this.

 After we visualize, we can press Ctrl +Shift +E and we can save the hierarchy chart in a folder

So one way to visualize in Nvivo is to use a hierarchy chart.

Another major way we can visualize our data in Nvivo would be through mind maps. let’s look at health issues for example, and we want to go to the explore area and the maps and then mind maps.

The Creation of a Mind map Process

After going to mind maps I create a mind map like this.

A Mind Map

So these are two of the basic visuals you can have in Nvivo.

Exporting the Code List

Now, remember we are still on the codes area. So, if we aim on the codes area, we can highlight all the codes. We can go to export, we right click, go to export, go to export list.

From exporting list, we get an excel containing the theme and codes.

This is the Excel.

The Code List

For more on how to visualize data in Nvivo see this video 9 Ways to Visualize Your Results in Nvivo

Producing the Data Analysis Report

Now let’s look at a very important point, which is how do we produce a data analysis report?

 Remember, we started with importing our data, then we did some analysis to get codes.

Then we look for shared meaning and patterns between the codes to come up with themes.

 Then we are able to visualize using one hierarchy chart, two, a mind map, and then a code list. Finally, we have our data and our visualization.

 So, we are going to see how we can produce a data analysis report in Nvivo.

The images below show part of the report that we produced.

Report Part 1

Report Part 2

We can also put like a hierarchy chart or we can decide to insert the mind map in the report

A Hierarchy Chart and a Mind Map

So, this is how you come up with the report. A report is just a story connecting the different themes and the codes that you came up with supporting the themes.

Now that’s how you conduct a data analysis with Nvivo.

Make sure to check out my other article that look at specific ways to conduct qualitative data analysis such as thematic analysis How To Do Qualitative Analysis of Interviews with Nvivo.