NVivo: Introduction and Basics

NVivo helps you organize and explore your data to discover themes guided by your research questions, methodologies, and analytical frameworks, i.e., coding your data. Codes collect in one space all the text, image, video, & other data that you identify as relevant to the themes you’ve identified. (Codes also store cases i.e., units of observation). You can create codes before you start coding (a priori; possibly guided by your research questions or a theoretical framework) and/or as you work (inductive), nest codes in a hierarchy (‘parent’ and ‘child’ codes), and rearrange, merge, and change your codes as needed. This is helpful as you develop your themes and typologies within broader categories

Below is an image of a well-developed coding scheme. Your coding scheme will not start out so organized. You will need to first think about your data and develop your codes and code schema.

In your Code List View, you can see the number of data files coded to that particular Code (named 'Files’) and the number of separate excerpts/timespans (named 'References') that have been coded to that particular Code. You can double-click on any Code to view the references, which are separated by their respective Data files. This gives you quick access to the content you've coded at different themes.

Creating Codes

1. In Navigation panel, click arrow beside Coding to expand the folder. Select Codes.
2. Right click the whitespace in the List View. Select New Code.
3. Give the code a name (required) and a description of when that Code should be applied (optional).

Optional: If you’re going to create hierarchical Code structures with ‘parent’ and ‘child’ Codes, checkbox the Aggregate coding from children option if you want NVivo to automatically double-code at the parent Code when coding child Codes

4. (Optional) Assign the code a color.
5. Click OK; the code will now appear in the Codes List Window

Creating a Child Code

1. Right click on the Parent code and select New Code
2. Follow steps 3-5 above.
3. Click OK; the child code is now added to Codes List View as an indented sub-code of the 'parent' code

 Coding Text-Based Data Files at Existing Codes and/or New Codes

1. In Navigation panel, click arrow beside Data to expand folder. Click on Files.
2. Double click a data file to open Detailed View.
3. To code the text at an existing code:
   1. Highlight text
   2. Right click highlighted text and select Code Selection
   3. Locate and select what Codes you wish to code from the Select Code Items box (use Ctrl key to select multiple codes)

OR

3. 1. In Navigation panel, click arrow to expand Coding folder and select Codes to display codes in list view
   2. Drag & drop highlighted text onto the Code
4. To code the text at a new code
   1. Highlight text
   2. Right click highlighted text and select Code Selection
   3. Select Create New: and name the new Code

OR

1. 1. In Navigation panel, click arrow to expand Coding folder and select Codes to display codes in list view
   2. Drag & drop highlighted text onto the Whitespace of the Codes list view and name new Code

 Coding Image and Audio/Visual Files at Existing Codes and/or New Codes

1. Open the Data File.
2. Select what Region of the image PDF, Picture, or Audio/Video audio track you want to code by left-clicking and drawing a box around the desired region/track timespan
3. To code the selection at an existing code:
   1. Right click within region box and select Code Selection
   2. Locate and select what Codes you wish to code from the Select Code Items box (use Ctrl key to select multiple codes)

OR

3. 1. In Navigation panel, click arrow to expand Coding folder and select Codes to display codes in list view
   2. Drag & drop selected region/track timespan onto the Code
4. To code the text at a new code
   1. Right click within region box and select Code Selection
   2. Select Create New: and name the new Code

OR

1. In Navigation panel, click arrow to expand Coding folder and select Codes to display codes in list view
2. Drag & drop selected region/track timespan onto the Whitespace of the Codes list view and name new Code

Coding stripes give you a visual indicator into which segments of text or audio/visual track timespans you have coded, who did the coding (if collaborating with others), coding density, and allow easier uncoding.

• To display, within a data file select the Coding Stripe Icon at the top of the opened file.
• In the Coding Stripe Window, you can customize which stripes you want displayed; ‘automatic colors’ randomly assigns colors, ‘item colors’ gives stripes colors that you optionally selected when creating Codes.
  • You can also assign color by right-clicking on code and go down to ‘color’
• Double-click on any code in the Coding Stripe or the List View to see a detail view of your References with that unique code
• Hover on the stripe to see which user(s) coded to that stripe
• Right-click to uncode all content coded at the code, hide the coding stripe, and show/hide sub-stripe (i.e., stripes split by user)