Research. Relate. Realize

QSR NVIVO 7A Preview in September 2005Tom Richards, Chief Scientist, QSR International

DISCLAIMERThe build of NVIVO 7 previewed and discussed here is pre-beta-test and seven months in advance of the public release version in late February 2006.Functionality and performance will change by the public release version, especially as a result of beta-testing. Hence this version should be understood only as a guide to what is coming.

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Why NVIVO Seven?

• Totally new & redesigned software– So not just NVIVO three

• Also supersedes the NUD*IST line (N6)– So it’s seven

• Designed for the future, not a re-vamp of past versions, styles and approaches– Early adopter of new technologies– Ready for new 3-D “Longhorn” OS– Annual major upgrades from now on

• Free for site licences and maintenance agreements

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NVIVO 7 Converts Legacy QSR Projects

• Opens N4, N5 and N6 projects, and NVIVO 1 and 2 projects.

• Converts them to NVIVO 7 projects

–Option to make Cases of all Documents (since Cases are more central in NVIVO 7)

Projects

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Project Security and Integrity

• All data in a project, including all Sources, are kept in a single securely encrypted database file.

• So porting and backing up is trivial.

• No chance of others tampering with documents, no need for insecure doc file update log files…

• In fact, absolute project database integrity, even through computer crashes.

Projects

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Multiple Projects

• Run multiple projects together

• Copy/paste content between projects

• Project merging will now be part of the NVIVO program – to be released in

Version 7.1 before midyear).

Projects

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Features for handling large projects

• NVIVO 7 is designed to handle extremely large projects as well as very small ones

• Also, users can optimize performance for large projects

• Web-browser style “inverted index” text search is insensitive to amount or length of documents.

Projects

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Save and Undo

Saves are not automatic, but reminders are.

Why?

You can undo the last five

changes, but not beyond the

last save.

Projects

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New Screen Layout gives simple navigation

Navigation Bar with Group

Buttons

Select a folder (you can create your own too)

Folder’s items appear in List

Pane

Contents of selected item

appear in tabbed Detail Pane

Projects

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Change the LayoutList pane side by

side with…

Detail pane is great

for…

Drag-and-drop

coding

Projects

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Or undock any (or all) of the Detail Views!Projects

You can then minimize them down to the taskbar to avoid clutter

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Sources: the data materialSources comprise

Documents, Externals and

MemosPlus folders you

create

Click a folder to list its items here

Click an item to open its

contents below

Sources

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Import Word™ .DOC files directly

• Conversion to .RTF not needed

• Code pictures and table cells

• Comprehensive word-processor

• You can keep documents in user-created folders – In fact you can make

your own sub-folders just about anywhere.

Sources

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External Sources support multimedia control

• Externals are Sources for referencing documents you can’t include in (or don’t want to copy into) the project database– Web pages, video

files, papers and books, etc.

Use the External itself to transcribe, summarize, comment on the

referenced material.

Use the automatically created tape count stamps on the External to locate

audio-video passages for replay

Sources

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Sources and Nodes can have Memos

• Every Source and Node can have its own unique Memo– Use Memos for discussions about their own

Source or Node

• Free or unattached Memos can also be created– Useful for more research topic discussions

• Memos, like any Source, can be coded, and given links and annotations.

Memo Icons

Sources

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Five types of Nodes• Nodes are NVIVO’s concept categories

– First four represent people, places, topics, concepts, attitudes etc., and their combinations. That is, they represent entities.

• Free Nodes (unordered)• Tree Nodes (for category/subcategory cataloguing)• Cases (for interviewees, people, places etc.)• Tables (i.e. Matrices)• Relationships (patent pending)

– Not representing entities, but making statements.

Nodes and Coding

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Give nodes nicknamesNodes and Coding

Nicknames for nodes speed up

referencing them when

coding

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Cases are much more central

• Why? Because only Cases have attributes– Not Sources such as interview docs, not other Nodes– Attributes are intended for demographic information about people,

places, organizations, etc.– Cases are where people, places, organizations etc. belong.

• Use Relationships instead, to express information about other things– E.g. interview document information

• Make a point of collecting all interview material for an interviewee at a case node for them.– Auto-coding group interviews makes this easy.

Nodes and Coding

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Relationships – an entirely new sort of Node

• A relationship joins two Project Items– They are part of the relationship

• A relationship makes a statement:– ‘Adrian (works with) Allen’– ‘Outsider (causes) attitudes\negative’

• Code the relationship with the evidence for the statement it makes

• Hint: use transitive verbs for relationship names– ‘causes’, ‘cannot get on with’– Then the statement made is clear: – ‘Annette cannot get on with Adrian’

Nodes and Coding

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Coding at Relationships is new and exciting• You can code for

what you read is being said, not just for topics.– Outsider (causes)

attitudes\positive• Then open the

relationship Node to see everything said about outsiders bringing about positive attitudes.

• Then open the related Nodes to see what you have on those topics– Outsiders – Attitudes\positive

Nodes and Coding

•What’s in the related nodes will usually be a lot more, and a lot less specific – they’re just topics

•And even intersecting them doesn’t home in on this relationship, this claim that outsiders cause positiveness. In general it will have more, and less.

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Importance of Relationships

• “Ordinary” nodes refer to entities – People, concepts, places, topics,

emotions, etc.• Since Relationships make statements,

they can be (and can code evidence for)– Descriptions, analytical claims,

hypotheses, properties of things, etc.• Display them in networks in the Modeler

– Complex theories, event & process nets, structures and organizations

Nodes and Coding

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Let’s do some Coding

• Drag-and-drop Coding is easy (but create new nodes first!)

• Can name Nodes (& Sources) in any language. – Can also

find text in any language.

Nodes and Coding

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Coding context

• Can show context in Node Detail View– Can also

spread coding to its context

Nodes and Coding

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Viewing Coding

• Can highlight coding at any node, in Detail View of a Node or Source

• Can show up to seven coding stripes and a coding density stripe:– Stripes for a node stay in

the one track and with a unique color

– Stripes are live both to highlighting their text and to accessing their node.

Nodes and Coding

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Auto-coding is streamlined

• For questionnaire-type documents, code by paragraph number

• Code by heading text and levels for group interview documents:

Nodes and Coding

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Linking is extended and streamlined

• Three types of links

1. Annotations are similar to Ms. Word™– Can list &

inspect them globally

– Can be text-searched like Sources

Links

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Sources and Nodes can have a Memo Link2. A Memo belongs

uniquely to a single Source or Node• Use it for

commentary on its original

• Or make a “free-standing” Memo for research notes

• Memos can be coded and linked like other sources• But not with Memo

links!

Links

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See Also Links – extended hyperlinking

3. All in-text links are handled by See-Also Links• Indicated by red wavy underlines• A passage can have multiple See Also links• You can link to just about any Project Item, not just Sources and Nodes• You can also link to any passage in any Source

Links

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See Also links can give file & web page access

• We have an External interview ‘Tiffany’ linked to an audio file

• We have an interview Document ‘Paula’ referring to a passage in that audio.

1. Put a See Also Link on Paula’s comment, linked to the passage in the External

2. Now we can go straight from Paula’s comment to the audio (and also to the External).

Links

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Sets are now more flexible

• Sets can now contain a mixture of Sources and Nodes (including Case Nodes).

• Use them for temporary and changing collections e.g. ‘To review’

• Use them as scopes for Query searches e.g. ‘Divorced women’

• Collect them as outputs of Queries (for further study and Querying) e.g. ‘Women who report excellent marriages’

Sets

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Attributes are properties of Cases

• Attributes were described earlier in connexion with Case Nodes

• Attributes can be organized as tables of Case Nodes versus Attributes– Cells hold the value of the Attribute at the

Case

• Case Tables can be imported and exported, e.g. to Excel™ or SPSS™

• [Attribute tables are not yet implemented]

Classifications

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Relationship Types

• When creating a Relationship, it has to be of a chosen Type, which involves:– Its name (“works with”, “causes” etc.)– Its direction

• None, like ‘associated’• One-way, like ‘causes’ or ‘loves’• Two-way like ‘is married to’

Classifications

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The Find Tool locates Project Items

• Look for them by name:

The Find Tool

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• The Advanced Find option can handle complex criteria for finding project items:

Advanced FindThe Find Tool

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• Grouped Find is for locating items (the Range) that relate to any of a number of selected items (the Scope) [not yet implemented]

• Example: find all Free Nodes (the Range) coding Interview Documents (the Scope)

• Result will list each Document and the Free Nodes that code it.

Grouped FindThe Find Tool

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The Query System – the powerhouse of NVIVO 7

• Queries are ways of locating specific content

• Queries can be saved for future use– Re-run them later when data have changed– Edit them to make a similar but different search

Query

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Text Search is similar to Web search enginesQuery

Looking for three text

items

Check here to save the

query

E.g. stemmed search for ‘give’ will find

‘giving’, (English only)

Can text-search Annotations too

Use these to set the scope of the

search

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Many options for Query resultsQuery

What to do with the results? If you just

preview, you can go on to save as a

node, etc.

Last 3 items save the scope items that had finds, as a set or

as sibling nodes.

Including some context with finds

(spreading) can be a good idea, especially

for text search

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The hidden power of Text Search

• Read Help on Text Search Queries to learn about the hidden power of Text Search:– Items with finds are listed with a

relevance weighting– Boolean search: e.g. for items containing

“social interaction” but not “community”.– Use wildcards * and ? (like in Word™)– Proximity (how close do you want “fear”

and “threat” to be in a search item?)– What weighting do you want to give

different words?

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Coding Query can be “Simple” or “Advanced”

• “Simple” looks for coding of one node in the search scope.

• “Advanced” allows the statement of many criteria in a natural English way.

Query

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Table Queries tabulate many queries at once

• Choose the rows for the table…

• Then the columns…

• Then the operator to make the cells…

• Then Run to make the table

Query

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The result is a Table

• Show counts of Sources, words, etc.

• Inspect each cell’s content like a Node

• Export numerical table as Excel or tab-separated text file

• Store as Table Node for future use.

• Give it a Memo, link it to other items.

Query

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Compound Queries

• These will enable mixing of other types of query

• [Not yet implemented]

Query

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Reports provide project profiles

• Use them to get information on any area of a project

Report Tool

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Print Reports, save as .DOC, .PDF etc.Report Tool

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Coding Comparison Reports

• Compare coding by two coders in two identical documents

Report Tool

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Models are hardly implemented yet• Here’s a model of some relationships + their coded evidence

Models

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And here’s the final wrap-up!

• No Using NVIVO book this time from Lyn Richards – Instead it’s a whole book in the Help files, Your Research

in NVIVO 7 – It’s a “conceptual help” to read by itself as a book– But also it’s carefully linked into the top-notch “procedural

help” • why as well as how for each topic, e.g. coding at relationships

• Handling Qualitative Data by Lyn Richards (London, Sage, 2005) will have new tutorials for NVIVO 7 on their website www.sagepub.co.uk/richards