How can NVivo help me?

Nvivo is a software package for managing qualitative and mixed methods analysis projects.

You can start an Nvivo project at any point in the research lifecycle: at the design phase, when you have already collected data, or even later.

As an analysis tool, Nvivo can help you:

But aside from helping to structure your analysis, Nvivo can be really helpful as a project management tool, organising your data and other useful information in one place.

You can also use Nvivo to collaborate - you can share projects or using cloud functionality to invite others in.

And what can’t it do?

Important to note, using Nvivo will NOT:

  • make your analysis better
  • make meaning- you as the researcher do that
  • automatically provide objectivity and clarity, or ensure reproducibility

Even though it allows linkage of qualitative and quantitative data, it can’t perform quantitative analysis.

Nvivo takes time to set up; and to make the most of the software, it requires some patience.

It is also more useful for some analysis approaches than others: for example very good for thematic content analysis (which we will cover today), but not so well adapted for others like interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA).