Day 1 – Introduction to NVivo – setting up your qualitative database

Day 1 offers a rounded introduction to NVivo and focuses on the requisite management decisions and choices one should make at the beginning of one’s project, such as what is my data? What format is my data in? What are my units of analysis and observation, and what data analysis methodology am I using? Should I code audio or transcripts, and what are the advantages and limitations of either approach? How to manage focus groups. How does the software work? How can I work in teams? Why should I integrate my background information or demographics, and what is auto-coding, and how might it help to better understand my data and prepare it for the cycles of manual interpretive coding to follow? What role do AI tools play in qualitative data analysis, and what are the limitations? Day 1 has an emphasis on the conceptual, although the afternoon is rooted in the practical. By the end of day 1, participants should be able to set up an NVivo database, back it up, import their data (that's any kind of data), set up a coding structure and code their data to it and set up and integrate their demographics, profiling information or closed questions from a survey. See full course outline attached.

Day 2 – NVivo Underway – analysing your data

Day 2 assumes these decisions have been made and focuses on analysing, retrieval and reporting on data. And whereas day 1 is largely conceptual, day 2 is mainly practical and technical in nature. Most people understand that setting up your database correctly is paramount to getting a return on the time and energy expended in learning the software tool. Given that manual interpretive coding in NVivo is not really any faster than using a manual system because you still have to code line by line, the benefit of using NVivo is in the retrieval and reporting of codes. Day 2 therefore focuses on interrogating (querying in database terminology) retrieval and reporting on results so that findings can be supported with high quality outputs or appendices. Also, the ability to support your coding processes with a clear audit trail (codebook for example), means that you can also demonstrate rigour for your methodology chapter which helps to establish your credibility as a researcher and by extension, trustworthiness and plausibility to your findings

The two day workshop comes with free and unlimited one-to-one post-training support for each participant for the life of their first project using NVivo, including PhD projects.  This support is delivered using a person-to-person, on-line, user-friendly screen sharing system and participants are not limited by duration or frequency of calls as they incrementally apply the tools, protocols, and concepts learned in the workshops in a real research environment using their live data. The two-day programme is quite intensive, but mitigated by this critical follow-up support. 

The Full two day timetable is here: NVivo Timetable