Data Alive! The Thinking Behind NVivo

The goals of rich data in qualitative research and the ways NVivo addresses these are explored, including code-based inquiry, searching, and theorizing combined with ability to annotate and edit documents.

Abstract

Rich data from qualitative research have been treated poorly by computers. Yet, plain text and static documents largely have been uncritically accepted as a price of coding. The new qualitative software from Qualitative Solutions and Research (QSR), NUD•IST Vivo (NVivo), challenges that assumption. This article explores the goals of rich data in qualitative research and the ways NVivo addresses these. Like its sibling software, NUD•IST4, NVivo supports code-based inquiry, searching, and theorizing combined with ability to annotate and edit documents. However, NVivo is designed for researchers who wish to display and develop rich data in dynamic documents. Documents can be imported and edited in rich text with hyperlinks to sound, image, and other files, but they also can be coded as finely as needed and the results of coding displayed, explored, and modeled. The final section offers a brief outline of these and other features of the new software.