Introduction

Nvivo

NVivo is a software program used for qualitative and mixed-methods research. Specifically, it is

used for the analysis of unstructured text, audio, video, and image data, including interviews,

focus groups, surveys, social media, and journal articles. It is produced by QSR International. As

of July 2014, it is available for both Windows and Macintosh operating systems; however, the

Macintosh version is missing some of the features that the Windows version has. NVivo helps

qualitative researchers to organize, analyze and find insights in unstructured or qualitative data

like interviews, open-ended survey responses, journal articles, social media and web content,

where deep levels of analysis on small or large volumes of data are required.

NVivo is used predominantly by academic, government, health and commercial researchers

across a diverse range of fields, including social sciences such as anthropology, psychology,

communication, sociology, as well as fields such as forensics, tourism, criminology and

marketing.

NVivo is intended to help users organize and analyze non-numerical or unstructured data. The

software allows users to classify, sort and arrange information; examine relationships in the data;

and combine analysis with linking, shaping, searching and modeling.

The researcher or analyst can identify trends and cross-examine information in a multitude of

ways using its search engine and query functions. They can make notes in the software using

memos and build a body of evidence to support their case or project.

NVivo accommodates a wide range of research methods, including network and organizational

analysis, action or evidence-based research, discourse analysis, grounded theory, conversation

analysis, ethnography, literature reviews, phenomenology, mixed methods research and the

Framework methodology.[5] NVivo supports data formats such as audio files, videos, digital
photos, Word, PDF, spreadsheets, rich text, plain text and web and social media data.[6] Users

can interchange data with applications like Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, IBM SPSS

Statistics, EndNote, Microsoft OneNote, Survey Monkey and Evernote.

Users can purchase add-on modules: NVivo Transcription for automated transcriptions, where

users can transcribe directly in NVivo (Release 1.0); and NVivo Collaboration Cloud, that uses

the cloud to enable small team project sharing and collaboration.

NVivo - Windows is available in English, Chinese (Simplified), French, German and Japanese,

Spanish and Portuguese. NVivo - Mac is available in English, French, German, Japanese and

Spanish.

Version history:

N4 – 1997

N5 – 2000

N6 – 2002

NVivo 2 – 2002

NVivo 7 – 2006 (consolidation of NVivo and N6 (NUD*IST))

NVivo 8 – 2008

NVivo 9 and NVivo for Teams – 2010

NVivo 10 – 2012

NVivo for Mac Beta – 2014

NVivo for Mac commercial release – 2014

NVivo 11 for Windows in three editions; NVivo Starter, NVivo Pro, NVivo Plus. Updates to

NVivo for Mac and NVivo for Teams – 2015

NVivo 12 (Pro, Plus, Mac, and Teams) – 2018

NVivo (Release 1.0) / Nvivo 1.0 – March 18, 2020 (Windows & Mac). As previously, the Mac

version has fewer features. QSR also released Collaboration Cloud for sharing projects (within

OS only). The Plus and Pro versions from NVivo 12 have been combined.

Uses of Nvivo:

 Analyze and organize unstructured text, audio, video, or image data.

 Playback ability for audio and video files, so that interviews can easily be transcribed in

NVivo.

 Ability to capture social media data from Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn using the

NCapture browser plug-in.

 Import notes and captures from Evernote - great for field research.

 Import citations from EndNote, Mendeley, Zotero, or other bibliographic management

software - great for literature reviews.

 User interface and text analysis available in English, French, German, Spanish,

Portuguese, Japanese, and Simplified Chinese.

NVivo has a mixture of qualitative and quantitative analysis features: in particular, it can

compute inter-coder reliability and use cluster analysis to examine text or coding similarities.

User interface and text analysis capabilities available for English, Spanish, French, German,

Portuguese, Japanese, and Chinese Simplified

Integration with Evernote: import anything from an Evernote notebook (including OCR'd text,

clipped websites, and recordings made using the mobile apps) into an NVivo project for analysis
Easy, code-free web scraping of social media data from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and

YouTube using the NCapture browser plugin for Google Chrome and Internet Explorer.

Reference:

Wikipedia. (2021, march 23). Nvivo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NVivo

Georgia state university library. (2021, August 23). NVivo Qualitative Data Analysis Software:
NVivo -What is It. https://research.library.gsu.edu/nvivo