These allow you to search for patterns across themes, and will also break down nodes according to different demographic or descriptive categories (e.g.

Two of our favourite features of the software are coding and matrix coding queries. You might also like to run text searches for specific concepts that have already been coded – this can be checked against manual coding to ensure that nothing has been left out. Scanning the results of a word frequency query, for example, may help to identify additional themes or categories.

The query tool in NVivo can be particularly useful at this stage of the process, as it can help you identify patterns in your data that you may have otherwise missed. If you need further ideas, we recommend Bazeley (2009) and Braun and Clarke (2006) – full citations are below. Don’t despair if this is the case – sometimes this type of coding can be a useful springboard for developing more analytic level themes, although this will require some thinking on your part! A good starting point for this is revisiting your research question(s) – it’s easy to have forgotten these by the time you’ve finished your initial coding. Moving beyond descriptionĭepending on how you have developed your nodes in NVivo, you might find at this stage that your nodes are quite “low-level” or descriptive. All of these tasks can be quickly and easily completed in NVivo. Viewing your standalone nodes can sometimes reveal that they can be grouped together in a hierarchy. Sometimes the opposite applies and you need to “code on” from a larger node to create more specific categories. Alternatively, some of the data may have been coded incorrectly to the wrong node, and it pays to find this out sooner rather than later so that it can be corrected.Īt this stage you may also want to check whether any categories can be combined to create broader themes. In some cases, we might adjust the level of coding (is there too much or too little material coded for example). The first thing we usually do is read through the content of each node to check if it’s correct. Once you’ve “finished” coding in NVivo, it pays to review your coding and node framework. If this applies to you, read on for some tips on moving forward at this stage of the analysis process – some of these are NVivo specific but others require a bit of old-fashioned brain work! Note that this blog post refers to 'nodes' in NVivo – if you're using a more recent version of the software, these have been renamed 'codes'. They know they eventually need to start writing, but they’re not sure how to get there from their coded nodes. A common problem researchers face when they’ve completed their initial coding is knowing what to do next.

Nvivo 12 thematic analysis