Nvivo procedures (importing, hand coding, word frequencies, and text search queries)

The instructions below tell you how to do the 20% of the paper that analyzed general patterns in the qualitative interview transcripts.  This also provides a foundation to simplify the analysis needed for 80% of the paper.  The steps used to find pertinent data are the same for both the 20% part and the 80% part.  The 20% part just analyzes the unstructured transcripts while the 80% analyzes the structured transcripts that match your tables as much as possible.  The task for the 20% part is to write about how people talk about the main topic of your paper.  The task for the 80% part is to write a paper that describes patterns in how the groups in the columns of your 5 quantitative tables talk about the topics in the rows of the tables.

Both the 20% part and the 80% part rely on the same procedures that are described below -- importing documents (actually you don't have to import anything for the 80% part), hand coding,  conducting a word frequency query, and conducting a text search query. 

 In the paper, you need to name the procedure (e.g., hand coding, word frequency query, text search query) and describe the output/findings that uncover patterns in how people talk about music/homelessness/inequality.  Your paper is about the patterns you've uncovered in the quotes, and quotes are given in the paper as evidence to support what you are saying about how people talk.

These procedures below (hand coding, word frequency query, text search query) will give you the data you need to describe one or two patterns overall in how our sample as a whole talked about the main topics in our interviews (e.g., music).  If you also want to discuss homelessness or inequality in this part because you did in your quantitative paper, that's OK, but it is only suggested if you can write efficiently.   This part of the paper is only about 20% of the paper, or about 1 page of your own writing. Its OK if its longer than a page, but it shouldn't be more than 20-25% of the paper.  It is intended to uncover general patterns within the unstructured manuscripts. So, for example, the analysis in this part is on music in general, not on a specific type of music.  Similarly, it covers all groups, and we don't know the gender, race, education, marital status of the speaker.   We are looking at one or two patterns that will help us understand how our respondents answered the most important open ended question.  In the example, I keyed in on the word help.  If I were writing the paper, I would want to do two words, perhaps help and government, for example.

Importing Documents

1. Go to the blogsite to find the link to download the unstructured files from dropbox

Note the file sizes of the unstructured document.  When you download, make sure the filesize is about the same.  

You need to left click on each file name, wait for it to load, 

 then click the "download" button, then "direct download".  After download, confirm that the files on your drive are about the same size as the files on dropbox.

2. Open Nvivo (Open like any other program -- go to start menu and look for program (QSR NVivo), or click the icon on the desktop

3. Right click on the big white space in the middle of the nvivo screen

4. Click import documents and search for the three unstructured documents on your hard drive, click ok to import

Hand Coding

5. On the main screen, double click the file that was imported, and it will allow you to read
unstructured file.

6.  Read the the quotes until you find some patterns.  Highlight a passage,
and right click on it, then choose, create new node, name the node the same as the content
of the passage.

7.  Repeat step six several times until you have several quotes in your node. You may
create more than one node and in fact you are encouraged to do so.

8. Go to nodes bar (bottom left), and click it so you see your nodes appear.   

Double click your node, and read through the quotes you coded. 

9. Copy at least two quotes into your paper, and describe the pattern (node) you uncovered. 

Word frequency queries

10. click "query" tab, then click word frequency query.




11. click add to project, and add project name.
 

12. Click the "word frequency criteria" tab.  Change maximum word length from 1 to 3
 

12. Go to the "of" dropdown menu and change from "all sources" to "selected items."  Then Click the "select" button next to selected items

 

14. Choose one ustructured document to search -- music, homelessness, or inequality by placing checkbox next to it. Then click "ok".(note that your screen will show inequality, homeless, and music in the list below)

 

15. Click run to get your results

16. In your paper, talk about patterns in the kinds of words that are most and least popular, by talking about how many times the word appears and its relative percentage.   You should mention several words and their relative percentage.  Choose one or two that are popular and one or two that are not popular.  Choose words you think are helpful in making sense of how people answered the question.

 

17.  You may repeat the text search query and get different results by moving the slider from "exact" to stemmed words or synonyms.

18.  Pick out a word or two you think is really important and use that word for a text search query

Text search query

19. Click on query tab, then click the text search query icon

 


20.  click the add to project checkbox, and give your search a name

21. Click the "text search criteria" tab, and type in your word in the "search for" box

 

22. change the "of" dropbown from all sources to "selected items".  Click the select button.

 

24. Choose one ustructured document to search -- music, homelessness, or inequality -- by placing checkbox next to it. Then click "ok".  (note that your screen will show inequality, homeless, and music in the list below)
 

25. Click the "query options" tab, then change the "options" dropdown from "preview only" to "create results as a new node", then click the "spread to" dropdown and change it from "none" to "broad context."
 

26.  Click the "select" button and in the screen that pops up, change it from results to nodes, then hit ok.
 
 

29. Click run to get your results.

30.  Pick some quotes to exemplify the diversity of responses you found -- -- copy the quote and paste it into word, then describe the pattern you found (in this case the way that people use the word "help"), and give at least 2 quotes to describe the pattern.