Getting started – Explore
It's likely that you'll run queries and create visualizations at the end of a project, as you draw final conclusions, but these types of exploration are valuable throughout a research project, providing insights into the directions you could follow.
Queries and visualizations require data to be set up so NVivo can process it effectively, producing meaningful outputs. For the purposes of this tutorial—aimed at beginners—the examples below are comparatively simple and require minimal setup (although the attribute chart requires that NVivo has converted survey questions into case attributes).
Word frequency query
A good, quick way to see what's on the minds of your research subjects is to run a word frequency query over what they say—which terms come up the most?
You can use the word frequency query to see what issues your research subjects are talking about. Open the query from the Explore tab. Select the files to run the query on, how many words to count, and whether you want to count related words as the same. When you’ve run the query you can display it as a word cloud.
Help links
Attribute chart
NVivo has many ways to analyze and visualize data. Here’s just one simple example, creating a graph in order to rapidly see people’s opinions on a specific issue.
If people have been asked a question in a survey, NVivo can automatically make each respondent a case and turn their responses into attribute values in case classifications applied to those cases.
Then, to create a chart of the responses, open Case Classifications in the List View, expand the relevant classification and select the attribute. On the Explore tab, open the Chart menu and select Chart Cases by Attribute Value. A bar chart showing how many people gave each response is produced.
There are several display options, including 2D bar chart, 3D bar chart, and pie chart.
Help links
See how to organize your data: Getting started – Organize