Summary and Schedule

This lesson provides step-by-step models and guides for effective workflows to find and reuse qualitative data archived at QDR in NVivo projects, as well as best practices to prepare your own NVivo projects and data for archiving and reuse at QDR. Along the way, you will practice major steps common to most qualitative data analysis projects.

Prerequisites

It is helpful, but not required, to be familiar with basic principles and practices in qualitative research, such as open and thematic coding. No experience with qualitative software (including NVivo) or QDR is necessary.

We will annotate, analyze, and prepare to archive interview transcripts from a qualitative study of data curation for qualitative data reuse and big social research.

The original study focused on how commonalities between qualitative data and big social data might help improve curation services.

However, you (in our imagined example) work for a research funding agency. Quantitative projects funded by your agency have required data and code sharing for over a decade and you’ve been asked to develop recommendations for identifying qualitative and mixed methods projects that are good candidates for sharing. The goal is to eventually create a set of rules governing what qualitative data and analysis products must be shared, versus what other part should be left to researchers to decide whether to share.

In the lesson, you will practice reusing and adapting sections of both the original data and the data analysis.

Workshop format

This lesson is designed to be delivered as an in-person or synchronous online workshop, with an experienced instructor demonstrating techniques and helpers available to assist anyone with questions or errors in real time. For best results in live workshops, we encourage you to attempt to complete steps with the instructor and use the methods provided by the instructional team to ask for help when needed. Making mistakes and encountering challenges is part of every learning process.

The lesson is also, however, complete and usable for fully self-paced online learning. When working through the lesson online, we recommend reading all callouts and notes, as well as attempting all exercises and checking your results against the provided solutions, although in some cases, there are alternative approaches that work equally well.

The actual schedule may vary slightly depending on the topics and exercises chosen by the instructor.

Software Setup

This lesson requires access to NVivo software for Windows or Mac. We recommend using NVivo 14 or NVivo Release 1 (also known as NVivo 13). While users of older versions should be able to perform most actions with minimal modification, the source data are in Release 1 format and will not be compatible with older versions, such as NVivo 11 or 12. No cloud or platform-specific features are required.

Prior to installing NVivo for the first time, you will need to set up a Lumivero account by clicking the Free Trial button at the top right of the NVivo homepage. After creating an account and downloading the software for your operating system, please sign into the software to validate your license, which will allow you full access to the software for 14 days.

Data Sets

In addition to NVivo software, you will be required to create a free account with the Qualitative Data Repository (QDR) to download data for this workshop.Instructions will be provided within the relevant section of the lesson.