All about NVivo

- [Instructor] Well by now, you've probably figured out that NVivo is software that's used in qualitative research. To make it easier to gather non-numerical data. Organize that data. And then analyze that data. Numerical data is easy to gather. And it's easy to analyze with charts and graphics. Qualitative data is different. NVivo has the tools you need to import qualitative data from various sources and keep it stored in an organized fashion. And it has the tools you need to query that data.

And even more tools to help you analyze the data through the use of charts, diagrams in a number of different reports. And doing all of this manually, as was done, before the introduction of NVivo software was a very tedious and time-consuming chore. So who uses NVivo software? Well in a nutshell, anyone whose responsible for researching text, rich, and or multimedia data, also known as unstructured or qualitative data for the purpose of analyzing that data to test theories, identify trends, and cross-examine information using its built-in search engines and query functions.

While NVivo can be used by anyone doing qualitative research, we often see it being used by academic, government, health and commercial researchers in a wide range of fields including social sciences, forensics, tourism, criminology, and it is very popular in marketing. So that's whose using NVivo, but how are they using it? With NVivo, these researchers can make observations in the software and build the body of evidence to support their case or project.

For example, marketing researchers can use NVivo to really learn about their customers and their preferences. Which can help in product development and marketing campaigns. Researchers in healthcare could use it to identify trends in patient healthcare priorities and satisfaction to identify areas for improvement. Researchers in tourism might use NVivo to gather data from social media outlets, surveys, interviews and other sources to identify the latest trends in the travel industry and use that data to possibly make adjustments to their marketing campaigns.

There truly is an infinite number of ways to use NVivo in the world of qualitative research. Now let's explore some of the common terminology you'll need to be familiar with as we investigate the capabilities of NVivo in the next movie.