In addition, we are using NVivo™ for our knowledge synthesis projects, which is a more novel application. For this qualitative study on Mothering & Albinism (SSHRC Insight Grant #435-2019-1120), we have also utilized NVivo TM to manage demographic details about participants and their transcribed interviews. We are using NVivo™ for qualitative ethnographic data analysis, which is the more common application of this software. These different features afforded by NVivo TM can be used as a validation tool (Polit & Beck, 2020), which contributes to a study’s trustworthiness and reliability (Welsh, 2002). Moreover, NVivo TM can facilitate transparency of the research as it can track how the analysis of the data was done, such as following the researchers’ use of memos, annotations, queries, mind maps, and cross-comparisons (Houghton et al., 2016 Zamawe,2015). NVivo TM provides the benefit of storing all of our sources in one document, allowing for easy access to aid in the analysis and synthesis of our combined data (Welsh, 2002).

Not only does it allow you to import various documents (e.g., PDF, Word), but also to include videos, audio files, images, surveys, and much more depending on your research. NVivo TM qualitative data analysis software, created by QSR International (2020), assists researchers to store and organize files in a manner that allows you to easily retrieve and group data, which in turn contributes to data analysis (without doing the analysis for you!). As a robust data management system, NVivo™ helps us manage hundreds of transcripts and articles.

A single transcript or journal article contains many invaluable insights within even one sentence or paragraph, holding more than one piece of information that can easily get lost. We have chosen to use NVivo TM software to help organize our data as well as assist with analysis. Organizing data for a large research project typically poses a challenge, particularly when data includes various types of files (e.g., transcripts from interviews, academic literature, grey literature, and photos) (Houghton, Murphy, Meehan, Thomas, Brooker & Casey, 2016).

Nvivo qualitative software