A Report on the Two Days Workshop on Managing Qualitative Research with Nvivo for SDPI

Researchers

Introduction: A two days workshop entitled “Managing Qualitative Research with Nvivo”

was organized by Sustainable Development Policy Institute [SDPI], Islamabad on 4-5 April,

2014. The workshop was specifically designed for the researchers of SDPI to enable them to

understand qualitative research and various applications of qualitative analysis software

(NVivo), which can analyze text, pictures, and video/audio recordings systematically and

efficiently. The development of software applications made it possible to analyze field

manuscripts, secondary sources, observations, notes and pictures/videos for advanced levels of

classification, synthesis and theory building. The workshop provided opportunity to participants

to learn and build capacity through hands-on practice on qualitative data analysis.

Inauguration: Dr. Shehryar, Research fellow SDPI inaugurated the workshop. Dr. Shehryar

said that the two day workshop would was an opportunity for SDPI researchers and they could

learn new things regarding Qualitative data analysis. He further stressed that such workshops

should be conducted to promote research knowledge of researchers. He congratulated Mr. Shahid

Minhas training manager, Centre for Capacity Building SDPI and Mr. Muhammad Sohaib for

taking a good initiative. He also thanks Principal trainer Prof. Dr Shafiq Ur Rehman from

University of the Punjab for sparing his valuable time and organizing customized workshop for

SDPI research staff. Dr Shafiq lead trainer in his welcome address emphasized the importance of

the qualitative research and NVIVO software.

Introduction of Trainers and Participants

Mr. Shahid Minhas, training manager SDPI introduced the chief resource person with

participants. He said that Dr. Shafiq Ur Rahman is a listed trainer and Consultant QSR

International, Australiais for NVIVO software. Additionally Dr. Shafiq is the author of more

than 20 research publications (HEC recognized) and presented ten research papers in

international conferences. He is also an approved PhD supervisor of HEC and teaching and

supervising post graduate students. He has conducted more than ninety workshops, seminars etc.

as a resource person in Pakistan and abroad. He also introduced assistant resource persons Mr.

Ghulam Murtaza and Mr Safdar (Mphil Scholars)

Sessions and Participants: Twenty five researchers of SDPI participated in all ten sessions of

the event. In introduction session, all participant gave one to one introduction of their research

assignments, current knowledge of qualitative research as well awareness about NVIVO

software. Additionally they also shared their major problem faced in qualitative data analysis.

There were ten sessions related to different aspects of qualitative research, Endnote and NVIVO

software.

Session 1: In the first session, Dr. Shafiq Ur Rehman presented an overview of qualitative

research and Nvivo software. He highlighted different topics of Qualitative traditions of inquiry

such as what is qualitative research? steps in qualitative study, difference between qualitative and

quantitative approaches, ethical considerations, sampling, types of data collection,data analysis

and validity, reliability and generalizability etc.

Session 2

Second session was about overview of NVIVO software. Dr. Shafiq through light What is

NVivo, Nvivo & qualitative research, methodologies Nvivo support, how can Nvivo help your

analysis, how do you approach your research project, Nvivo key terms, Nvivo system

requirements and myths about Nvivo. At the end resource person answered different questions of

participants.

Session 3: In this session, Dr. Shafiq Ur Rehman explored various features of EndNote software

through hands-on practice such as searching, sorting, importing and organizing of references

electronically from web pages, Google Scholar, journal Databases and preparation of

bibliographies with Microsoft Word option Cite While You Write (CWYW). Mr Sohaib and

Muhammad Safdar also helped the participants during hands on practice and individual exercise

on Endnote.

Session 4: In next session, Dr. Shafiq Ur Rehman guided the participants how to create a new

project in NVivo, introduced NVivo’s workspace (Interface views) and creating and navigating

around a project.

Session 5: Session five was related to data feeding in NVIVO software. Dr. Shafiq and

participants practically entered different types of qualitative data i.e. – Word, Excel, pdf, picture,

audio and video. After that participants also learned how to access and read the entered data.

Before tea break an exercise on data import was also given to the participants and they

completed successfully.

Session 6: In sixth session, Dr. Shafiq Ur Rehman guided the participants about coding and

making nodes. They learnt how to code the sources to gather material about particular themes

and topics. Different approaches to coding were discussed like start with ‘broad-brush’ coding to

organize the material into broad topic areas, text search, detailed coding (making nodes as you

need them) and combine and group your nodes into related categories (parent and child nodes).

They also explored different types of coding: create a new nodes, existing nodes and code in

vivo. A group exercise creating nodes (coding) was also given to the participants.

Session 7: In last session of day one, The participants explored text Search Query and word

frequency queries. In word frequency query, they learned how to list the most frequently

occurring words in their sources and also visualized the results in a tag cloud, tree map or cluster

analysis diagram. Next query was text search query in which they search for a word or phrase in

their source material and view all the matches in a preview node—automatically coded the

content. Dr. Shafiq also explained how to display a word tree to visualize words in context: Most

of the participants successfully used both queries.

Session 8, In first session of second day, Dr Shafiq explained how to create a node hierarchy.

The participants learned how to add ‘child’ nodes (sub-nodes or sub themes) and make parent

node (broad node or theme). Moreover, source classifications and node classification was also

discussed. Source classification is very helpful in recording information about information

sources—for example, bibliographical data. In similar way, node classifications allow to record

information about people, places or other cases—for example, demographic data about people.

Session 9, In this session, Dr. Shafiq and Ghulam Murtaza run different kind of queries to

explore their coding.They reviewed and explored coding using different coding queries. In

coding query, participants gather all the coding at any combination of nodes. The resource

person also explained how to create a matrix of nodes based on search criteria by using matrix

coding query. In next step resource person demonstrated compound query which combines text

and coding queries. At the end of this session, the participants learned how to importing data

from Social Media and word wide web.

Session 10, This session highlighted different qualitative analysis techniques like creation of

model, tree map, cluster analysis and Word tree. The participants learnt how to create a chart to

present the data in their project. They also created 3D bar or column charts using the chart

Wizard. Finally, Dr. Shafiq shared how to create models to visualize, explore and present the

connections in qualitative data. Similarly, they also viewed the tree maps and cluster analysis

diagrams to group sources or nodes that share similar words attribute values, or coding.

Closing: Dr. Shehryar, Research fellow SDPI and Dr. Shafiq Ur Rehman Principal trainer were

the chief guests in closing ceremony of the workshop. They appreciated the participants and

congratulates them for active participation in the workshop. Dr. Shafiq also congratulates the

SDPI for conducting such a valuable workshop. Moreover he also appreciated the efforts of

Assistant Resource Persons (Ghulam Murtaza, Muhammad Safdar and Mr. Muhammad Sohaib

for their help and support in workshop. At the end a group photo of participants along with

resource person was taken. The workshop ended with the vote of thanks by chair.

Dr. Shafiq Ur Rehman

Lead Trainer