So, after a few hours of coding, I thought I was finished. Not only that, I thought these themes would be the ONLY interesting themes and that they would be easily discernible and distinct from each other. Iterating your CodingĪfter I had finished an initial draft of my literature review and methodology, I thought I was set to start coding the themes that had emerged from my research. So many hours wasted, but hopefully you won’t ever find yourself in my situation. I did find this process VERY difficult on a laptop’s track-pad, so I made a sensible investment in a wireless mouse. Simply select the text or region and drag it over to the code it.Easy. Had I been bold enough to watch their (very) helpful tutorial videos, I would’ve known straight away that there is a MUCH easier way to code your files. All I had to do to code was right click and select the code button, right? When I started using NVivo for my research, I thought that I had nailed the basics. So, as a way of demonstrating that, I thought I’d cover the four things that I wish I knew when I started NVivo, and how it didn’t destroy my research when I got them wrong. Indeed, I still do today! This post is about failure, and why it’s okay. Just because I’m standing at the front of the class teaching it doesn’t mean I haven’t struggled with NVivo myself. As I’m sure you all know, trying to figure out what NVivo is all about can be difficult. However, with all this experience, I don’t feel like an expert. Hearing all their stories and getting to teach the tool is a great privilege. I get to hear from a lot of researchers about what it’s like to use NVivo. I started using it last year, and since then, I’ve gone on to run the research community for NVivo at the University of Melbourne. Like many of you, I found learning NVivo tough. This is the very first guest post for this blog so thank you Alex! A disclaimer: This post was written for NVivo 12.

Nvivo thematic analysis coding