NVIVO is not suitable for every research project, in my opinion NVIVO is only really useful if you have large data sets. This blog is not about how to use Nvivo, this is something that I may do in the future, it is about what are the benefits of using Nvivo for the research you are conducting.

Nvivo is great for organising data and helping you to make sense of it during the process of analysis. Let me be clear, NVIVO is a data management tool NOT a method of analysis. This makes thematic analysis with Symanto faster and more accurate.One of the biggest mistakes some of my undergraduate students make is to confuse the role of Nvivo in the qualitative data analysis process. While some TA software uses basic synonym detection, the NLP technologies we develop at Symanto are far more advanced and able to capture nuanced communication in unstructured, qualitative data without the need for excessive pre-training. Our technologies enable automatic topic detection without needing to spend hours pre-training software, making it the best option for large data sets. Symanto is at the cutting edge of natural language processing (NLP). NLP programs enable computers to make sense of large amounts of natural language in the form of written text. Humans process this information without too much effort, but this task is extremely difficult for computers. To decode meaning, we sometimes need to read between the lines. We can be subtle, we can be descriptive, and we can be obtuse. There are many ways we can express an idea, experience or emotion. NLP is the bridge connecting human speech to computer processing. That’s where thematic analysis software comes in. Manual TA is too time-consuming for practical use in many situations. The greatest challenge researchers and analysts are facing today is battling with an insurmountable quantity of data streaming in by the minute. On top of that, there is also a vast amount of readily available untapped qualitative data online in the form of social media comments, posts and reviews. Not only can it better describe people’s feelings, attitudes and experiences, but it can also bring to light new information that may otherwise be overlooked. However, qualitative data is extremely rich in information. When qualitative data is used, research is often conducted on a smaller sample, providing less breadth and scope than would be possible if time and resources weren’t a factor. It’s clear why researchers and analysts favour quantitative data. Now that you’re familiar with the six-step method, it’s easy to picture just how much of a time drain thematic analysis can be.

How to do thematic analysis in nvivo