NVivo for Qualitative Research

Queries & visualizations

Word frequency query

• On the Explore tab, click Word Frequency.
• Choose where you want to search for matching text:
• File and Externals—search for content in all the files and externals in your project
• Selected Items—restrict your search to selected items (for example, a set containing interview transcripts)
• Items in Selected Folders—restrict your search to content in selected folders (for example, a folder of interview transcripts)
• (Optional) Select Include stemmed words if you want to include words with the same stem (e.g. look for 'talk' and also find 'talking') when Finding matches. 
• (Optional) You can choose to display:
• All to include all words found in the selected project items.
•  Most frequent to include a specific number of words—for example, you could display the 100 most frequently occurring words.
• (Optional) Enter a With minimum length to exclude short words from the results—for example, enter 7 to display only words with seven or more letters. 
• Click the Run Query button at the top of the Detail View.

Crosstab query

Crosstab queries are a quick way to check the spread of coding across cases and demographic variables.

For example, you can use crosstab queries to:

• Check how often interview respondents refer to a particular topic or issue

• Compare what different demographic groups have said about a theme

• Cross-tabulate codes and cases

• Check the spread of coding across the cases in a project

On the Explore tab, in the Queries menu, click Crosstab.

Select the Query tab to set query criteria:

Export query results

• Click in the results in the Detail View, to give them the focus.

• On the Share tab, in the Export menu, select Export Items.

• Where available, select a format for the exported file.

For crosstab and matrix coding queries, you can also click the share icon at the top of the Detail View to export, print or share the results.

Keyboard Shortcut To export an item, press ⌘ + SHIFT + E.

• Create a chart

• In the List View, select the file or code you want to chart. For example, select an interview transcript to see the dominant themes, or select a code to see how coding is distributed across demographic groups.

• On the Explore tab, click Chart.

The chart is generated and displayed in the Detail View.