NVivo facilitates teamwork for groups of researchers working on the same project. In qualitative research, it's common to structure teamwork in different ways:
- Each team member codes separate documents using all codes and when combined, all documents are coded.
- Each team member codes all documents but only for some codes; when combined, all documents are coded.
- Each team member codes all documents or an overlapping subset of documents; when combined, all documents are coded, some coded two or more times by two or more team members.
NVivo makes structuring teamwork easy, but planning in advance is necessary. When considering using NVivo in a research team setting, consider the following in advance:
- How would you like to allocate team members across the research materials (see above)? Are there team members with specialized knowledge pertaining to some of the coding concepts or data?
- Is it important to measure the reliability of coding by having two or more coders code the same item? If so, how much overlap is needed?
- How flexible/locked in is the coding schema? Will researchers be able to make changes, and how will these changes be communicated to others (email, weekly team meetings, memos in NVivo, etc.)?
- How frequently should copies of the research project be merged and redistributed to all team members?
NVivo allows other NVivo projects to be imported into a project, making merging of project copies easy.
- To make a copy of a project, use the Copy Project under the Share tab in the top toolbar. Before doing this, make sure to have imported all of the files to be coded, have a complete coding schema under the Codes section of the Navigation Pane, have Cases defined if needed, and agree in advance how project documentation will take place using memos in NVivo.
- There are slight differences between NVivo for Windows and Mac, so test the merging of projects process early to ensure all researchers and produce usable data.
- NVivo indicates changes make by users according to initials. This allows the team to see who coded what, who wrote what in a memo, and so on. Users can set their initials by navigating to File >> Options in the toolbar on top.
- To merge two or more projects, navigate to the Import tab on the toolbar on top, and select Project. Projects processed by coders should be merged into a copy of the original, uncoded master copy of the project.
- NVivo will itemize changes made. In particular, make sure the numbers of files (the research materials to be coded) does not change.
