Hi Katheryn

Thanks for your post. It's really interesting and I think you're absolutely on the right track to code CMOs together as theories rather than coding Cs and Ms and Os separately. See Pawson and Manzano's realist diagnostic workshop paper in evaluation for the risks of not doing this.

One thing you might do is actually give each of your theories it's own node, rather than having all your theories as child nodes within one tree. This might make it easier to also deal with any 'sub theories' that emerge.  Also, with double coding (sometimes the same paragraph might speak to two theories) you could then use the search function in to look for instances where two theories occur together and try to explore any relationships between them.

However, for me, the trick with using Nvivo is not just to rely on the coding and search functions but also to write memos! Lots of them! Of your hunches, ideas, things you've noticed when doing your interviews or observations and when coding the data. You can then go back and test these out by interrogating your codes and data within them more deeply, then, write your further reflections in a memo.  This to me is the nub of analysis - the coding is just data management and organisation to make data easier to retrieve. The analysis is when you reflect on and think about your data and then reconfigure or search your data to test out your hunches. Also, you can bring in other sorts of data within Nvivo (eg documents, photos, even excel spreadsheets I think it might manage now, but I'd need to check this!) to bring in lateral support for your theories or challenges to them, suggesting the need for revision. Again, record all you ideas and hunches in a memo. And you can also link memos to theories and nodes I think.

Hope this helps

Best wishes
Joanne 

Sent from my iPad

> On 14 Jul 2016, at 18:47, "Katheryn Courville" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> I am a doctoral student in nursing.  I'm conducting a RE with a committee, while incredibly scholarly in research, are new to RE.  I thankfully have 1 committee member who is my 'expert' in RE, but she isn't familiar with NVivo.  I'm seeking advice on coding, and analyzing in Nvivo .
> 
> I am currently in Phase 1 (theory development) phase and am analyzing literature and interviews, seeking CMOs to use in Phase 2 (theory testing).
> I created the nodes 'context' 'mech' & 'outcome', and then added child nodes - all of my (many many) Cs, Ms, & Os.  I had trouble linking them together (still not clear on how to use the 'relationship' function).  I read a blog and an article that gave a little peek at how NVivo was done (most articles just say "Nvivo was used" - very frustrating).  this gave me the idea to code whole statements/paragraphs as a CMO (not individually).  When i started looking, I saw CMOs appear in interview statements.  It seems people tend to talk in CMOs or MOs - not just an O or C or M.  I created a node called "theories" and child nodes were the short names of these theories.  In the description of the child node (CMO) I wrote a starter-CMO statement and then coded the paragraph to the appropriate Cs Ms & Os.
> 
> I'm coloring my nodes also.  All Ms are one color, all Cs are another...  This way, when I view 'coding stripes' I can quickly visualize paragraphs and the Cs Ms & Os associated with it.
> 
> ok - sorry to be so long winded.  Can anyone add hints on using NVivo?  I'm very open to comments and ideas.  Thanks