Hi Gill,<div><br></div><div>A good question and right up front I have to admit that I have not used NVivo with such a large team and independent data extraction and analysis. So I can&#39;t provide any helpful advice on how best to do this with NVivo. However, I have read that NVivo 9 is meant to be more &#39;user friendly&#39; for collaborations across teams. You are I am sure going to do this, but it would be worth making sure you pilot and iron out any idiosyncrasies NVivo may have in &#39;collaboration mode&#39; before doing the real thing??</div>

<div><br></div><div>As you may (or may not recall), I have only ever:</div><div>1) used a fraction of the functionality of NVivo ... so some of the stuff you are asking about is way above me!</div><div>2) used it mainly as a tagging / filing system</div>

<div><br></div><div>As such its use has been more as a support tool .. and (sorry to repeat this cliche but) fancy software is no substitute for repeated detailed discussion, debate and analysis within the review team. For what it is worth:</div>

<div><br></div><div>a) I have always tried to get some idea of what data I need to extract first. Have done this through developing a programme theory of varying sophistication. Have then used the programme theory to guide what data I need to test it.</div>

<div>b) I tend to make up a bunch of free nodes which support, refute, refine the various components of a programme theory. I don&#39;t initially break these down in to C, M or O, but do later on if necessary. So I guess my point is start without a tree structure and then reorganise later - either by using a tree structure or using sets?</div>

<div>c) I found that &#39;piloting&#39; was very helpful. So once I had a small set of seemingly relevant papers, I would read them, make up some codes (free nodes) and then check if they captured the relevant data within these initial papers, adding or nodes if needed. I guess you could do this process as a team, come up with an initial set of free nodes which everyone will use but still allow each researcher to create additional nodes. In the team meetings you could then discuss the value of the agreed set of nodes AND also then have a discussion about the value of any new &#39;individual&#39; nodes. These new &#39;individual&#39; nodes could then be included (or not) into the agreed set of common nodes for all to use .. and the process goes on.</div>

<div>A process of iterative and gradual refinement and re-organisation of the nodes.</div><div>The key here is to then go back and recode the documents using any nodes you have added (a laborious but important step).</div>

<div><br></div><div>Hope this helps and any thoughts from anyone out there who has also used NVivo or any other similar software would be welcomed by me too as it would be nice to have some idea of how we all operationalise this aspect of realist reviews.</div>

<div><br></div><div>Geoff</div><div><br></div><div><br><div class="gmail_quote">On 14 December 2012 23:14, Gill Westhorp <span dir="ltr">&lt;<a href="mailto:[log in to unmask]" target="_blank"><a href="/cgi-bin/wa-jisc.exe?LOGON=A3%3Dind1212%26L%3DRAMESES%26E%3Dquoted-printable%26P%3D7556%26B%3D--e89a8f2353293920e704d0e26dce%26T%3Dtext%252Fhtml%3B%2520charset%3DISO-8859-1%26pending%3D" target="_parent" >[log in to unmask]</a></a>&gt;</span> wrote:<br>

<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Hi all<br>
There was a brief discussion a year or so ago about using software to assist with analysis (or more precisely, coding and sorting material ready for analysis). My team are currently struggling with the question: What&#39;s the best way to set up coding in NVivo9 to support a realist analysis?<br>


<br>
Situation: The question we&#39;re attempting to answer is relatively broad, looks across multiple kinds of interventions in the international development arena, with a correspondingly diverse literature, and does not have a particularly detailed initial theory.  There is a relatively large group of analysts (6 people), some working remotely, on different copies of NVivo (so if we want to merge copies later, the node structure has to be identical across all copies).  Every document has to be analysed by 2 team members.<br>


<br>
The main question we&#39;re grappling with is:  What&#39;s the most efficient way to be able to draw links between C, M and O, both within and across texts?  Subsidiary questions:  What level of detail should be pre-established in the coding guide?  Is it better to have fairly broad codes or quite detailed ones?  Is it better to use classifications and nodes (and therefore be able to use matrix searches) or nodes with see also links?  Or just nodes and annotations?<br>


<br>
If anyone has suggestions or experiences we&#39;d be delighted to hear about them.<br>
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Best wishes of the season to all<br>
<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888">Gill<br>
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