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Using NVivo: An Unofficial and Unauthorized Primer

Shalin Hai-Jew, Author

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Glossary of Terms

Glossary of Terms (Digital Flashcards)




Please click this link to access the digital flashcards.  These cards are in mixed and randomized order. 


Glossary of Terms (alphabetical order)


Note: This is a partial glossary of terms related to “Using NVivo…” This is conceptualized as a quick reference guide only. 

 

Agnostic (as in theory- or method- agnostic):   A software tool that is not designed with an underlying theory or method in mind but is sufficiently flexible to accommodate a range of theoretical or methodological approaches

Autocoding (automatic coding):  The computerized labeling of data to particular nodes in NVivo either based on text style or on machine learning (from extant human coding)

Bibliographic tool: A third-party software tool that enables the ingestion of bibliographic (citation) data from formally-published contents hosted on repositories (and often contents from the Web and Internet)

CAQDAS:  Computer-Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software

Case comparison diagram:  A visualization which highlights some of the salient comparisons and contrasts (similarities and differences) between coded cases 

Codebook A document which describes the codes and their respective definitions used in coding data; may be pre-defined a priori, may be emergent, or may be created from both pre-defined and emergent (from the data) methods

Classification sheet: A table which enables the description of types of sources or case nodes in a project and the attributes linked to the particular classification (such as a “person” type of “case node” and the respective attributes for that person such as “age,” “education,” and “gender”

Coding comparison:  A type of matrix query that enables comparisons-and-contrasts across coded nodes

Coding pattern: A machine-analysis of human coding for machine-emulated autocoding

Cohen’s Kappa coefficient: A similarity calculation of interrater reliability that looks at the disjoint set of two coders’ coded data (as compared to their agreement on what to code and what not to code)

Compound query: A multiple-layered query of types of information in NVivo (from both sources and coded nodes)

Data query: The mining of both structured and unstructured data in NVivo using a range of possible tools

Data repository: A collection of datasets or data

Dataset:
A collection of data (of a certain type or of varying types)

De-identification: 
Removing the identifying features of respondents from a dataset (optimally in a way in which individuals may not be re-identified)

Disambiguation:
Removing ambiguity or confusion or “noise” from data

Dynamic: Moving, changing over time

Ego:  An individual or self 

Entity: A group

Event log: A recording of the human actions taken in an NVivo project (reported out as a text file)

External source:
A category of source which contains “proxies” for data which cannot be directly transcoded and ingested into the NVivo project 

Extract:  A particular element which is taken from a certain location to build a report, a data table, or some other exportable file 

Facet:  A dimension or property of an item (such as a case node)  

Geolocation: The relating of online data to a physical location on earth (often from noisy data to specific “structured location references”

Graph: A 2D or 3D node-link representation of entities and relationships

Group query: An advanced query that enables the querying of particular groupings of data for in-depth analysis

Hashtag (#): The labeling of microblogging text messages or shared social media contents based on a shared theme or topic or conversation

Ingest:
The importation of data into an NVivo project

Interface: The space where a human being interacts with a software tool, including the Navigation View, Ribbon, Find Bar, List View, and Detail View in the integrated workspace

Internal source:  Any digital data related to the research project

Inter-rater reliability: A similarity measure to compare how closely two coders code data (as points of agreement and points of disagreement; also known as inter-annotator reliability

Machine reading: The capability for computers to automatically extract relevant data based on algorithms, without human intervention (in relation to the Semantic Web)

Matrix: A table used to compare entities or variables labeled in the rows and columns (with the data in the intersecting cells)

Memo: A note related to a particular object (in terms of context-sensitive memoing)

Metadata: Information about content data (used for various types of datamining and analysis)

Microblogging: The act of sharing short messages, URL links, images, and videos through a microblogging site or related app

Mixed methodology: A form of research which integrates or mixes qualitative and quantitative theories and methods

Multi-methodology: A form of research that uses more than one method of research

Multimedia:
Media that consists of a variety of content forms

NCapture: A plug-in or add-on to Google Chrome and Internet Explorer to enable the capturing of website information for use In NVivo as well as dataset extractions from Twitter, Facebook, Linked-In and other social media platforms

Network analysis:  A visual analytical (and statistical) research approach based on the study of ego-based networks or content-based networks 

NVivo:  A qualitative and mixed methods data analysis software tool

.nvp:
The extension for an NVivo project in Windows 

.nvpx:  The extension for an NVivo project in the Mac operating system 

Node: The basic unit of “code” in NVivo, which may represent concepts, themes, individuals, demographic attributes, or a range of other informational features

Node-link diagram:  A 2D or 3D depiction of egos/entities and their interrelationships (defined in a variety of ways depending on the research context)  

Operating system:  Software that runs a computer's basic functions, such as Windows, Mac, or Linux

Optical character recognition (OCR):  The capability for a machine to recognize a particular language character from a photo-scanned document 

Path: A sequence of navigation through pages and multimedia (on Scalar, the platform on which the “Using NVivo” text is hosted)

Proxy: Something used to represent or stand in for something else

Radial diagram: A data visualization in Scalar based on a radiating pattern from a central point (in Scalar)

Relationship
: An undirected or directed linkage between two nodes

Research journal: A chronological record of the research

Screenshot: A screen capture of the visual contents on a computer screen

Semantic Web: A concept of the World Wide Web in which its contents are sufficiently metadata-ed so as to be machine searchable (a concept of Tim Berners-Lee) for a wide range of information mining capabilities

Sentiment analysis:  A machine categorization of text-based data as very positive, moderately positive, moderately negative, and very negative (on the positive-to-negative continuum) 

Social media platforms: Online spaces that enable human sharing of digital information and interactions through self-created online identities

Static: Non-dynamic, not moving, passive

Structured data: Data that is pre-labeled in spreadsheets with column and / or row headers labeling the data

Synthetic data: Artificial data (created for exemplification or other purposes)

Tag: The folk (non-expert; amateur) labeling of social media contents like images, audio files, video files, slideshows, or other contents

Text frequency count:
A machine count of all (generally semantic) words in a document or text corpus (minus those listed in a “stopwords list” or a “delete words list”)

Text search: The extraction of all instances of a particular term or phrase (or related synonyms) in order to capture the “gist” of its usage based on proxemics terms (both prior to the term’s use and following the term’s use) 

Theme extraction: An autocoding feature in NVivo 11 Plus that enables the automated extraction of the main themes and subthemes in text data 

Unicode:  A code set of characters and specifications that enables the inclusion of any written language to be used on computers and the Internet (based on the work of The Unicode Consortium)

Unstructured data: Data that is not structured in tables with labeled rows and columns, such as textual documents, text corpuses, extracted Tweetstream datasets, images, audio files, video, and so on 

User stream:  A listing of microblogging messages related to a particular user account on Twitter (extractable using the NCapture add-on to Chrome or IE in conjunction with NVivo) 

Visual mining: The human extraction of information (and insight) from often-interactive visual objects

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