ACTIVITY: Youth Climate March News Analysis

new project button

Creating a project and navigating the workspace
- Open NVivo and select Blank Project
- In the New Project dialogue box that opens, enter a title for your project “2019 Youth Climate March News Analysis”
- Next to the File name field, select where to save your project file with Browse
- Check the box next to Keep a log of user actions (this will keep track of your methodology and retrace your steps later on). Click OK when finished
  There are 4 key areas of the NVivo workspace:
  - Top Ribbon - all of the commands and options in NVivo are found here
  - Navigation Pane - where you view and organize your files
  - File List Pane - displays contents of folders selected in the navigation pane
  - Detail Pane - displays contents of files and project items
Importing your files
- Download the two workshop activity files from this directory
- Select the Import tab on the top ribbon and then select Files
- Navigate to the two files you saved to your computer. Select the two PDFs and click Open
- On the Import Files dialogue box that appears, select Import
- In the File List Pane, you’ll see the files you just imported.
Coding text files with codes
- Codes are labels that help you group together pieces of data that relate to the same idea, theme, or concept.
- Double click the “SouthChinaMorningPost_2019-07-18.pdf” file to display it in the detail pane. Read through the document and keep an eye out for key issues and themes brought up by each of the speakers in the 9 countries covered. In the following steps we will code and organize themes identified in the document by creating a series of codes
- Coding at a new code: The speaker from Australia mentions increasing summer temperatures. To create a code representing this theme, highlight the related sentence, right-click the highlighted text and select Code Selection. In the Select Code Items dialogue box that appears, select Codes and then, under the Create New: heading, select Top Level Code. Title your new code “increasing temperature”
- Coding at an existing code: The speaker from Vietnam also talks about increasing temperatures. Right-click the highlighted text, select Code Selection, select increasing temperature (under the Codes heading), and then confirm with the Code Selection to “increasing temperature” button at the bottom of the pop up. Alternatively, to achieve the same result you could have selected Code to Recent Codes and selected increasing temperature
- You can code the same pieces of text as multiple themes. In this same text that we coded as “increasing temperature” from the Australian speaker, they also mention coral bleaching. Create a new code for this topic and recode this sentence
- Quick Coding Bar: The coding bar at the bottom of the workspace can be a quick way to code text. Select the text in your file you wish to code. On the quick coding bar, type the name of a new or existing code (as you start typing, the names of codes will start to show up), and then click enter on your keyboard
- Highlighting Codes: To see what portions of text in your document have been coded, in the top ribbon under the Document tab (that should in this case display “SouthChinaMorningPost_2019-07-18”) click the Highlight icon and select All Coding. If you want to only see specific codes highlighted in the text, select Coding for Selected Items and pick from the list displayed, then click OK
- Coding Density: Coding density is a visual indicator that shows how much of a section of text has been coded. To get a visual sense of the coding density of your codes and spot patterns in the distribution of topics, turn on coding stripes. Make sure the “SouthChinaMorningPost_2019-07-18.pdf” file is visible in the detail pane. In the top ribbon, select the Document tab as before, click the Coding Stripes icon and, in the drop-down menu, select All
- Key Themes: Continue coding the rest of this document by creating codes and applying them to the sentences they are contained in. Identify themes related to:
  - i. Impacts
  - ii. Barriers
  - iii. Solutions
- Aim to identify at least 3 to 5 themes in each response.
- Removing code: If you need to remove codes, highlight the piece of text, right-click and select Uncode. Select the code you wish to remove your selection from and click OK
- Create Code Hierarchies: As you create more and more modes, you may start to see a hierarchy of themes emerge. You can group codes into parent or child categories. Using the “Impact”, “Bariers”, and “Solutions” themes, organize your codes into a hierarchy. To do so, first create a new code titled “Barriers”. Double click the Codes icon in the navigation pane to display it in the file list pane. Click the Code icon in the top ribbon under the Create tab. In the New Code dialogue box that appears, name a new code “Barriers”
- With your codes list displayed in the file list pane, you can select and then drag and drop the child codes representing barriers onto the parent code to create a hierarchy. Repeat for codes representing Impacts and Solutions
  - Note: In the Windows version of NVivo, if nothing is selected in the File List Pane, clicking and dragging will select multiple entries. If you wish to click and drag one item, you must first click it once to select it and then click and drag it from one location to the next
- It can be helpful to group references from all child codes together under a parent theme. To copy the coding from the child codes to the parent code, in the list view right-click the parent code and select Aggregate Coding from Children
- Removing Child Codes: To remove a child code from a hierarchy, drag the child code to the Codes icon in the navigation pane
- Viewing code references: To view all the pieces of text coded at a given code, from the Codes list double click the desired code. This will open up a window in the detail pane with all the references.
  - Time permitting, repeat the above exercise for the “WashingtonPost_2020-02-03.pdf” file, continuing to use and build upon your themes hierarchy
Word frequency queries
- Word frequency queries show you the most commonly used words in a document, helping you get an initial sense of key topics and potential codes before you begin coding.
- Running a word frequency query can help you establish codes prior to coding and give you a sense of the content of your file. Click the Explore tab in the Top Ribbon, and then click the Word Frequency icon
- The Word Frequency Criteria menu opens in a new window. Click the Selected Items… button to choose which file(s) to search. In the dialogue box that appears, select the “WashingtonPost_2020-02-03.pdf” file, then click OK
- In the Word Frequency Criteria menu, you can adjust the parameters of your search, including the number of results to display, the minimum word character length for inclusion in the search, and how to group similar words together in the search. Click Run Query to execute the word frequency calculation. How do the results compare with your codes?
- Try modifying these parameters and see how your results change. Make sure to click Run Query each time to re-execute the query
- Right-click terms you want to exclude from your results and select Add to Stop Words List. To view words in the stop word list, click the File tab then Project Properties. On the General tab click the Stop Words button
- To save the query, click the Save Criteria… button. The results will be saved in the Query Criteria folder under the Queries heading in the navigation pane
Text search queries
- Text search queries allow you to search for particular words or phrases within and across the documents you have imported into NVivo. Click the Explore tab in the Top Ribbon and then click the Text Search icon
- The Text Search Criteria menu opens in a new window. Click the Selected Items… button to choose which file(s) to search. In the Select Project Items dialogue box that appears, select the “WashingtonPost_2020-02-03.pdf” text file, then click OK
- Open the Codes list in the list view pane. Let’s see whether any of the themes we identified in the first interview are also discussed in the second interview
- Enter the term “drought” into the text box and click Run Query. 1 reference should be found
- Play around with some of your other codes and search options: with stemmed words, with synonyms etc. Some samples to try including: disaster, displace, lobby, activism, coral, etc.
- Double click the copy of the file listed below the Text Search Criteria. The words in the search string are now highlighted within the context of the document
- To code the highlighted text, in the Text Search Query click Save Results. In the dialogue box that appears, select Create Results as New Code or Case. Next to Location click the arrow then select Codes. Give it an appropriate title and then press OK
Matrix coding queries
- Matrix coding queries enable you to see coding intersections between two lists of items. For example, let’s explore how our Impact codes intersect with countries
- First create codes for each country represented in the sources and apply each of them to the related text
- Under the Explore tab, click Matrix Coding Query. Search in Files & Externals. Set “Coding at rows AND columns”. Select, drag, and drop all of the Country child codes into the Rows and drag and drop all of the Impact child codes into the Columns text boxes. Then, select Run Query
- The resulting matrix shows counts of which impacts were raised by speakers from different countries
- To save the query, click the Save Criteria… button. The results will be saved in the Query Results folder under the Queries heading in the navigation pane
Creating Visualizations
- Visualizing Query Results: NVivo automatically creates visualizations for queries. Re-open your saved word frequency query. On the right-side of the results summary, tabs indicating Word Cloud and Tree Map are available
- For matrix queries and crosstab queries, you can display your results as a chart. Re-open your saved matrix query. On the right-side of the results summary click the Chart tab. By default, NVivo will create a 3D visualization to represent your results. This can be changed or customized using the Chart tools displayed on the Top Ribbon
Exporting materials
- Reports and Extracts: NVivo automatically generates a series of reports to summarize your work. In the navigation pane, expand the Output heading. Two options should be listed: reports and extracts. Reports are meant to be read as documents, whereas extracts can be imported into spreadsheets
- Click the Reports icon in the navigation pane. A series of reporting options should appear in the file list pane. Let’s create a report summarizing our coding scheme. Click Coding Summary by Code Report. In the Filter Options dialogue box that appears, click OK. In the detail pane, a document should open, which summarizes information on each of the codes in the hierarchy and lists the coded text
- For comparison, click the Extracts icon in the navigation pane. Click Coding Summary by Code Report in the file list pane. In the Filter Options dialogue box that appears, click Okay. NVivo will ask you to save this document locally as a *.txt file. This file can now be opened by programs like Excel. Column structure is maintained by comma delineation
- Individual Item Export: You can also export the codebook and other content generated in NVivo as individual files. In the navigation pane under Codes, right-click Codes and select Export Codebook. In the dialogue box that appears, you can browse to select where to save the file. You can choose to save the file either in MS Word format (*.docx) or MS Excel (*.xlsx)
Saving your workspace
- Your workspace is saved by NVivo as a *.nvp file. All of your files and outputs are saved as part of your workspace. to save, click File above the top ribbon, then select Save. If you need to copy your workspace to another location, click File and then select Copy Project
- To review your actions taken in the workshop, click File above the top ribbon, then click Open Project Event Log

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