The first part is on NCapture, a tool that lets you easily capture webpages as PDFs.
The second part is on importing survey data into NVivo.
NCapture
You may want to import in content from the web, and NVivo can help with this. To do so, you need to install a plugin for Google Chrome. Most web pages can be captured as PDFs. You can also capture some pages from Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube as datasets, videos and pictures. NCapture files (.nvcx) contain your captured content as well as the URLs, capture times and any additional information such as a description, memo and coding that you specified at the time of capture. To use NCapture, you would use Chrome to go to the page you want to capture, and then click on the NCapture button to capture the content. These NCapture files can then be brought into NVivo to analyze. However, I will warn you that it is fairly limited in its use and the results can be unpredictable – it’s really best for capturing web pages. For extensive social media data gathering, other tools are better suited than NVivo to capture them.
For this tutorial, let's capture an article for analysis in NVivo.
1. First we need to install NCapture in Chrome. Go to NCapture for Chrome in the Chrome Web Store using Google Chrome.
2. Click the Add to Chrome button.
Then click on Add extension to confirm.
NCapture for Chrome is added to Chrome, with an icon in the toolbar. If you don’t see it, click on the puzzle piece to display all your extensions, and then click on the pin icon to pin NCapture to your extensions bar.
3. Next, let’s try a really simple example of capturing a webpage as a PDF file. Use Chrome and go to this URL: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/industry-news/property-report/article-demand-for-storage-space-in-the-cloud-creates-a-land-rush/
4. Click on the NCapture icon on the top right of Chrome (you will need to accept an end-user license agreement the first time you use it). If you don’t see it, click on the puzzle piece to display all your extensions, and then click on the pin icon to pin NCapture to your extensions bar.
5. When you click on the NCapture icon, you are presented with the choice of capturing the entire page, including headers, ads, etc. or just the main article itself as a PDF. Let’s choose the article – so select Article as PDF.
6. You will see it shows you a simplified version of the page and what it will capture.
7. You can give it a name if you like, but let’s keep the default name in this case.
8. We could provide a description and/or attach a memo if you like. We can skip that for now.
9. You can also code the entire thing with a node, if appropriate. Let’s leave it blank.
10. Finally click on the Capture button.
You can click on the NCapture icon again to find a link to a capture progress page in Chrome at the bottom. You may see a small window pops up on the bottom right corner. You can also click on the link in the pop-up to see the progress page. The pop-up window will disappear after a short while, even if the capture has not finished.
The progress page allows you to stop the capture, if you made a mistake or it is taking too long.
11. It should capture the page fairly quickly and then a pop-up window should ask you where to save the file. Save it somewhere you can find it, such as your Desktop. If you are not prompted about where to save the file, check your Downloads directory, as that is often the default location where items will be saved.
12. Then go back to NVivo. From the left menu, under Data, click on the Files folder to select where you will be importing this new article. Then go to the Data menu and select NCapture.
13. Browse to the folder where the capture was saved and click on Open.
14. You should now see the file in the list, make sure that it is highlighted. Finally, click on Import.
15. NVivo will present you with a PDF properties window with properties about this newly imported file. Click on Done.
Now NVivo has imported the PDF file into your Files folder, but you can then move it to reorganize your files, if you wish.
16. It should also automatically open up the PDF, and you will be able to read it and code the text.
Survey Data
Another common data type that you might want to use NVivo to analyze is survey data. NVivo can import survey data in directly if you have your survey data stored in a spreadsheet, where each row is a survey respondent’s answers and each column is a question.
Note: This activity assumes you are familiar with case classifications and cases in NVivo. If case classifications and cases in NVivo is new to you, you can learn more in our Introduction to NVivo 12 tutorial!
1. To start, let's download a small sample of survey data called the Millennial Sentiment Interview Transcript Dataset. This data set is hosted on Kaggle, which is an public data platform. To download this data you’ll first have to register for a free account (or sign in if you already have one). Click Register at the top right of the website.
After you’ve signed in, click Download and save it somewhere you can find it, such as the Desktop.
2. Go to NVivo. From the left menu, under Data, click on the Files folder. Then go to the Data menu and select Dataset.
3. Browse to the folder where the Millennial Sentiment Interview Transcript Dataset (file Interview_Database_Cleaned.xlsx) was saved. Select the file, and then click on Open.
4. NVivo’s Dataset Import Wizard will open up to help you import your data. First as there are two sheets in the Excel file, it is asking which one to use. The default “Data” sheet is fine. It will also present you with a preview of the data. Click on Next.
5. Next it checks the data format. Our first row is our column headers, so we can keep the default. We don’t have any dates in our survey, so again we can keep the default, but if you are working with dates, then take a look at this option. Click on Next.
6. This screen presents you with how NVivo has interpreted the different columns in the dataset – that some have codable content, for example. Keep the defaults on the next screen and click on Next.
7. Then click Import to complete importing in our data. You will see a progress screen.
8. NVivo will open up the data when finished, as a spreadsheet display.
9. Next we can create nodes for each open-ended question automatically. Then it’ll group all the responses to a particular question together in a node. To do so, hold down the Control key and click on the newly imported dataset in the list of files. Select Auto Code and then Dataset…
10. Using the Auto Code Dataset Assistant, select Code at nodes for selected columns. Then click on Next.
11. NVivo auto detects the columns that are open-ended and lists them in Selected Columns. We can keep the defaults and select Next.
12. It asks if we want to put these new nodes under a parent node or create a new parent node based on the name of the dataset. We can keep the defaults and select Auto Code.
13. Once completed, from the left menu, you can click on Node and expand the Interview_Database_Cleaned node to see all the auto generated nodes. Double click on one to see all the answers to that particular question in the survey.
14. We can also use NVivo to auto create cases, one case for each survey respondent. To do so, from the left menu, go back to the Files folder. Hold down the Control key and click on the newly imported dataset once again. Select Auto Code and then Dataset…
15. This time, select Code at cases for each value in a column and then select Next.
16. For Choose the column that contains the case names, select Sr No. to select the ID numbers we can use to identify survey respondents. Then select Next.
17. Next it will suggest coding all the open-ended responses by these newly created cases. We can keep the defaults, so select Next.
18. Select classify cases from classifying columns. The defaults below this will create a new case classification using the closed-ended variables in your dataset as attributes, such as Industry, etc. Then select Auto Code.
19. From the left menu, go to Cases, and expand Interview_Database_Cleaned to see a list of all the cases created (one for each survey respondent). Double click on one of them to see all the responses to the survey that respondent provided.
20. From the left menu, go to Case Classifications, and double click on Interview_Database_Cleaned. Select Classification Sheet just above the data to see a spreadsheet of the attributes for each case.
21. To summarize, when importing the survey dataset, NVivo will help us create a case for the survey respondent. For each closed-ended question that it detects, it will capture that information about the survey respondent as case attributes. It will import each open-ended question as spreadsheet content that can be coded, and automatically code each question’s response with a new code for that question. You can now continue to code the open-ended question responses to further analyze the survey data, or run queries to gain insight into the data.
Resources to Learn More
Visit our Getting Started page for more information, tutorials, and workshops on NVivo 12!
Check out this NVivo help page to explore all the file types you can import into an NVivo project.