In his paper, Tom Richards, the co-developer of the program, justified the birth of NVivo in the face of the reputation and long history of NUD*IST. The developers of the software have described it as an improved and expanded version of the NUD*IST 3. NVivo, one of the current popular qualitative data management programs, has its roots in the NUD*IST. The dawn of CAQDAS was marked by the development of a program called Non-numerical Unstructured Data Indexing Searching and Theorizing (NUD*IST), which was specifically designed for qualitative data management in 1980's. To lessen this burden, it is important that health researchers become aware of the possibilities of using Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software (CAQDAS) such as ATLAS.ti, MAXqda, NVivo and N6. The systematic and rigorous preparation and analysis of qualitative data is usually time consuming and labour intensive 2. Qualitative research usually produces large amounts of textual data in the form of transcripts and field notes.

In recent years, there has been an increase in number of qualitative studies been carried out by health professionals. However, when we want to broaden or deepen our understanding of how things came to be the way they are in our social world, qualitative research has no substitute 1. Quantitative research tells us how often or how many behave in a certain way. CAQDAS are basically data management packages, which support the researcher during analysis.

In other words, researchers must equally know that no software can analyse qualitative data.

The key message is that unlike statistical software, the main function of CAQDAS is not to analyse data but rather to aid the analysis process, which the researcher must always remain in control of.

In this paper, the author reflects on his experience of interacting with one of the popular CAQDAS (NVivo) in order to provide evidence-based implications of using the software. While the issue of mastering CAQDAS has received ample attention, little has been done to address the misconceptions associated with CAQDAS. This may be due to the difficulties that one has to go through to master the software and the misconceptions that are associated with using CAQDAS. Although the CAQDAS has been there for decades, very few qualitative health researchers report using it. However, Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software (CAQDAS) are increasingly being developed. For a long time, electronic data analysis has been associated with quantitative methods.

Nvivo research