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About classifications

 

In NVivo, you use classifications to store descriptive information about your sources or about the people, places or other cases in your project. You can then use this information to make comparisons or to gather material by attribute. This topic gets you started with classifications—for more information, refer to Classify sources and Classify nodes.  

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What are classifications?

Classifications provide a way to record descriptive information about the sources and nodes in your project:

 

While source and node classifications behave in a similar way, they are used for different purposes:

  • Use source classifications to store bibliographical information about your sources.

  • Use node classifications to provide demographic details about the people, places or other 'cases' in your project. For example, classify a node as a Person and define attributes for age and occupation.

For more information, refer to About classifying sources or Classify nodes (set attribute values to record information).

NOTE  This release of NVivo for Mac does not provide predefined classifications, support the import of bibliographical data from reference management tools. For an overview of the features in this release, refer to What's in Nvivo 10 for Mac.

Working with source classifications

When you click on Source Classifications in Navigation View you will see the classifications that are available in your project—for example:

  • Newspaper Article

  • Journal Article

  • Web Page

If you cannot see any classifications, then you may want to:

Each classification has its own unique set of attributes. For example, if you expand the classification Newspaper Article you can see the attributes that are available for recording:

  • Reporter

  • Year

  • Title

As you classify your sources, you can specify an 'attribute value' for each attribute:

Attribute Value
Reporter Benjamin Smith
Year 2010
Title Urgent Challenges of Climate Change

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Working with node classifications

When you click on Node Classifications in Navigation View, you will see the node classifications that are available in your project—for example:

  • Person

  • Organization

  • Community

If you cannot see any classifications, then you may want to

Each node classification has its own unique set of attributes. For example, if you expand the classification Person you can see the attributes that are available for recording:

  • Age

  • Sex

  • Occupation

As you classify your nodes, you can specify an 'attribute value' for each attribute:

Attribute Value
Age 25

Sex

 Male
Occupation

Cattle farmer

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What is a classification sheet?

When you have classified your sources or nodes, you can open a grid that displays the attributes for all items in a particular classification—this grid is called a classification sheet.

For example, you could open the Person classification sheet and see all the nodes in this classification. The nodes are displayed along with their attribute values—you can sort and filter the sources based on their attribute values (for example, age and sex). You can also update attribute values via the classification sheet.

Refer to About classification sheets for more information.

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