NVivo 12 Essentials

I miss going physically to bookstores to browse these books...because I would have never bought this book, had I been given the opportunity to review it. I had high expectations, but this book is just a more detailed version of the technical manual QSR International (vendor of NVivo) provides for free to its customers. It shows you, say, how to important data, how to handle text sources...and how to do pretty much anything in DECONTEXTUALIZED and INDEPENDENT SEGMENTS without context or continuity, and chapters don't build up on each other. So, it is strictly a reference book for people that already know what they are doing but need very specific technical assistance here and there.Sure, for example, it's great that they are telling me how to edit text in NVivo--simply by clicking on "Edit," as though one couldn't have guessed that. But this is done completely out of context, so I wouldn't know exactly when this function might become handy. This type of technical info is readily available for free from QSR Int'l anyhow but isn't all that helpful unless you already know the basics of how the analysis goes in general terms and only need specific guidance on what option to click on, etc.I bought this book because It sounded like it would show how to complete a thematic analysis or content analysis project from Step 1 to Step N using NVivo. Unfortunately, it does not. It would have been far more effective for authors to show, perhaps using case examples, how qualitative analysis is to be performed on NVivo in its entirety.

This guide is excellent for understanding the functionality and logic behind NVivo 12. However, I will offer a word of caution to those who are detail-oriented. I have been mortified by the number of typos in the book. A simple spellcheck would have prevented this problem. Alternatively, an editor should have caught them.