Understand views and fields

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In reports and extracts, a view is a group of related data fields. When you build a report or extract, select the view which contains the fields you want to include in your report or extract. There are five different views: node, case classification, source, source classification and project item.

In this topic

Which view should I choose?
Understand how to work with the fields in a 'view'
Which fields should I choose?
Understand the Case Classification view
Understand the Node view
Understand the Project Item view
Understand the Source Classification view
Understand the Source view

Which view should I choose?

The view you choose when building a report or extract determines the information (fields) you can include.

Below is a summary of the available views including links to example reports.

View	Use this view to...	Report examples
Case Classification	Report on the classifications, attributes and attribute values used to describe the people, places and other cases in your project. You can use this view to show the classification structure, or the demographic spread of cases. This view does not contain any coding information. If you want to report on coding at nodes, choose the Node view.	List all the values for an attribute—for example, list all the cities specified for the attribute ‘location’. Count the number of cases by attribute value—for example, the number of people assigned to each age group. List the cases grouped by attribute value for a selected attribute—for example, list the people in each age group, with a total for each age group. See example report.
Node	Report on the nodes in your project including sources they code, coding references, and any classifications assigned to them. This view includes 'intersecting' nodes which is useful for reporting on how coding at two nodes coincides—for example see which 'cases' intersect selected themes. This view also includes collections, which you could use to limit the scope of your reports.	List the sources that are coded at selected nodes, including the number of coding references. List the ‘theme’ nodes and count the ‘cases’ that are coded at them. List the case nodes along with the 'theme' nodes that intersect them. See example report.
Project item	Use this view to create reports about the structure of your project. Report on your project and the project items, including the types of project items and who created them.	List all the people who work on the project and how many items of each type they have created. List the project items grouped by type including when they were last modified. See example report. Produce a codebook that lists nodes and their description. See example report.
Source Classification	Report on the classifications that are used to describe your sources. You can create reports that show the classifications in your project or how your sources are classified. This view does not contain any coding information. To report on coding in sources, choose the Source view.	List the classified sources and folder location grouped by classification. Count the number of sources that belong to each classification—for example, the number of books, magazine articles and so on. See example report.
Source	Report on sources including which nodes code the sources. This view also includes collections, which you could use to limit the scope of your reports.	Display sources that belong to a set and show the nodes that code the sources. For each source, display nodes in descending order of coding coverage. See example report.

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Understand how to work with the fields in a 'view'

Based on your selected 'view', you can choose the fields you want to include in your report or extract. Each view consists of a number of tables that contain related fields.

You can select fields from one or more tables within the view to add to your report or extract. For example, if you want to report on the case classifications and attributes in your project, you could choose:

Name from the Classification table
Attribute Name from the Attribute.Attribute Value table

You could then specify group options to organize a report. Using the example above, you could group the classification names together, so that Person is displayed once, Place is displayed once and so on. If you are using the Report Wizard, refer to Summary and group options If you are using the Report Designer, refer to Report criteria .

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Which fields should I choose?

NVivo provides a flexible approach to choosing the information you want to include on report. You can choose descriptive information based on an item's properties or more detailed information based on how an item relates to other items.

Experiment by combining fields to get the required result—for example, if you want to focus on interview respondents and their demographic attributes, choose the Case Classification view and choose a combination of the following fields:

Name from the Classification.Node table
Attribute Name from the Node.Attribute Value table
Attribute Value from the Node.Attribute Value table

NOTE Some combinations of fields produce more meaningful and manageable results than others. For more information, refer to the sections below for each view.

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Understand the Case Classification view

Combine the fields in the Case Classification view to check the status of the node classifications in your project. For example, to list all the values for each attribute, choose the following fields:

Name from the Classification.Attribute table
Attribute Value from the Attribute.Attribute Value table

NOTE For best results, select fields from either the red box or the blue box as shown in the diagram above.

Summary of tables and fields

Below is a summary of the tables and fields available in the Case Classification view:

Table	Includes fields related to...
Classification	The case classifications (person, place and so on) that have been added to your project.
Classification.Attribute	The attributes (gender, age and so on) defined for the case classifications in your project.
Attribute.Attribute Value	Attribute values (male, 25-35 and so on) defined for the attributes in your project.
Classification.Node	The nodes that have been classified as a person, place or other 'case'.
Node.Attribute Value	The attribute values assigned to the people, places or other 'cases' in your project.

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Understand the Node view

Combine the fields in the Node view to check the status of the nodes in your project. For example, to report on nodes and the sources coded at them, choose the following fields:

Name from the Node table
Name from the Node.Coded Source table

NOTE

For best results, select fields from either the red box or the blue box as shown in the diagram above.
Node matrices are not available in the Node view, but are available in the Project Item view.

Summary of tables and fields

Below is a summary of the tables and fields available in the Node view:

Table	Includes fields related to...
Node	Nodes and their properties.
Node.Classification	Classifications (person, place and so on) used to describe the nodes in your project.
Node.Attribute Value	Attribute values assigned to the classified nodes in your project.
Node.Collection	Collections that contain nodes—for example, sets and search folders and so on.
Node.Created By	The users who created nodes.
Node.Modified By	The users who last modified nodes.
Node.Coded Source	The sources coded at nodes.
Coded Source.Coding Reference	The coding references in sources for particular nodes.
Intersecting Node	How coding at one node coincides with the coding at another node. For example, list a selection of 'theme' nodes and the 'cases' that intersect them.
Intersecting Node.Classification	The classification of nodes where coding at one node intersects with coding at another.
Intersecting Node.Attribute Value	The attribute values of nodes where coding at one node intersects with coding at another. For example, list the' theme' nodes and see the 'cases' that intersect them along with demographic information about the case.

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Understand the Project Item view

Combine the fields in the Project Item view to check the overall status of your project. For example, to list the project items in your folders—choose the following fields:

Name from the Folder table
Name from the Folder.ProjectItem table

NOTE For best results, select fields from either the red box or the blue box as shown in the diagram above.

Summary of tables and fields

Below is a summary of the tables and fields available in the Project Item view:

Table	Includes fields related to...
Project	The properties of your project.
User	The team members who work on the project.
Folder	The folders in your project.
Folder.ProjectItem	The properties of project items in a folder.
Collection	The properties of the collections (sets, search folders and so on) defined in your project.
Collection.ProjectItem	The properties of the items in the collections defined for your project.

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Understand the Source Classification view

Combine the fields in the Source Classification view to check the status of the source classifications in your project. For example, to list all the sources in each classification (book, article and so on), choose the following fields:

Name from the Classification table
Name from the Classification.Source table

NOTE For best results, select fields from either the red box or the blue box as shown in the diagram above.

Summary of tables and fields

Below is a summary of the tables and fields available in the Source Classification view:

Table	Includes fields related to...
Classification	The source classifications (book, article and so on) that have been added to your project.
Classification.Attribute	The attributes (author, date and so on) defined for the source classifications in your project.
Attribute.Attribute Value	Attribute values (B.Smith, 12/12/09 and so on) specified for the source classifications in your project.
Classification.Source	Sources that have been classified.
Source.Attribute Value	The attribute values (author, publication date and so on) for sources that have been classified.

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Understand the Source view

Combine the fields in the Source view to check the status of the sources in your project. For example, to report on sources and the nodes they are coded at, choose the following fields:

Name from the Source table
Name from the Coding Node table

Summary of tables and fields

Below is a summary of the tables and fields available in the Source view:

Table	Includes fields related to...
Source	Sources and their properties.
Source.Classification	Classifications (book, article and so on) used to describe the sources in your project.
Source.Attribute Value	Attribute values assigned to the classified sources in your project.
Source.Collection	Collections that contain sources.
Source.Created By	The users who created sources.
Source.Modified By	The users who modified sources.
Coding Node	Coding references in nodes for particular sources.
Coding Reference	The coding references in sources.

NOTE Framework matrices are not available in the Source view, but are available in the Project Item view.

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