Getting started – Explore (NVivo 14 Mac)

An NVivo beginner guide to exploring data using queries and visualizations like word frequency, word clouds, and hierarchy charts to reveal key insights.

Apr 1, 2026
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Getting started – Explore (NVivo 14 Mac)

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Getting started – Explore (NVivo 14 Mac)

It's likely that you'll run queries and create visualizations at the end of a project, as you draw final conclusions, but these types of exploration are valuable throughout a research project, providing insights into the directions you could follow.

Queries and visualizations require data to be set up so NVivo can process it effectively, producing meaningful outputs. For the purposes of this tutorial—aimed at beginners—the examples below are comparatively simple and require minimal setup (although the attribute chart requires that NVivo has converted survey questions into case attributes).

Word frequency query

A good, quick way to see what's on the minds of your research subjects is to run a word frequency query over what they say—which terms come up the most?

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Summary

You can use the word frequency query to see what issues your research subjects are talking about. Open the query from the Explore tab. Select the files to run the query on, how many words to count, and whether you want to count related words as the same. When you’ve run the query you can display it as a word cloud.

Help links

Word frequency query (NVivo 14 Mac)

Hierarchy chart

NVivo has many ways to analyze and visualize data. Here’s just one simple example, creating a graph in order to rapidly see people’s opinions on a specific issue.

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Summary

If people have been asked a question in a survey, NVivo can automatically make each respondent a case and turn their responses into attribute values in case classifications applied to those cases.

Then, to create a chart of the responses, open Case Classifications in the List View and open the classification that contains the attribute in the Detail View. Select the attribute in the Detail View and open the context menu. Select Visualize / Hierarchy Chart of Attribute Value Combinations. A hierarchy chart showing how many people gave each response is produced. You can display in 'Treemap' or 'Sunburst' formats.

Help links

Charts (NVivo 14 Mac), Analyzing surveys (NVivo 14 Mac)

See how to organize your data: Getting started – Organize (NVivo 14 Mac)

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NV14Mac-Content-tutorials-tutorial-03-explore