Text content language & stop words (NVivo 15 Windows)

Text content language is the language of the files that you import or work with in NVivo. You can work with your NVivo interface in one language and your source files in another. For example, you may work with the interface in English, but you are analyzing interviews that are transcribed in French.

The text content language and stop word lists are managed via project properties. Project property settings apply to every user who accesses the project.

In NVivo Collaboration Server projects, all project users can view project properties (including the text content language and stop words list), but only Project Owners can make changes. Collaborate in a Collaboration Server 15 project

Why set the text content language?

NVivo provides the following text content languages: Chinese, English (UK), English (US), French, German, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish.

Each text content language has an associated dictionary that is used for:

• Spell checking.
• Finding words with the same stem or similar meanings when you run Text Search and Word Frequency queries.
• Including words with the same stem when you autocode based on existing coding patterns. (This feature is only available in NVivo installations with coding enhancements enabled.)

Each text content language also has an associated 'stop word' list. The words in the stop word list are filtered out (removed) when you:

• Run a Word Frequency or Text Search query
• Generate a cluster analysis diagram comparing words in files or codes

If you autocode based on existing coding patterns, NVivo excludes the stop words when comparing wording of text passages to previously coded content.

If you autocode sentiment, the text content language determines the language used when processing your files. The 'stop word' list is not used for this feature. (This feature is only available in NVivo installations with coding enhancements enabled.)

Make sure that the text content language is set to match the language of your files.  If the language of your files is not available as a text content language, you should set the text content language to 'Other'. When the text content language is set to 'Other', you cannot look for similar words when you run a Text Search query or Word Frequency query.

NOTE  For Chinese and Japanese text content, stop words are not used to filter out content when running Text Search queries.

What stop words are provided by default?

NVivo provides default stop words for Chinese, English (UK), English (US), French, German, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish. The default stop words are less significant words like conjunctions or prepositions that may not be meaningful to your analysis. You can view the stop words associated with each language, and you can customize the stop words by adding or removing words from the stop word list.

Set the text content language for your project

1. Click the File tab and then click Project Properties.
2. On the General tab, select the language used in your files from the Text content language list.

View, add or remove stop words

1. Click the File tab and then click Project Properties.
2. On the General tab, click the Stop Words button. The Stop Words dialog box opens.
3. Add or remove words from the list. Each word must be separated by a space.

Restore the default stop words

CAUTION  When you restore the default stop word list for a text content language, any additional words that you have added to the stop word list are removed.

1. Click the File tab and then click Project Properties.
2. On the General tab, click the Stop Words button. The Stop Words dialog box opens.
3. Click Reset, and then click OK.