2. Case Classifications
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Cases and their classifications are a confusing but vitally important feature which NVivo offers.
Cases are "units of observation" within your data, which might include specific people, organisations, locations, or institutions.
Classifications are the broad categories which you can assign to your individual cases. An example of a case might be "people".
Through the next two sections, we'll work through cases and classifications in more depth.
For a quick example, "Barbara" would be an example of a case because she is a person. "Person" would be a classification.
But why would we want to tell NVivo that Barbara is a person?
Whenever we create case classifications in NVivo, we can create attributes within those classifications.
Attributes are important subcategories within classifications that can help you to answer your research questions. Examples of attributes are "Age", "Occupation", or "Marital Status". Which attributes you decide to create will depend on your research question.
As an example, it might be really important for us to know Barbara's age, so when we create or modify our case classification of "Person" we can add an attribute "Age". When the time comes (and this is explored in the next section) to assign Barbara to a case classification, we can then use these attributes to add more information to her (e.g. how old she is).
Cases and classifications are quite complicated, and it's okay if you don't get them the first time around. I've aimed to provide plenty of resources in the next two sections to clarify them as much as I can.
Navigate to the case classifications tab on the left
Create a new case classification for "People" or "Person"
Create several general attributes under this classification such as "Age" and "Occupation"
Bonus Task: Try to create a list of potential attribute values. For instance, under "Age" try to create values for "18-24", "25-34", "35-44", etc.