The College of Humanities recently hosted a two-day workshop for its academic staff on the Howard College campus to train them to make full and effective use of the NVivo software that supports qualitative and mixed methods research.

The workshop gave staff an opportunity to learn how to make efficient use of the software while also showing them how to organise, analyse and find insights in unstructured or qualitative data such as from interviews, open-ended survey responses, articles, social media and web content.

Social Work lecturer in the School of Applied Human Sciences Ms Nolwazi Ngcobo said: ‘These are vital skills and I am grateful to have benefited from the training.’

Lecturer and Clinical Psychologist Mr Sachet Valjee added: ‘My sincere appreciation to you all for this opportunity to acquire or improve on skills I think all social scientists should have. This software has amazing potential and has certainly shortened the data sorting phase of qualitative research. I hope that future skills development and training will continue to be accessible to us.’