The big news for our newest releases is that your qualitative data is now future-proofed so it can be available for further secondary or comparitive analysis in the years ahead.
QSR is a core member of the Rotterdam Exchange Format Initiative (REFI) whose goal is to develop a standard for exchanging analyzed and partially analyzed qualitative data between QDA software programs.
NVivo 12 (Windows) and NVivo 12 Mac now support the REFI-QDA Standard, allowing you to import and export data in a standard format. It unlocks data, thus future-proofing research studies for further secondary and comparative analysis in the years ahead.
It is important to note that as all software packages support different features there will be some data loss when transferring a project from one software to another. So while the NVivo export includes file and case classifications with their attributes, they may not be included in all the software adopting the REFI-QDA standard. It depends on the structure and capabilities of the other software.
The current version of the standard does not enable ‘round-tripping’ – i.e. going from software A to software B and then from software B back to software A. Enabling round-tripping is a goal for phase 3 of REFI.
Version 12.5 (released in July 2019) brought further improvements to NVivo 12 (Windows). Now researchers working with Qualtrics can import Qualtrics data if the survey contains a ‘rank order’ question. Minor improvements to support the REFI-QDA initiative and various security improvements were also part of this release.
Mac users benefit from greater accessibility
Recent updates for NVivo 12 Mac have focused on improving the accessibility of the software. Version 12.3 added support for VoiceOver, Apple’s built in screen reader, benefiting researchers who are blind or have low vision on a computer. (The Windows version introduced support for the JAWS and MS Narrator screen readers in 12.3.) Version 12.4 has continued the focus on accessibility by improving color contrast:
- In the Navigation View labels (now darker and bolder)
- When viewing coding context in a node
- In the coding comparison query
- In the placeholder text in the detail view 
Version 12.4 also improved the Japanese and German interfaces and included additional enhancements. One new improvement is around editing an audio/video transcript. Now when you finish the transcript it scrolls to the top of the row you edited – not all the way to the beginning of the transcript.
Also in NVivo Mac 12.5 is integration with Apple touchbar support. Now users will benefit from enhanced coding and annotation experience with integration with Apple's Touch Bar. With a PDF or document open users can use the Apple Touch Bar to toggle edit mode, code to recent nodes, open the quick coding pallet, annotate text selection and bold, italic and underline formatting buttons.