Narrative research with audiovisual data: Video Intervention/Prevention Assessment (VIA) and NVivo

Video Intervention/Prevention Assessment (VIA) is a qualitative research method that investigates health conditions from the patient's perspective. VIA's primary data consist of visual illness narratives, video diaries made by participants of their experiences living with and managing chronic medical conditions. The visual narratives are viewed and listened to by a data logger and notated in sequential scenes by participant identification number, tape number, and video timecode. The content of the audiovisual data is logged as text comprising 'objective descriptions' of information that is visible or audible and 'subjective accounts' of what is observed, relating the participant's perspective, emotional tone and psychosocial dynamics of a scene. Within the logs, distinct font headings designate different types of data, so that they can be recognized as such when the logs are imported into NVivo qualitative analysis software for data management, structuring and analysis. Using this software, multiple researchers can code, recode and refine the logs of the visual illness narratives and link their structured analyses to illustrative excerpts from the primary audiovisual data.