Advanced AI and Automation in NVivo Training Course

This five-day advanced course is for senior researchers, evaluators and team leads who want to use NVivo's AI and automation at scale and govern it well. It covers AI-assisted analysis across large, mixed-methods and team projects, autocoding and sentiment at volume, the evaluation of AI output quality, and the ethics, transparency, data protection and governance that keep AI-assisted findings defensible.

Once AI works on a single project, the harder questions arrive at scale. How do you keep AI use consistent across a team of coders? How do you decide, defensibly, which parts of a large mixed-methods study to automate and which to protect? How do you answer an ethics board, a donor or a peer reviewer who asks exactly what the AI did and why you trusted it? Speed is the easy part. Governance is the part that separates credible work from the rest.

This course is about that harder layer. It assumes you can already use NVivo's AI Assistant and moves to using it well across complex work: integrating AI-assisted coding into mixed-methods designs, applying autocoding and sentiment to large datasets without losing control, and building the governance that large or funded projects require. It treats AI not as a feature to switch on but as something to manage, with explicit decisions about where it is appropriate, how its output is checked, and how its use is documented and disclosed.

It is grounded in the realities of African research and evaluation, where projects are often multi-site, multi-language and donor-funded, and where data-protection obligations and ethical scrutiny are real. Participants leave able to lead AI-assisted qualitative work that is fast, rigorous and defensible to any reviewer.

• Design a workflow that integrates AI assistance into large or mixed-methods projects.
• Apply autocoding and sentiment analysis at scale and validate the output.
• Evaluate the quality, bias and limits of AI-generated summaries and codes.
• Set governance rules for AI use across a team or organisation.
• Maintain transparency and an audit trail of AI-assisted decisions.
• Address ethics, consent and data protection when using AI on qualitative data.
• Decide defensibly where AI is appropriate and where it is not.
• Report and disclose AI use credibly to donors, reviewers and ethics boards.

This course is designed for:

• Senior researchers and research leads
• Evaluators and M&E specialists running large studies
• Consultants delivering AI-assisted qualitative work
• Academics and supervisors setting standards for AI use
• Project managers coordinating analysis across teams
• Organisations developing AI policy for research
• Anyone responsible for the rigour of AI-assisted findings

The course is case-based and decision-focused. Participants work through complex scenarios, building and governing AI-assisted workflows and defending the choices they make, mirroring the demands of real funded research.

• Workflow design for AI-assisted projects
• Large-dataset autocoding and validation exercises
• Critical evaluation of AI output quality and bias
• Governance and policy-drafting exercises
• A final AI-assisted analysis with a governance and disclosure note

Organisations that invest in this training for their teams will benefit from:

• AI used consistently and defensibly across the organisation
• Faster analysis of large and complex datasets
• Clear governance that satisfies donors and ethics boards
• Reduced risk from the misuse of AI in research
• Transparent, audit-ready AI-assisted findings
• The ability to scale qualitative work without losing rigour

Participants who enrol in this training will benefit from:

• The ability to lead AI-assisted qualitative analysis
• Skill in evaluating and validating AI output
• Command of AI governance and ethics in research
• A rare, senior, highly marketable capability
• Confidence defending AI use to any reviewer

At Strategic Revenue Africa, our certification goes beyond proof of attendance—it represents practical competence and measurable capability. Upon successful completion of our training programs, participants are awarded a Certificate of Completion from Strategic Revenue Africa, recognizing their ability to apply acquired knowledge in real-world settings. As an organization focused on architecting sustainable revenue and strengthening organizational performance, our certifications signal that participants are equipped with skills that drive results, not just theory.

This is an advanced course. Participants should be comfortable using NVivo's AI Assistant and analysing qualitative data, ideally with experience on larger projects. The AI-Assisted Qualitative Analysis with NVivo course, or equivalent, is recommended. A laptop with NVivo 15 and AI Assistant access is required.