An honest side-by-side. NVivo does mixed methods properly, and any page claiming otherwise is not worth reading. It is qualitatively led, with cases, attributes and crosstabs inside one application. MM Studio takes a different route, doing nothing but integration and taking its inputs from wherever the analysis actually happened.
| MM Studio | NVivo | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | An integration platform that receives both strands | A full qualitative platform with mixed methods inside it |
| Direction of travel | Neither strand leads; integration is its own stage | Qualitatively led, with quantitative attributes attached to cases |
| Joint displays | A primary output, designed as a first-class object | Achievable via matrices and crosstabs |
| Evidence-strength ratings | Yes, on each integrated finding | Not a built-in concept |
| Integrated reporting | APA-ready integrated report as the normal output | Export tools you assemble into a report |
| Qualitative coding | Not where you code | Extensive, and a genuine strength |
| Statistics | Receives results; deeper work lives in Quanta | Descriptive work in app, with XLSTAT for heavier modelling |
| Literature review | No | Yes, and strong at it |
| Field collection | iPad Field App included | Not part of the product |
| Teams | Not a multi-coder tool | Yes, with agreement statistics |
| Platform | Native Mac, plus web and iPad | Windows and Mac |
| Price | $15 a month or $129 a year | Typically four figures per seat, or institutional licensing |
NVivo's mixed methods support is real, and the case-and-attribute model is a sound way to think about a study. If your institution licenses NVivo and your project is qualitatively led, using what you already have is the sensible answer.
MM Studio exists because of a specific and common failure. Mixed methods studies routinely get criticized for reporting two strands beside each other without joining them, and that happens partly because integration tends to arrive last, after both analyses are finished and the deadline is close. Making integration the spine of the workflow, with joint displays and an explicit strength rating on each finding, is an attempt to fix that at the level of the process rather than the write-up.
It is also considerably cheaper, and it does not require abandoning NVivo. MM Studio takes coded qualitative output and quantitative results as inputs, whatever produced them.