Content and Thematics Analysis Flashcards
What is thematic analysis?
This involves making summaries of the data and identifying key themes and categories
How does thematic analysis work?
The researcher becomes familiar withy the data
The researcher then looks for different themes, then he reviews the themes, defines and names the themes
The researcher then writes a report
What are the advantages of thematic analysis?
When qualitative data is used thematic analysis preserves the details in the analysis
Creating the hypothesis during analysis allows for new insights to develop some objectivity can be established by using triangulation
What are the disadvantages of thematic analysis?
It is difficult to decide which categories to use and to place what in which category
It is hard to decide what to leave out of the summery
There are a lot of subjective decisions
Describe the process of content analysis?
A representative sample of qualitative data is first collected eg from a newspaper
Coding units are then identified to analyse the data
A coding unit could be: an act of violence; amount of times the word biology is mentioned For example
The qualitative data is then analysed to see how often the coding unit occurs
Statistical analysis can then be carried out
What are the advantages of content analysis?
A clear summery of the patterns in the data may be established
Once a coding system has been set up it has high replicability this then increases its reliability
What are the disadvantages of content analysis?
This can be a very subjective process
Reducing the data to coding units removes detail
What type of data is used with content analysis?
Data that has been collected before hand. Either by you are someone else eso they data can be secondary or primary although the data is normally secondary data
In content analysis how is data analysed?
Typologies, quotations and summaries into categories
How do you make your hypothesis when you are doing thematic or content analysis?
The hypothesis are grounded in the data
This means that you don’t make the until you have collected the data
Define typologies?
Your interpretation of the categories
Define triangulation in terms of data collection?
Why would you do this?
This is when you use qualitative and quantitative data. This makes the data more valid.
What does grounding your hypothesis in the data mean?
The idea that we formulate our hypothesis on pre existing results
