Qualitative research in practice

Question 1

What is thematic analysis?

Answer 1

theory-free method to address a wide range of research questions, including ones about peoples experiences and perspectives
Doesn’t require a homogenous sample
Themes aiming to identify are pre-determined e.g. in a study of how children understand obesity our themes could be any that are relevant to obesity and healthy eating

Question 2

What is interpretative phenomenological analysis?

Answer 2

Idiographic focus i.e. aims to offer insights into how a given person in a given context makes sense of a given phenomenon, usually a phenomena of personal significance

Question 3

What are the 6 steps when conducting a thematic analysis?

Answer 3

1) Familiarise with data - transcribe, read and re-read and note any ideas
2) Generate initial codes - code interesting features in a systematic fashion, collecting data relevant to each code
3) Searching for themes - collate codes into potential themes, gathering all data relevant to a theme
4) Review themes - check the themes work with the coded extracts and entire data set, generate a THEMATIC MAP
5) Define and name themes - refine specifics and overall story told by analysis
6) Produce the report - select vivid and compelling extract examples, relate analysis back to research question

Question 4

What is meant by semantic coding?

Answer 4

Describe the content of the text - if original data taken away we should be able to know what it was about from these codes

Question 5

What are latent codes?

Answer 5

Identifying underlying patterns/ideas through interpreting what someone is saying

Question 6

What is the development of themes like?

Answer 6

Can be inductive (based on what see in data) or deductive (based on pre-existing theory) or combination of both

Question 7

What does the process of looking for themes commonly involve?

Answer 7

Collapsing or clustering codes that seem to share some unifying feature, so that they reflect a coherent and meaningful pattern in the data

Question 8

What are the 7 characteristics of a good thematic analysis?

Answer 8

Start with codes that properly represent the data
Goes beyond data collection questions as themes
Themes that provide nuanced/complex data interpretations
Doesn’t present data extracts with little interpretation
Uses data to evidence themes
Evidence of reflexivity
Do themes provide rich and coherent analysis that answers research questions

Question 9

Why don’t we advocate multiple coders and inter-rater reliability for thematic analysis?

Answer 9

Inter-rater reliability is underpinned by assumption that there is an accurate reality in the data that can be captured in coding
TA sees coding as being flexible and organic, and evolvable during the process - active and reflexive
There is no one accurate way to code the data

Question 10

What do researchers need to be aware of?

Answer 10

How the research process has affected them personally and professionally - think critically about findings and not accept them at face value
Consider how this may then have impacted on their behaviour e.g. the questions they chose to ask/how they asked them, what they are emphasising in the findings and why
Reflecting like this can mitigate the influence it has

Question 11

What are key ways in which a researcher can engage in reflexive thinking?

Answer 11

Keep a thought diary during the research process - see if events such as a family argument can affect interviews with participants or the way you code data
Take notes and make memos when analysing the data - helps to acknowledge the process of constructing meaning