Thematic Analysis

Question 1

What is thematic analysis?

Answer 1

a way of analysing data without losing its meaningfulness completely, but enables lots of qualitative data to be reduced into general patterns, trends and themes (makes it more manageable)

Question 2

how is thematic analysis achieved inductively?

Answer 2

read and re-read qualitative data gathered, whereby themes would emerge from this without researchers imposing on ideas or expectations

Question 3

how is thematic analysis achieved deductively?

Answer 3

researcher specific themes they will look for before analysing the data

Question 4

describe the first 2 steps of the procedure of thematic analysis

Answer 4

1.read, consider and become familiar qualitative data gathered

2.identify themes present in data that occur frequently or seem to be key feature; this is determined depending on the opinion of then researcher and nature of analysed material

Question 5

describe the last two steps of the procedure of thematic analysis

Answer 5

3.researcher develops the themes only codes representing the categories of the themes found

4.researcher uses these codes to search for instances where it appears in the data; reviewed continually and changed if necessary - all until themes can be stated, supported and used as summary of the data

Question 6

what can be done to make sure Coding is done without any preconceptions of what will be found?

Answer 6

-use a coder who doesn’t know research questions/aims

-use multiple coders to see if the identified ideas agree with one another

Question 7

what is a reflexive journal?

Answer 7

a record of the whole process, logging how coding is done, thoughts when doing coding, ideas developed about themes during coding process and ideas relating to the research question

Question 8

what does the reflexive journal aid to?

Answer 8

it is there and ready for the part of the analysis that links to the aims of the study

Question 9

2 strengths of thematic analysis?

Answer 9

• it’s a way of reducing lots of data into manageable summary and conclusion without losing validity of the data if analysis is down well
• encourages researches o derive themes from the data rather than impose pre-selected themes, which is likely to achieve better validity

Question 10

2 weaknesses of thematic analysis?

Answer 10

• researchers often don’t explain fully how they arrived at the themes and so a study is not easily judged for its validity
• can be very time-consuming process, so isn’t a very efficient method of analysis, so results may take longer to obtain.