Thematic Analysis

Question 1

What is this an example of?

Answer 1

Qualitative analysis

Question 2

What is thematic analysis?

Answer 2

An approach which identifies themes or patterns of meaning in text

Thematic analysis underpins lots of other forms of qualitative analysis

Question 3

What is a theme?

Answer 3

A theme is a pattern of meaning - captures something important about the material
Represents some level of patterned response within the data set - different elements belong together
Emphasis is on MEANING not prevlence

Question 4

What is the emphasis on?

Answer 4

Meaning

Question 5

Where do themes come from?

Answer 5

They are either theory driven - give us themes to look for which match or data driven - open minded about what to look for

Question 6

Step 1

Answer 6

Familiarising yourself with the material: read, start taking notes or marking ideas for coding

Question 7

What is coding?

Answer 7

Selective coding – identify relevant material, take out the extracts that touch on topics of instrest to me

Complete coding – line by line

Question 8

Step 2

Answer 8

Initial coding - identify parts of interest- use highlighters, pens, post it notes

Question 9

What is a code?

Answer 9

A basic unit of meaning

Question 10

How big are codes?

Answer 10

Varies from a few words to a multi-sentence chunk - coded data differs from themes which are broader

Question 11

Step 3

Answer 11

Searching for themes - play with the codes, which ones belong together

Question 12

Step 4

Answer 12

Reviewing themes - read all extracts from each theme, consider if they appear to form a pattern

Question 13

What do you have to decide when looking at themes?

Answer 13

Judgement - decide, if themes aren’t really themes (not enough data) - drop them
Others might be merged into each other (2 separate themes may form one theme)
Other themes may need to be split into separate themes

Question 14

Step 5

Answer 14

Defining and naming themes - then provide commentary

Question 15

Why do you need to provide commentary?

Answer 15

Need to provide accompanying narrative - cannot just paraphrase the extracts presented, but identify what is interesting about them and why
Writing - interpretation - is an important part of analysis, doesn’t just occur at the end (as it does with statistical analysis)

Question 16

What are the problems?

Answer 16

People just see five or six themes and then look for examples to fit: this implies that the themes are thee without researcher input, no justification or explanation given for themes and no effort

Question 17

What are the advantages?

Answer 17

Can be used with any qualitative data-set:
interviews
newspaper materials – lots of speakers involved
naturally occurring conversations
websites
social media material

Techniques have many features in common with other qual methods (IPA, Grounded Theory) – if learn TA, can easily learn other approaches