thematic analysis

• what is a thematic analysis


  one way to explore qualitative data- end result is often a short summary of the main feature
• what are the preparations that must be done before starting a thematic analysis

  gather qualitative data-this can be done by either

  handing out questionnaires

  conducting interviews/focus groups and transcribe what was said
• what are the main stages of doing a thematic analysis

  familiarisation with the data

  coding

  categorisation

  emerging themes

  writing upp
• what is meant by familiarisation with the data

  this phase involves reading and re-reading the data to become immersed and intimately familiar with its content
• what is meant by coding

  this phase involves generating succinct labels (short codes) that identify features of the data that might be relevant to answering the research questions
• what is meant by categorisation

  this phase involves re-reading the data, highlighting and noting where each codes appear and each piece of data needs to be given a relevant code- then re-read to make sure you have sufficient codes for all your data

  some of the codes may need to be split, combined or discarded
• what is meant by emerging themes

  review your coding and categorisation of your data and at this point it is also a good idea to have multiple researchers and to do a reliability check- inter-rater reliability can be monitored
• what is meant by writing up

  write a report summarising what you found and why you think that these results might have occurred
• what is a strength of thematic analysis

  reduces a large amount of data into a manageable structure- this is because each statement is assessed and a theme is identified- the researcher will then write a report which summarises the themes- there will clearly be less information in the summary than the original data set- this means it is easier for other to establish the findings and conclusions from a data set
• what is a strength of thematic analysis

  it encourages the researcher to derive themes from the data rather than to impose pre-selected themes- themes are not decided prior to data collection but after the data collection- when gathering their data, the researcher needs to record everything that they see and hear-therefore this increases the validity of the data
• what is a drawback of thematic analysis

  the researcher may have themes in mind when they do their data analysis-even though the researchers should gather their data, the researcher is usually doing the T.A in order to find evidence to support a particular theory- therefore this will reduce the validity of the data because the researchers could be subjective and biased in what data they gather and their interpretations of the data
• what is a drawback of thematic analysis

  researchers do not often explain fully how they arrived at their themes- in the report researchers tend to focus on what they found rather than explaining how they obtained these findings- therefore this makes it difficult to judge the validity of the study and equally, this also makes it difficult to replicate the study, so thematic analysis tend to be only reliable for the same reason
• what is a drawback of thematic analysis

  thematic analysis are time consuming and requires skill- because of the researcher will know their data the best, they will need skill in order to establish codes for each statement in their data- the whole process of t.a takes time as the researcher may have to go back to an earlier step to review their original coding before the report can be written- therefore thematic analyses is not the most practical or cost-effective research methods available