thematic analysis

• What type of data does thematic analysis explore?

  Qualitative
• what is the qualitative data obtained from?

  Open questions and interviews

  Interview/focus groups
• what is the end result of thematic analysis?

  a short summary of the main features of an observation
• how is The qualitative data gathered?

  The questionnaires are handed out

  The interview/focus groups are conducted and what is said is transcribed
• what are the main stages of doing a thematic analysis?

  Familiarisation with the data

  Coding

  Categorisation

  Emerging themes

  Writing up
• what is coding?

  Generating short labels that identify important features of the data that might be relevant to answering the research question
• what is categorisation?

  Reread the data where each code appears

  Each piece of data needs to be given a relevant code
• what can happen to codes?

  They can be split

  They can be combined

  Or discarded
• what is emerging themes?

  Reviewing the coding and categorisation of your data checking for any patterns and if some codes are a lot more common than others
• what can be a good idea after step four?

  Having multiple researchers to do a reliability check to to enable inter rater reliability
• what is writing up?

  Writing a report summarising what you found and why you think these results might have occurred
• what are strength of thematic analysis?

  It reduces a large amount of data into a manageable summary. This means it is easier for others to establish the findings and conclusions from a data set making it more practical.

  It encourages the researcher to derive themes from the data rather than to impose pre-selected themes. This increases the validity of data.
• what are weaknesses of thematic analysis?

  The researcher may have themes in mind when they do that data analysis which could reduce the validity of the data

  Researchers do not often fully explain how they arrive to their themes making it difficult to judge the validity of the data

  Thematic analysis is time-consuming and requires skill. This can make it less practical and cost.