Thematic analysis

blue_ashleigh

I'm doing thematic analysis of 5 interviews.

Does anyone know where I can get a worked example of thematic analysis? I.e. an interview with the themes etc. on it.

I can't seem to find one...

janine22

You could have a look for a PhD thesis using this mode of analysis, there will usually be an annotated transcript in the appendix.

Or ask a tutor nicely and they may show you an example.

Piggles12345

Hi there,

There aren't likely to be many worked examples of it as it is very subjective and not a process that can be easily exemplified in the same way as quants analysis could. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any worked examples, but thematic analysis is easy when you know how and have had a bit of practice!

You need to read through your data a few times and become very familiar with it. As you do this you will begin to see patterns in the responses. These multiple responses can then be grouped into themes.
For example, if you are studying why people send their children to private school and you have three responses as follows;

Respondent 1: "I don't want my child mixing with rough children"
Respondent 2: "I don't want my daughter to end up pregnant"
Respondent 3: "My child shouldn't be exposed to drugs and weapons".

I would group these responses under a theme of 'risk'. You can then draw out these themes and understand what informs them; in this example it might be the uncontrollability of young people within state schools and/or the paren'ts concerns about their own child's ability to deal with peer pressure.

If you have access, take a look at this paper:

V. Clarke. (2001) 'What About the Children?: Arguments Against Lesbian and Gay Parenting', Women's Studies International Forum, 24 (5), pp. 555-570.

The author does a thematic anaylsis of media discourse on gay and lesbian parenting and it is a really good and clean (if that makes sense!) example of thematic analysis.

You might also want to have a look at methodological books, such as R. Boyatzis (1998) 'Transforming Qualitative Information: Thematic Analysis and Code Development' or A. Bryman (2008) 'Social Research Methods, 3rd Edition'.

Basically you need to follow these steps to do a thematic analysis:

1. Read and re-read the data to become very very familiar with it
2. As you read it for the 2nd or 3rd time, take note of multiple responses and patterns.
3. Write these patterns down with page numbers, respondent details etc.
4. Apply actual quotes from the responses to these patterns.
5. When you have wrote down the patterns and evidential quotes, start to group them appropriately. This involves reading between the lines. Ask yourself 'what is this person really saying?'.
6. These groups will be your themes and within them you may well start to have sub-themes or division according to age, gender, ethnicity, geographical location etc. which you can begin (if you have time) to interrogate further.

I would recommend that you arrange a meeting with your supervisor or an appropriate member of staff to discuss any concerns that you have. You could even arrange a meeting with a PhD student using this methods as they will also be learning how to do it properly and doing it on a daily basis, so they may have some golden tips that they have learned.

Then have a look at the Boyatzis book and Clarke article.

Then you need to start becoming familiar with your data and developing your themes and coding frame.

What topic are you researching? Is it for a dissertation?

Please keep us posted about how this is going.