Before The Adventure
About the authors and contributors
Acknowledgements
Scene setting: What Thematic analysis: A practical guide offers you, and how to navigate your way through it
Chapter overview
Setting the scene for Thematic analysis: A practical guide
Baking, adventures and maps: Is this a recipe book, a guidebook, or what?
Navigating language and imagining the reader
This is our mapping
Learning through doing: A practice-first approach to learning thematic analysis
Who is the book for?
A book of two parts
Mapped adventure pathways: Navigating your way through the book
Helpful things to support your adventure: The pedagogical features
The companion website: An abundance of teaching and learning resources
SECTION I VENTURING FORTH! DOING REFLEXIVE THEMATIC ANALYSIS
1 It's almost time to depart: Getting ready for your thematic analysis adventure
Chapter One Overview
Let us introduce you to thematic analysis
What is reflexive TA?
Table 1.1 Overview of some key differences between qualitative and quantitative research paradigms
Can we provide a simple overview of reflexive TA?
A qualitative sensibility for reflexive TA
Box 1.1 Ten core assumptions of reflexive TA
But wait, there's more: Variation within reflexive TA
Table 1.2 The variations of reflexive TA
Reflexive TA offers guidelines, not rules, but a clear process
Mentally preparing yourself to tackle your TA journey: Becoming comfortable with uncertainty and discomfort
Subjectivity is at the heart of reflexive TA practice
Reflexivity: The most important companion for your adventure
Doing reflexivity for reflexive TA
Box 1.2 Your values and politics in qualitative research
The time to start reflexivity is NOW
Activity pause: A task to get reflexivity started
Reflective and reflexive journals
Box 1.3 What might reflexive journal entries look like?
Chapter summary
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Before analysis: A brief design interlude
Getting into design thinking A guided activity
Some readings to take you further into design thinking
2 Taking an initial lay of the land: Introducing our worked example dataset and doing familiarisation
Chapter Two Overview
Today's the day!
The process of reflexive TA
Box 2.1 Introducing six phases of reflexive thematic analysis
Introducing and contextualising our worked example dataset
Researcher reflection - Box 2.2: Situating myself in relation to these data (Ginny)
Researcher reflection - Box 2.3: Situating myself in relation to these data (Victoria)
Table 2.1 Anonymised but otherwise unedited comments from Seven Sharp Facebook post about "being childfree"
What's my purpose here? Settling on a research question
Familiarisation (Phase one)
Activity pause: Familiarisation
Meaning, the dataset and the analytic process: A brief note on language
Note-making for familiarisation
Figure 2.1 Familiarisation Doodle for participant `Franz'
Figure 2.2 Familiarisation Doodle for participant `Frank'
Box 2.4 Ginny's overall dataset familiarisation notes
Chapter summary
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3 Exploring this world in detail: Doing coding
Chapter Three Overview
Preparing for coding
Box 3.1 Coding, codes and code labels in reflexive TA - a quick guide
Coding is a systematic process
Coding is organic, evolving and subjective
Inductive and deductive orientations to data coding
Semantic to latent coding
Table 3.1 Dispelling some misconceptions about semantic and latent coding
General guidelines for codes and code labels in reflexive TA
Doing coding (Phase two)
Table 3.2 Some general guidelines for developing code labels
Activity pause: Before coding
Box 3.2 A selection of six extracts from childfree dataset
Table 3.3 A selection of childfree comments data with Code labels
Actually wrangling data and codes: Technologies of coding
Box 3.3 Is using QDAS better than coding in other ways?
Researcher reflection - Box 3.4: Thematic analysis and QDAS
Researcher reflection - Box 3.5: On Using NVivo
Evolving your coding
Box 3.6 Codes as building blocks for analysis
Refining your coding through multiple rounds
Can I stop coding yet?
Chapter summary
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4 Finding, losing, then finding your way again: Developing your themes
Chapter Four Overview
Understanding the key concept: What is this thing called a theme?
In reflexive TA, a topic summary is not a theme
In reflexive TA, a theme captures shared meaning, united by a central organising concept
Generating initial themes (Phase three)
Developing initial themes2 from your codes
Figure 4.1: Coding and initial theme development with a cup of coffee
Table 4.1 A selection of code labels and collated data extracts
Using visual mapping for theme generation, development and review
Figure 4.2: An initial mapping of patterns across childfree dataset
Box 4.1 Theme levels in reflexive TA
Five key things to keep in mind in the early stages of theme development
Figure 4.3a & 4.3b: A dandelion head - fully connected seeds (4.3a) and partially dispersed seeds (4.3b)
Box 4.2 How many themes? Some guiding considerations for theme development and review
I quite like it here, should I stay longer? Tackling time management in (initial) theme development
I'm struggling a bit, to be honest: Managing anxiety in the TA process
Researcher reflection - Box 4.3: Facing the battle of anxiety and OCD when undertaking TA for the first time
Researcher reflection - Box 4.4: Doing TA when you've got ADHD and anxiety: Reflections and strategies
Developing and reviewing themes10 (Phase four)
Figure 4.4 "Data says no"
Theme development and revision with coded extracts
Figure 4.5 Theme development as wrestling a sea-monster?
Theme development and revision with the full dataset
Box 4.5 Can my analysis be based on part of the dataset?
What's the point of this part of my adventure?
Figure 4.6 Refined thematic map for `gains and losses' analysis
Figure 4.7 Refined (finalised) thematic map for `choice matters' analysis
Okay, so how would a topic summary be different from a shared meaning theme?
Box 4.6 Illustrative `topic summary': Reasons for being childfree
But what about contradiction?
Precision matters: Refining, defining and naming themes (Phase five)
Box 4.7 The `contradictory' theme Good and Bad Parents [ extract]
Box 4.8 Definition of the theme `deficient personhood'
Naming themes
Box 4.9 Naming themes related to `choice' in the childfree dataset
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5 Arriving home and telling a story about your adventure: Writing your thematic analysis report
Chapter Five Overview
Writing matters for analysis (Phase six)
Setting the scene of your story (the introduction or literature review)
Describing how you approached your adventure (the method/ology section)
Explaining your choice of TA and what it offers
Table 5.1 Is my rationale for TA strong enough?
Table 5.2 Examples of rationales for (reflexive) TA from published research
Describing what you actually did during analysis
Box 5.1 Should I explain why I used TA and not a similar method?
Box 5.2 An example of a student analysis process write-up
Telling your analytic story (the results and discussion section)
Box 5.3 How we'd briefly write the analysis part of a methodology section, related to the overarching theme around `choice'
Introducing the analysis
Table 5.3 Example of a theme summary table
Structuring the analysis section
Box 5.4 Writing separate results and discussion sections
Selecting data extracts
Data extracts and your analytic narrative
Box 5.5 Illustrative and analytic treatment of data extracts in reporting a theme
Traps to easily avoid when reporting your analysis in reflexive TA
Box 5.6 Don't try this at home - paraphrasing your data
Is `thick description' something I should be aiming for?
The flow of the story
Should I use numbers to report theme `frequency'?
Should I claim generalisability in reporting my TA?
Table 5.4 Different types of qualitative generalisability
Drawing conclusions
Reflection and evaluation in your write-up
Telling your story well: The value of the edit
Chapter summary
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SECTION II GOING DEEPER FOR TIP-TOP REFLEXIVE THEMATIC ANALYSIS: THEORY, INTERPRETATION, AND QUALITY MATTERS
6 A not-so-scary theory chapter: Conceptually locating reflexive thematic analysis
Chapter Six Overview
There's no such thing as atheoretical TA!
What sorts of theory are we discussing?
Key basic starting points for TA and theory
The diversity of qualitative research: Revisiting some important conceptual divisions
Figure 6.1: It's all connected: Qualitative orientation, theory, questions and methods
Researcher reflection - Box 6.1: An example of experiential TA: African Caribbean women `staying strong'?
Researcher reflection - Box 6.2: An example of critical TA research: Onward Gay Christian Soldiers?
Let's get theoretical!
What do we think language does? Three theories of language
Box 6.3 Theories of language applied to data
Introducing the 'ologies: The big scary theory
Theories of reality: Ontologies
Realism
Critical realism
Box 6.4 Some of the complexity of critical realism
Researcher reflection - Box 6.5: Coming to critical realism
Relativism
Do I really have to think about ontology for TA?
Theories of knowledge: Epistemologies
Table 6.1 Realist and relativist TA: An overview comparison
(Post)positivism
Contextualism
Constructionism
Researcher reflection - Box 6.6: Beyond western ontologies and epistemologies: Using TA in the context of Indigenous knowledge frameworks
Box 6.7 Is constructivism just a different name for constructionism?
Checking out the view from the houses of epistemology
Back to the confusion Big Theory is contested terrain
Theory as it's used: Some TA examples
Table 6.2 Some varied use of theory in published TA research
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7 So what? The importance of interpretation in reflexive thematic analysis
Chapter Seven Overview
Doing interpretation during theme development
What is interpretation?
Interpretation needs to be defensible!
Different modes of interpretation for reflexive TA
From more descriptive to more interpretative modes of analysis
Experiential to critical orientations in interpretation of data patterns
Box 7.1 Shifting from an experiential to critical orientation to build analytic depth
A deductive orientation: Working with existing theoretical concepts in doing interpretation
Box 7.2 Explanatory theory in reflexive TA
Locating data within the wider context
Minimising harm in interpretation: Ethics, politics and representation
Box 7.3 Interpretation across difference: Power, privilege and positioning
Chapter Summary
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8 One big happy family? Understanding similarities and differences between reflexive thematic analysis and its methodological siblings and cousins
Chapter Eight Overview
A brief and partial history of `thematic analysis'
Table 8.1 Don't believe everything you hear! 10 claims about TA that are actually wrong
Variation across TA approaches: Core concepts
Coding: Process and/or output?
What is a theme?
Table 8.2 Shared-meaning themes vs. topic summaries
Researcher subjectivity (reflexivity)
A process of theme development or identification?
Box 8.1 How do I get my themes in TA? Two different conceptualizations of the process
Figure 8.1 Themes do not emerge!
Mapping the main members of the TA family: Our tripartite clustering
Table 8.3 Comparing TA: A quick overview of different forms of TA
Coding reliability approaches: Small q thematic analysis
What do we think is problematic about coding reliability approaches to TA?
Codebook approaches to TA (medium q)
Template analysis
Do we perceive any problems with template analysis?
Framework analysis
Do we perceive any problems with framework analysis?
Challenges with using codebook approaches in general
So is reflexive TA the best approach to TA?
But wait there's even more? Other approaches to thematic analysis
Table 8.4 A quick summary of advantages and challenges for different forms of TA
Box 8.2 Thematic coding
The use of TA for qualitative evidence synthesis
Box 8.3 Polytextual TA for visual data analysis
Researcher reflection - Box 8.4: How I use TA on visual data
Figure 8.2 Image of Inverness Castle with white grid lines overlay
Figure 8.3 Initial analysis of photograph
`Off-label' TA: Combining thematic analysis with other approaches
Researcher reflection - Box 8.5: Combining TA and discourse analysis
Chapter summary
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9 Getting your own house in order: Understanding what makes good reflexive thematic analysis to ensure quality
Chapter Nine Overview
They did what? Common problems we encounter in TA work
Table 9.1 Strengths and limitations of reflexive TA
Figure 9.1 Reflexive TA bingo
Table 9.2 Common problems and good practice in (reflexive) TA research
Premature closure of the analysis
Strategies for ensuring quality in your TA research
Table 9.3 Our 15-point checklist for good reflexive TA - version 2022
Reflexive journaling
Box 9.1 Check yourself! Avoiding `positivism creep' by developing a qualitative sensibility
Talking about your data and analysis with others
Allowing time for your analytic insights to fully develop
Working with an experienced supervisor, mentor or co-researcher
Making sure themes are themes, and naming them carefully
Drawing inspiration from excellent examples of published research
Demonstrating quality through an electronic or paper trail
Managing quality during the publication process
Are generic qualitative quality criteria and strategies useful in TA research?
Chapter summary
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Fare-well! Becoming a bold adventurer in the world of reflexive TA
Glossary
References
Index