How to Carry out a Reflexive Thematic Analysis (Part 1 and 2) PDF

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Summary

Qualitative Unit
Teacher - George Kountouriotis...

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Investigating Psychology 2 Week 2 – Qualitative – How to do Reflexive Thematic Analysis (Part 1 and 2) By the end of this lecture, you should be able to show:

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The ability to complete the first steps of thematic analysis according to Braun and Clarke’s guidance Awareness of common mistakes in completing reflexive thematic analysis and how to avoid them

The 6 steps (Braun and Clark, 2006):

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Make sure you are first clear on your epistemology – if you use Braun and Clark’s approach, you’re not thinking about what the participant says as a representation of objective reality but at the very least, their subjective reality -> you may even be looking at what they say as ‘creating’ reality if looking from a critical position. 1. Familiarise yourself with the data 2. Then you code the data 3. Use the codes to construct draft themes 4. Review potential themes 5. Defining and naming themes 6. Producing the report (write-up is considered as part of the analysis)

1.Familiarisation:      

Start by being familiar with your data The key to good familiarisation s curiosity and asking informal questions of the data Start a record of analysis -> write notes in a separate document about your ideas Can be very fluid and informal at this point Looking for initial ideas and assumptions Things to avoid at this stage: skipping over familiarisation and identifying themes too early

2.Coding:    

Little more systematic than familiarisation -> think about research question Start to identify specific segments of data set and tag them something meaningful Tags need to be something that you an come back to and link to your research question Tips: ensure that your codes are informative enough to take the data away and still understand what was being suggested about the data & don’t be afraid to revisit and revise the codes

3.Constructing themes:    

Codes -> themes This is not about finding or discovering themes -> they don’t just emerge The researcher generate/constructs them What the researcher produces is determined to some extent by the material or the data they have in front of them

How do we get there? Codes and Themes: 

Take your codes and start to group them -> central organising concept -> initial theme label or title

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Interested in patterns across the data set Avoid: getting too attached to any code/theme (need to be okay getting rid of any code/theme at any stage)

Theme generation example:  

Codes that were present in body art extract: connections/relationships, meaningful personal expression, personal significance, personal identity, permanence, and aesthetics You can group meaningful personal expression, personal significance, and personal identity into the theme personal meaning

The Thematic Map: 

E.G.

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Map at this stage will have lots of potential theme and you use arrows to look at which themes feed into other themes

How do researchers organise their thoughts?     

Thematic maps Word processing programmes – make comments and highlights in one document Copy and paste extracts – different pages for different ideas Post its/index cards NVivo – digital software to organise tags

4.Refining Themes:   

Quality check the themes you have so far Right now, you have candidate theme Questions to ask: does the theme capture the data that it is supposed to? Can the theme be grouped with another? Do the themes need to be scrapped? Have you spotted anything new which you would change your analysis?

5.Defining Themes:  

What story are you telling with your data? Look at similarities and differences of your themes which may change the name of your theme titles E.g. ‘personal meaning’ -> could bring it to life with a participant quote

6.Producing the Report:  

At this point, you’ll have many drafts f codes, themes, thematic maps etc. This is the final stage

Summary and Further Guidance:  

Important things to remember are make lots of notes, always be willing to change your analysis based on your reflection and take your time Key texts: Braun and Clark, 2006 and Terry e al, 2017...