Analysing Qualitative Data

Question 1

What is thematic analysis?

Answer 1

A reaearch method which is a process of interpretation of qualitative data to find a pattern of reasoning.

Question 2

What is the process of thematic anaylsis?

Answer 2

1. The researcher collects data through observation, semi structured/unstructured interviews (transcipt)
2. Researcher re-reads transcript really well
3. Researcher identifies codes in the data relevant to the research question (hihglighting relevant comments)
4. Researcher uses codes to interpret common themes. These themes used to capture overall meaning.
5. Researcher collects specific quotes that illustrate the main themes and use as supporting evidence.

Question 3

How is TA inductive?

Answer 3

More specific and genereal reasoning compared to broad ones.

Question 4

How is TA latent?

Answer 4

Means that it is moving away from underlying meaning to acc meaning.

Question 5

What are strenghts of TA?

Answer 5

High internal validity (rich qualitative data that has quotes as supporting evidence and means lots of themes/info/subthemes)

high generalisaibilty (researchers can study participants thoughts, perceptions and experiences across multiple cultures/genders/ages and take backround info into account)

Question 6

What are weakenesses of TA?

Answer 6

Subjective interpretation: one or few researcher perceptions, which makes cause and effect harder to establish as no empircial, obhejctive data collected.

low reliability: as although methodlogy can be repeated easily, it is unlikeable that diff researchers will come to the same codes/themes/results because of interprtations.