Thematic analysis
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Abstract
Thematic analysis (TA) is a method for identifying, analyzing, and interpreting patterns of meaning (‘themes’) within qualitative data. TA is unusual in the canon of qualitative analytic approaches, because it offers a method – a tool or technique, unbounded by theoretical commitments – rather than a methodology (a theoretically informed, and confined, framework for research). This does not mean that TA is atheoretical, or, as is often assumed, realist, or essentialist. Rather, TA can be applied across a range of theoretical frameworks and indeed research paradigms. There are versions of TA developed for use within (post)positivist frameworks that foreground the importance of coding reliability (e.g. Boyatzis, 1998; Guest, MacQueen, & Namey, 2012), and given the emphasis on positivism in positive psychology (Friedman, 2008), it is unsurprising that such approaches are often favored by qualitative researchers in this area (e.g. Selvam & Collicutt, 2013). However, there are also versions of TA – like ours – developed (primarily) for use within a qualitative paradigm (Braun & Clarke, 2006, 2013). These versions emphasize an organic approach to coding and theme development and the active role of the researcher in these processes, and some positive psychologists are embracing the greater flexibility that they offer to the qualitative researcher (e.g. Holmqvist & Frisén, 2012). Since we published our original paper on TA (Braun & Clarke, 2006), our approach has become the most widely cited of the many (many!) different version of TA available to the qualitative researcher, and it is this version that we focus on in the rest of this brief commentary.