Top Research Papers on Thematic Analysis

Terry, G. and Hayfield, N. (forthcoming, July 2021) Essentials of thematic analysis. American Psychological Association.

Thematic analysis is an increasingly popular method for analysing qualitative data within the social sciences. Current guides for conducting thematic analysis promote the method’s broad flexibility across research designs, which has resulted in criticism that the method lacks the rigour and structure necessary for credible academic research. Recognizing the challenges faced by qualitative scholars, I developed and present an 8-step prescriptive approach specific to abductive methodologies incorporating many concepts from seminal works in thematic analysis, and importantly maintaining the balan...

Thematic analysis (TA) is widely used in qualitative psychology. In using TA, researchers must choose between a diverse range of approaches that can differ considerably in their underlying (but often implicit) conceptualizations of qualitative research, meaningful knowledge production and key constructs such as themes, as well as analytic procedures. This diversity within the method of TA is typically poorly understood and rarely acknowledged, resulting in the frequent publication of research lacking in design coherence. Furthermore, because TA offers researchers something closer to a method (...

Thematic analyses can take multiple forms, some of them systematic, others intuitive. In practice, published research that involves thematic analysis comes is all sorts of shapes and styles: some good, some bad, and some just plain ugly. In this article, I attempt to clarify the nature and practice of thematic analysis. I offer concrete examples of what I consider to be good practice, highlighting instances where I think the thematic analysis has been conducted in an appropriately rigorous way, yielding rich, informative findings. First, different types of thematic analyses are identified and ...

Thematic analysis (TA) is one of the most widely utilized methods for analyzing qualitative data, offering a structured yet flexible framework for identifying, analyzing, and interpreting patterns of meaning within datasets. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of Braun and Clarke's six-phase thematic analysis framework, which includes (1) familiarization with data, (2) generating initial codes, (3) searching for themes, (4) reviewing themes, (5) defining and naming themes, and (6) writing the report. Additionally, it presents a 16-item checklist to ensure adherence to the established ...

This article discusses one approach to conducting thematic analysis using structured qualitative data collected from focus groups. Thematic analysis is one of the most used but often poorly defined approaches in the qualitative research community. The method is principally concerned with the identification of patterns which are then reported as researcher-generated themes. In this article, I use data obtained from the Qualitative Data Repository to demonstrate how secondary qualitative data can be analyzed to produce themes. I note the ways in which this process unfolds as well as how it diffe...

While research in the diversity and leadership literatures has given attention to the concept of inclusive leadership, work in these areas has progressed within relatively independent theoretical streams with little integration of findings. To integrate findings from these literatures and develop theory on inclusive leadership, this study explores the concept and enactment of inclusive leadership from the leader’s perspective. Through manual and assisted thematic analyses of 27 leaders’ written responses to questions regarding how they perceive and demonstrate inclusive leadership, we investig...

The hospitality and tourism industry for a variety of reasons is vulnerable to crises of various origins and scope. Thereby, research regarding crises in this industry has received significant attention among scholars. This study presents the results of a qualitative thematic analysis (TA) of the literature concerning crisis management in hospitality and tourism. A total of 207 research publications from 1986 to 2019 were analyzed. The findings revealed eight major themes that emerged in the literature over time. We critically discuss these themes with suggestions and directions for future res...

Purpose This study aims to conduct a systematic review and critically analyze the sentiment analysis literature in hospitality and tourism from methodological (data sets and analyzes) and thematic (topics, theories, key constructs and their relationships) perspectives. Design/methodology/approach Qualitative thematic review and quantitative systematic review were performed on 70 papers obtained from hospitality and tourism categories of two databases, namely, Web of Science and Scopus. Findings A total of 5 topics and 27 sub-topics were identified and the major theme is market intelligence. Se...

Recent decades have seen a more thoughtful discussion regarding the inclusion of children and youth in research and decision making, challenging how we conduct child and youth-focused studies. Included is a focus on Youth Participatory Action Research approaches and how they facilitate engagement of child and youth voice. Similarly, there is a smaller yet equally important questioning of how we understand “voice,” drawing attention to the conceptualization of “voice,” and the need to account for its social positioning and construction. Despite these various advances, current discussions focus ...

Thematic analysis is outlined, positioning it in relation to other methods of qualitative analysis, and described when it is appropriate to use the method under a variety of epistemological frameworks, as this term is often misapplied.

This paper describes how a multidisciplinary graduate student group of applied health researchers utilized Braun and Clarke’s approach to reflexive thematic analysis and highlights the experiences through each phase, outline strategies to support analytic quality, and share practical activities to guide the use of reflexivethematic analysis within an applied health research context and when working within research teams.

The Reflexive Thematic Analysis Reporting Guidelines (the RTARG) are developed, informed by this review, other reviews the authors have done and their values and experience as qualitative researchers, to support qualitative researchers in producing coherent and reflexively open reports of reflexive thematic analysis.

:Thematic analysis (TA) is unique in that it does not come with a predetermined theoretical framework, leaving the researcher accountable to articulate methodological decisions made. As a community of qualitative scholars, we need to clearly articulate and define the theoretical foundations, assumptions, and parameters that guide our work and analysis. We also need to be transparent about our reflections during data analysis, sharing our tensions, struggles, and realizations. While the flexibility of TA can lead to poorly constructed and executed analysis, it also offers the ability to develop...

Mobility as a Service (MaaS) is a novel brand of transport that promises to replace private cars with multimodal personalised mobility packages enabled by a digital platform capable of integrating travel planning, booking and ticketing, and real-time information services. It is an intervention that through its digitisation, connectivity, information and sharing merits intends to inspire and support the transition to a more sustainable mobility paradigm. Recent research suggests, however, that the potential uptake of MaaS might not be overwhelming; current car drivers could face considerable di...

Thematic analysis (TA) is one of the most popular methods in social science. There are several different approaches to TA that hold different ontological commitments, ranging from positivistic coding reliability TA to constructivist reflexive TA. However, there has been less focus on developing an approach that is informed by critical realism, with the notable exception of Wiltshire and Ronkainen. The first part of this paper proposes a five-step critical realist approach to TA. This approach aims to produce nuanced causal explanations of events, countering the mistaken assumption that qualita...

Interest in applied educational research methodology is growing as educators and researchers strive to seek empirical evidence about what is effective teaching within distinctive contexts. However, for beginner researchers who are interested in conducting case studies within educational settings and are looking for an appropriate starting point, there is limited literature that shapes comprehensively the theory and application of a rigorous research design. This article outlines the theoretical foundation, philosophical assumptions and application of a research design suitable for implementati...

Abstract Since the publication of their inaugural paper on the topic in 2006, Braun and Clarke’s approach has arguably become one of the most thoroughly delineated methods of conducting thematic analysis (TA). However, confusion persists as to how to implement this specific approach to TA appropriately. The authors themselves have identified that many researchers who purport to adhere to this approach—and who reference their work as such—fail to adhere fully to the principles of ‘reflexive thematic analysis’ (RTA). Over the course of numerous publications, Braun and Clarke have elaborated sign...

Inductive/deductive hybrid thematic analysis offers significant opportunities for researchers, but its application within integrative mixed methods research has yet to be fully explored. Firstly, this article contributes by demonstrating the compatibility of inductive/deductive hybrid thematic analysis with quantitative work in a mixed methods approach to research. Secondly, the article then innovates by highlighting the value of this approach within a critical realist meta-theoretical perspective. Here, the critical realist concepts of abduction and retroduction are crucial, both in terms of ...

In this article I present a structured approach to thematic analysis that is designed for working with brief texts. It is grounded in both the ecumenical thematic analysis of Boyatzis and the reflexive thematic analysis of Braun and Clarke. The process of structured tabular TA (ST-TA) is best conducted in spreadsheet software such as Microsoft Excel. As with other forms of thematic analysis, it permits inductive, deductive or hybrid approaches to theme development and analysis. Its logistical processes are well suited to working with the large samples that can be achieved when gathering brief ...