00:00: This module on thematic analysis follows on from the topics we’ve explored so far: elements of a scientific argument, critical thinking and writing, and theoretical frameworks. Underlying all these aspects is the fundamental notion of critical thinking, which you should ideally apply throughout the course of your research and writing – whether you’re doing thematic analysis or trying to figure out what your theoretical framework should be.
00:48: So, as we go through this module, I encourage you to reflect constantly on how you can engage critically with any thematic analysis you are required to do. In the module, we will look at how to generate relevant themes from whatever data sources you have at your disposal – whether, again, you’re conducting a literature review or doing primary research. Later on in the module, we will look at an example of how it works in primary research from a paper I co-authored.
01:27: But, I want to put in a word here about how thematic analysis can help enhance secondary research – for example, when you need to produce that literature review. You may have noticed that one of the texts assigned in this module – the one by Wilson et al. – is a systematic review in terms of the methodology used and the way that the sources were selected. But then, in synthesising the literature and the findings, the authors took a thematic approach to those.
02:05: And, what that does for you is it helps you build and enrich your narrative, and it helps you to see what is happening across the board. When conducting secondary research, you typically have this vast body of literature that you need to consult. Sometimes overwhelming.
02:31: But then, having consulted all of these sources, sometimes with multiple lines of argument, critique, and counter-critique, how do you make a coherent picture out of this mix? In other words, how do you make music out of all the noise? All that information can quickly feel cacophonous and overwhelming. But how do you draw out relevant themes and strands that are meaningful and useful for your particular piece of research?
03:06: This is what thematic analysis helps you to do. So, what is thematic analysis? Perhaps the key word to focus on here is analysis. Thematic analysis is a powerful yet flexible method for analysing qualitative data – certainly in primary research using qualitative sources, but also in desk research, even for quantitative or mixed-method studies where you need to summarise the evidence from a range of sources for your literature review. It is useful here to look beyond methodological barriers, because even in qualitative research, quantitative papers are often included in the sources consulted for literature reviews.
04:01: The important thing is to have the tools you need to achieve the results you want, to select and synthesise the most relevant data you need to engage with the research question at hand. And again, thematic analysis helps you to do that. Thematic analysis is powerful in the sense that it often throws up profound insights, and it is flexible because it can be applied to a broad range of research situations and sources.
04:34: You can thematically analyse data from academic papers, policy papers and briefs, news articles, documentaries, project reports, and so on. In addition to being powerful and flexible, thematic analysis is also versatile. And yes, there’s a framework that guides the analysis, which we will look at a bit later.
05:02: But within that framework, there is a lot of room for adaptation to your specific purposes at a given moment, whatever those purposes are. And perhaps the most exciting thing about thematic analysis is that it helps you go beyond describing the phenomena you have uncovered in your really interesting research, to interpreting them.
05:29: Now, if you’re writing a bachelor’s dissertation, it might be allowed for you to do primarily descriptive work. But when you start getting to master’s, and certainly PhD level, you need to punch that much higher. At those higher levels, you’re expected to go beyond merely – and I use that word deliberately – merely descriptive writing to making an original contribution through analysis.
05:58: When you’re writing a postgraduate thesis or a paper, you’re expected to have a results or findings section. So, there is that element of describing. But, in addition to that, the real value that you’re bringing is then interpreting what those findings mean, what those results mean. And, to do that, when you have a lot of data from a lot of sources, you need to actively recognise patterns across the data set.