Definition
Thematic analysis (TA) is a set of methods for developing and interpreting patterns of meaning across qualitative data.
Description
In the social and health sciences, TA has been extensively used for analyzing qualitative data, but until the last decade or so, there had been little discussion of TA as a method or guidance provided for its use (Aronson 1994; Boyatzis 1998; Patton 1990, provide early exceptions). In 2006, Braun and Clarke (2006) proposed a “systematic” and “sophisticated” (Howitt and Cramer 2008, p. 341) approach to TA, which has subsequently been widely adopted. Although TA is often used merely to describe or summarize key patterns in data, for Braun and Clarke, a good TA involves more than simply reporting what is in the data; it involves telling an interpretative story about the data in relation to a research question.
TA is often referred to as if it is one homogenous entity, with one set of underlying assumptions and analytic procedures (Terry et al. 2017...
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References
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Braun, V., Clarke, V. (2022). Thematic Analysis. In: Maggino, F. (eds) Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69909-7_3470-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69909-7_3470-2
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