Thematic Data Analysis Essay

4.8 Thematic Data Analysis

The thematic analysis is an often used method in qualitative research, according to Braun and Clarke (2006) it helps, ‘identifying, analysing and reporting patterns (themes) within data. It minimally organises and describes your data set in (rich) detail. However, frequently it goes further than this, and interprets various aspects of the research topic.’, (Braun and Clarke, 2006:79). Thematic analysis allows a theoretically flexible approach to evaluate qualitative data. Furthermore, according to Braun and Clarke (2006) thematic analysis can be applied to situations, as for our case it helps us analyse ‘the way in which events, realities, meanings, experiences and so on are the effect of a range of discourses operating within society’ (Braun and Clarke, 2006:81).

We applied a deductive thematic approach to identify our themes. Therefore, we have chosen a predetermined framework to analyse the data. With this approach we use the already identified theories on the data to examine it. Moreover, to build a theme for the data we used the following instructions: ‘A theme captures something important about the data in relation to the research question and represents some level of patterned response or meaning within the data set.’ (Braun and

Besides this, in order to protect our participants, we gave them fictitious names. We also decided to include a consent form (see Appendix 3), which the interviewees signed before each interview. The consent form proved to be helpful as we had the opportunity to describe our research, make the interviewee’s aware of the nature of the research, inform them of their rights, including anonymity and confidentiality, as well if we were able to tape record them during the interviews (Bryman,