Thematic Data Analysis
Hey, guys welcome to Grad Coach TV where we demystify and simplify the oftentimes confusing world of academic research. My name is David and today I am chatting to one of our trusted coaches Amy about six tips to keep in mind when you are conducting your thematic analysis. This discussion is based on one of the many, many articles over at the Grad Coach blog. So if you would like to find out more about thematic analysis you can visit the blog at gradcoach.com/blog. Also if you are looking for a helping hand with your dissertation thesis or research project be sure to check out our one-on-one private coaching service where we hold your hand throughout the research process step by step. For more information and to book a free consultation head over to gradcoach.com. So hey Amy, welcome back to the Coach Cast as always super great to have you on it with us today. Hi, David, I am happy to be here. So Amy today we are talking about thematic analysis sort of some tips and tricks that we can do to sort of ease the process of running thematic analysis. And the first tip that we are going to mention is probably one anyone who has been watching our content will know will come up is making sure you are considering your golden thread when running your thematic analysis. So Amy what should we be looking out for here? Well, the first place to start is with your research questions. So look at the qualifying words you have attached to your research questions what type of research questions are you using are they exploratory in nature are they predictive are they interpretive? So this matters because this is going to determine how you are analysing your data and sort of what phrases you use when you are finalising your themes. So then the next thing you can look at is the types of research aims and objectives you have. Again if your study is more exploratory then you need to remain kind of more open when you are identifying patterns and what your participants have said or in whatever data source you are using.
Conversely, if you are trying to make some sort of a prediction or some sort of a conclusive statement then you might need to be a bit more intentional about how you are looking at your data and what you are looking for. And then you might look at your theoretical framework or model if you are using one. I always think they are a good idea because they just really help organise your whole study and make sure that golden thread is tightly aligned throughout each chapter. So a framework, a model will have different constructs different features. And so what are those constructs what are the branches of the model? Really dissect that and then that can help organise your data and it can you know it should be the lens through which you are analysing your data anyway that theoretical framework. So, for example, if you are doing a study and you are using social identity theory then the thing that you are looking for is relationships. So you are looking for the presence and the patterns and anytime the participants are talking about personal relationships. If you are using a framework that is about an intervention let us say social workers and discipline at a school you are going to be looking in the data for any time your participants are talking about anything that has to do with student discipline to identify whether or not and the degree to which the presence of social workers is helping with discipline. I think that is really helpful to think through sort of those core parts of your golden thread. If what we are talking about sounds a little strange do not worry we do have a video up on YouTube explaining what the golden thread is and how to use it. The link to that will be down in the description below. But it is really helpful to think about letting your golden thread lead you through how you are going to undertake the thematic analysis.
But it is also good to go back to it right at the end. Once you feel comfortable with your analysis that you have identified themes it is a good thing to take a look at those themes and just make sure you are in line with what you set out to do. You do not want to have set out to do an exploratory study and then by the time you get right to the end you are actually doing something completely different. So we are always looking for that alignment back to what we started off with. And so the golden thread is going to be super helpful there. Part of that I always say it is a little bit helpful to just copy and paste your research questions at the beginning of each chapter and you do not have to end with that you can take those out but just to keep you okay, am I gearing too far off of the research questions and just keep referring back to those at the start of every chapter. I cannot agree more with that I do it all the time myself and I encourage all my students to do it as well. The research questions have to come up at least in every chapter whether they stay there maybe not but definitely putting them there is just going to help you out down the line. So our second tip is to remember that thematic analysis and qualitative analysis in general are iterative. You are not just going to do a single run-through of your analysis. Amy, why do we need to follow this sort of back and forth process with our data? Well, David, I think a lot of times well, every time actually we as researchers were coming into our projects with a certain world view a certain perspective. Which is good this is a part of it and you talk about that in your method section and your positionality perhaps. You have certain expectations for what you are going to find in your study and you might even be hoping for certain things and inevitably in your raw data and your transcripts, you are going to find certain things right that probably reflect those expectations in some way.
So those are going to emerge in some form or another as your dominant themes. So that is why you know to minimize that bias you want to make sure to circle back to that raw data to those transcripts and you will probably find some lines some things that your participants said that you did not quite capture. Just because it is not as dominant as the other things do not mean it is not worth incorporating into your findings. And in fact, it could lead to something quite interesting so you want to just make sure you are capturing all angles of what your participants have said in their experiences. That is the whole point of doing qualitative work. One thing I really suggest is helpful for me is taking quick breaks. Leave your desk leave the computer get some fresh air or even you know stare at another screen for a while but get your eyes off of those words get your brain off of those words because you will come back with fresh brain, fresh perspective and you will see things completely differently. You will see things perhaps that you did not see at all before. So that might actually require that you step away for more than just a few minutes that could be a week or more if you are just really kind of stuck. Which happens a lot when we are really engrossed in our work. So I think that is super helpful and it is one of the things that I know I do in more than just analysis chapters, in write-up, in planning it is always good to take that step back to do something else and then to come back and look with fresh eyes. But again with the thematic analysis remember that it is an iterative process we are going to be looking at our data we are going to be looking at the codes we have generated seeing the relationships that exist and then consider developing them into themes. We are then going to take those themes right back to the data to confirm they exist and you are going to do that a few times.
There are multiple rounds to a thematic analysis you know you might do an initial round just to identify the core themes you might do a second round and identify potential sub-themes that are making up a theme or maybe a theme you thought you had might actually not have the support that you initially thought. So it is always good to come back and re-look at your data because your data is what is supporting your view. Yeah, absolutely that is so critical especially in qualitative work to demonstrate to your audience, to your committee to whomever that you have gone systematically, methodically in rounds step by step. So it is not just you read the transcripts once came up with codes, came up with themes and that was it. This should take a fairly lengthy amount of time and that is also where that putting time and distance between you and the transcripts comes into play as well. I think that is a really helpful point and it is somewhat a little unclear in the when you are reading a paper that is done a thematic analysis it sounds like they have just coded it and found the themes they do not always mention how many steps there are. But definitely take a look at any of the methodological textbooks out there any of the key resources. I swear by Braun and Clark but definitely take a look at those and they can be so helpful in the thematic analysis process. I mean if you look at the systematic thematic analysis those people they will take hours and they will be in teams they will be in committees sitting around boardroom desks before they finalise their ultimate theme. So you are absolutely right that it may look like a very short phrase okay it takes nothing to come up with that but no in fact it takes a lot of thoughtfulness, a lot of consideration, a lot of tying all of these pieces together to feel confident about what you are ultimately saying about your study is wholly reflective of what your participants actually said.
So our third tip is to expect the unexpected. Amy what is unexpected in thematic analysis? To me, this is kind of the fun of doing qualitative work is that or any research really you do not really know what you are going to find. And I think one of the things that I have found with my students that I work with is that is they are they are going into it with certain expectations and then in the findings it is not there or it is there in a different way then they feel like they have done something wrong but that is not the case. And in fact, it is it is quite the opposite it is as long as you have enough evidence to support your findings you want to have those unexpected findings. And that is kind of the unexpected and significant way that you are contributing to research and that is definitely something you will want to emphasise is this is how your study is contributing to existing research. Because let us say that you are looking at a particular leadership framework that emphasises the importance of clear communication but when you actually go to interview the employers, your participants are employers and they are not really talking about communicating with their employees then that is significant. I mean you are finding that that is not actually happening and this could have important implications for those organizations that there needs to be standardise the framework they need to better apply it or maybe the framework itself needs to be adjusted in some way. I think that is really helpful to think through especially because it is really easy to think when something does not go the way that the literature is stating that you think the problem is with you. It is very much something that happens with imposter syndrome, particularly with young researchers who are just learning the ropes. What I can say is have a bit of faith in yourself.
This is your analysis and as long as you can go back to your data that you have strong support from the interviews through the use of quotes and the analysis that you have done then it is totally okay to have these results and if anything they are going to be the surprising results that help improve your study. But just make sure not to throw out the expected findings in lieu of the unexpected. Make sure that if there are four out of five of the aims and objectives that you had that totally make sense with the literature deal with each of those. And where there is that unexpected finding then you can bring that in as needed. So do not feel you have to question your own results but also make sure you have got the data to support it. Yeah, I like the way that you say that it is about finding that confidence as a researcher and especially if this is your first time doing this a lot of the clients that we work with it is their first time that is why you want to be so methodical and so thoughtful and read, read, read get some coaching help, get outside help for each step of the process. So at the end, you can have that confidence and feel like well this is not what I thought I was going to find but I have done everything correctly so I am going to include this. Yes, I am going to stand by this this is something unexpected but I think there is something interesting here. There is so much richness to doing that it is definitely what makes for fun qualitative analysis is when you do identify these little interesting titbits that sort of enrich the concept that you are dealing with. And I guess that is why we are coming to qualitative research is for that level of richness in the data set. So our fourth tip is to not forget the importance of keeping good quality research journals. When we are doing research journaling during thematic analysis what are the things we need to be keeping in mind and why is it beneficial? Well, I keep coming back to this notion of doing qualitative work and the importance of conveying rigour and being systematic.
So one of that is transparency so you want each and every step that you are taking in your design to be clear. The logic behind each of the design decisions that you made and there is going to be a lot of decisions and a lot of thinking that you have. So keep track of that in a reflexive journal. So this start from the very beginning but you need to have this documented in some way so you can keep reflecting back to it because later on you are going to circle back and you are going to think what was I thinking there when I said that or when I coded it this way. And then if you have that there you go okay yes that was my logic there. Inevitably you are going to forget things so keeping a journal for each step will be helpful especially when you get to your coding just to get out of your head and get your thoughts onto paper start listing your codes. You have your empirical indicators those are your exemplar that reflect the examples of those codes and then you have a brief description and then maybe add a column for your own reflective thinking your own memo to fill in the dots of maybe what is not you know literally reflected in the words of the quote itself. Memos and journals are really important too in the actual interviews. So as you are interviewing a participant you have the you know over Zoom or in person you are recording the audio, okay but you are also writing down the all the whole context everything and that that is what we call thick notes and that you can actually add to your methods section as a part of your method thick notes is that you are writing down there might be something significant in the in the non-verbal communication what the participant is not saying that you might factor into your later analysis that is important. So for example if you ask a question about something and they give a long extended pause or they seem uncomfortable in some way you write that down and then later on it might make something later on, make more sense.
But the point is you know it is kind of a fairly easy thing to do keeping a research journal it is for yourself you are not going to necessarily include it in your paper. So you can write however you want to write it whatever you want to write but being able to circle back and remind yourself about why you made certain choices will help you later on, turn that into more academic writing of those explanations for those choices. I think that is really good advice and it is something that can even help as a thinking process by getting those ideas onto paper at that point and going back and reflecting on them you can generate further insights. It is also really helpful when it comes to defending your research because that inevitably happens a month or a little bit after you have handed in a little bit further since you did your analysis. So having a document that you can go back to that has sort of the outline of your thinking and how your thinking has developed is going to be super helpful in the write-up phase but also when you are defending your thesis. Simply taking a read-through of your journal prior to a defence is just going to give you so much more confidence in the way you approach to your research topic and how you answered those questions. Yeah, that is true too because inevitably in research it is an evolution and your paper is going to change probably in quite a few ways from where you initially started. And that is okay too that is totally normal that is how it should happen. But there might be some things at the beginning or along the way that are also really important and maybe it got lost as you refined and refined and everybody is giving their input and you are just hacking your paper apart and getting to the finalised version.
So going back to that journal and really reminding yourself about what is it that you originally wanted to get out of this research, what was the point you were trying to make, what were your goals, what is the story you wanted to tell that maybe got lost a little bit along the way. So that journal can help you bring you back to why you wanted to do this to, begin with. My advice is and it is the same thing I tell quantitative scientists just keep notes of every step because the worst-case scenario used up a little bit of paper or in the modern era a few megabytes of computer space but not having those notes and needing to come back to them that is always way worse than having them and not needing them. So I always suggest take notes throughout the process just keep track of your research it is only going to strengthen your final product. So our fifth tip is to take advantage of visualisation methods. Amy what can we do to use visualisation techniques to help us in the thematic approach? Well I mean I do not know about you but I am a very visual person. So it helps me to see the words on a table, a graph, a chart some pictorial form to think about things differently and see things differently. So, for example, you are trying to come up with your themes you might have some sort of chart or graph or you know it just depends on what kind of a learner you are. So if you are a software person and you work well with different software use that use PowerPoint or Microsoft Word. It does not matter what whatever makes sense to you. When I was a teacher I used a software called Inspiration it is still around it is very user-friendly and you can either use one of their templates or come up with your own. So let us say you are coming up with your themes take your codes put the codes in some sort of a shape a circle or square put it any kind of colour you want and then you will be able to see okay these codes are kind of similar so I am going to cluster them and put them into a category or conversely these codes are very different so we are going to separate them out.
But the point is getting out of just staring at the computer will facilitate a different way of thinking and that is what we are trying to get at to get that fresh perspective and those really good tight original compelling themes. And, for me, I am also very much about writing things down it is something about the act of writing it down so I have a million sticky notes everywhere. Write down your codes on the stickies put them up on a bulletin board, put them up on your desk and just move them around and in different ways because the point is you want to engage with your data with different approaches so that you can come up with the best most effective most relevant findings. I totally agree with you on using alternative methods. I will say I personally maybe it is because I come from the quantitative background do not think in pictures I think in spreadsheets and those. But I totally use Excel to help me find connections between themes. So I will do things like develop a column that is just my initial codes, develop a second column which is my sort of refined code from there I will develop some sub-themes or potential themes and then I will start colour coding. I will start using filtering, sorting and through that, I am able to tackle those codes in a different way. That said I still will take those codes take those themes and put them on a mind map. Because as much as I am a thinker in spreadsheets and hard data, it is really helpful to just have that visualisation that is helping me make connections between themes or sub-themes that I would not normally interact with. And so I always suggest to clients take a look at using a methodology that you are not familiar with just to help in the planning and analysis phase.
Does not need to be pretty you are not necessarily going to be publishing this but it is going to be really helpful for you thinking through how things are connected and how to develop your themes. Yeah, and I mean there is a variety of ways to do it and as a first step, you might even just Google codes, categories, themes. And if you just Google that and click on images a million things will come up. So that might be a place to just kind of okay how do I do this. Get out of your head and just literally type in those words and click on one of those pictures images and that will give you a direction of okay this pictorial way makes sense to me and just go with it. And do not worry about being right or wrong. Yeah, I totally agree with that particularly, at the analysis phase. It is that analysis it is an iterative thinking process. Ideas will change ideas would develop but having that on paper can just really help you out or in a visualisation. One other thing to mention is while you probably will not be publishing the thinking that you do in these initial visualisations sometimes these connections, mind maps, word maps that you generate are the seeds for a visualisation or a graphic that you will be presenting in your final dissertation. So do not just think of it as an analysis section it is also something that helps you move towards the final presentation of that data as well. I have seen some really amazing Word Clouds this was a really cool software that extracts the most commonly used words in your participants' responses and put them in a really neat visual. And so this is part of your methods as well. You can arrive there and maybe you will just starting out maybe you do not worry about it being pretty but you never know how these things can evolve maybe it gets to the point where you want to include this in your paper and then you will need to worry about you know making it look more academic.
But first starting out you know you do not have to worry so much about that. So our final tip, tip number six is to remember that you are becoming the expert and it is your analysis. So you can have some confidence there but also do not feel that you have to do everything alone. Amy, I have sort of presented two opposites here how do we put those together? Well, it is complicated right this whole undertaking of a thesis or dissertation is overwhelming and complicated and time-consuming. And by the end of it, you will have done so much reading but all of that time and by the end, you should have that confidence that you have become an expert in this. Because you have done all the reading in these different ways and these different topics different areas and you have put it all together in some kind of a unique way so you are that expert on those topics in that way. And that is kind of an exciting part about doing a research paper. So you need to trust yourself and your analysis. In a thematic analysis you come up with your themes and then in your discussion chapters, it is your job to go beyond the literal data. Your analysis is exactly that your analysis. And also I think there are some things that you can and should do to help instil that confidence both in yourself and in your audience, in your committee and that is getting outside opinions. In qualitative work, there are a few ways to do that. There is something called member checking and that is okay so you have generated your codes, the codes have been clustered into categories and then from there you have analysed and abstracted them into themes. And so once you have your final themes send them back to your participants and get their input. And so they will say okay yes you got it you got the spirit of what I was saying or they might say no that is not what I was saying at all. But that is important that you learned that okay and you can actually put that into your methods section as well that you this is a part of your triangulating of your findings of your data supporting your ultimate findings is you did some member checking.
You can also do purity briefing which is enlisting the help of someone who is not involved in your study but might have an academic background and who can look at your results look at your findings and say yes okay I can see how you got there I see this transcript and I can see the logic behind getting from there to your themes. And so having other people agree with you and sort of confirm what you found can help you as you are this emerging scholar and that confidence building that you will need when you get to the end and you have to defend all of these choices. I think that is really helpful it is also a great way to sort of avoid any bias a peer debriefer is going to be able to help you pick up if there are any biases that you have in the way that you are analysing, thinking through and working through those transcripts. But it does come up as well that if you have a strong theme that is counted to the literature and you have got a peer debriefer who has looked at it and says actually this totally makes sense then you can totally lean into it. It is a valid finding as long as it is well supported by the literature having that peer debriefer you can feel confident in that result. Even though it is counter to what was expected or what you set out to find out. So definitely keep that in mind while you are doing this. You are becoming an expert you are the individual that collected the data, you have analysed the data you have read the associated literature give yourself the confidence that you deserve. You have put the effort in now it is just about writing it in a convincing way and getting that across to your panel and your committee. Yes, absolutely and I mean think about every researcher every published article that you read those researchers started out at some point as a student who had no published articles or anything and probably felt the same sorts of doubt that we all experienced when we are writing our first paper.
But now you are becoming you are taking that leap from student to scholar becoming the person that other people are going to start citing and that is really exciting. Yeah really is. So Amy thanks so much for joining us today as we tackled a bit about thematic analysis and some tips and tricks to keep in mind. As always super great to have you joining us. Absolutely my pleasure. All right so that pretty much wraps up this episode of Grad Coach TV. Remember if you are looking for more information about thematic analysis be sure to check out our blog at gradcoach.com/blog. There you can also get access to our free dissertation and thesis writing mini-course which gives you all the information you need to get started on your research journey. Also if you are looking for a helping hand with your dissertation or thesis be sure to check out our one-on-one private coaching service where you can work with one of our friendly coaches just like Amy. For all the information and to book that free consultation head over to gradcoach.com.
Conversely, if you are trying to make some sort of a prediction or some sort of a conclusive statement then you might need to be a bit more intentional about how you are looking at your data and what you are looking for. And then you might look at your theoretical framework or model if you are using one. I always think they are a good idea because they just really help organise your whole study and make sure that golden thread is tightly aligned throughout each chapter. So a framework, a model will have different constructs different features. And so what are those constructs what are the branches of the model? Really dissect that and then that can help organise your data and it can you know it should be the lens through which you are analysing your data anyway that theoretical framework. So, for example, if you are doing a study and you are using social identity theory then the thing that you are looking for is relationships. So you are looking for the presence and the patterns and anytime the participants are talking about personal relationships. If you are using a framework that is about an intervention let us say social workers and discipline at a school you are going to be looking in the data for any time your participants are talking about anything that has to do with student discipline to identify whether or not and the degree to which the presence of social workers is helping with discipline. I think that is really helpful to think through sort of those core parts of your golden thread. If what we are talking about sounds a little strange do not worry we do have a video up on YouTube explaining what the golden thread is and how to use it. The link to that will be down in the description below. But it is really helpful to think about letting your golden thread lead you through how you are going to undertake the thematic analysis.
But it is also good to go back to it right at the end. Once you feel comfortable with your analysis that you have identified themes it is a good thing to take a look at those themes and just make sure you are in line with what you set out to do. You do not want to have set out to do an exploratory study and then by the time you get right to the end you are actually doing something completely different. So we are always looking for that alignment back to what we started off with. And so the golden thread is going to be super helpful there. Part of that I always say it is a little bit helpful to just copy and paste your research questions at the beginning of each chapter and you do not have to end with that you can take those out but just to keep you okay, am I gearing too far off of the research questions and just keep referring back to those at the start of every chapter. I cannot agree more with that I do it all the time myself and I encourage all my students to do it as well. The research questions have to come up at least in every chapter whether they stay there maybe not but definitely putting them there is just going to help you out down the line. So our second tip is to remember that thematic analysis and qualitative analysis in general are iterative. You are not just going to do a single run-through of your analysis. Amy, why do we need to follow this sort of back and forth process with our data? Well, David, I think a lot of times well, every time actually we as researchers were coming into our projects with a certain world view a certain perspective. Which is good this is a part of it and you talk about that in your method section and your positionality perhaps. You have certain expectations for what you are going to find in your study and you might even be hoping for certain things and inevitably in your raw data and your transcripts, you are going to find certain things right that probably reflect those expectations in some way.
So those are going to emerge in some form or another as your dominant themes. So that is why you know to minimize that bias you want to make sure to circle back to that raw data to those transcripts and you will probably find some lines some things that your participants said that you did not quite capture. Just because it is not as dominant as the other things do not mean it is not worth incorporating into your findings. And in fact, it could lead to something quite interesting so you want to just make sure you are capturing all angles of what your participants have said in their experiences. That is the whole point of doing qualitative work. One thing I really suggest is helpful for me is taking quick breaks. Leave your desk leave the computer get some fresh air or even you know stare at another screen for a while but get your eyes off of those words get your brain off of those words because you will come back with fresh brain, fresh perspective and you will see things completely differently. You will see things perhaps that you did not see at all before. So that might actually require that you step away for more than just a few minutes that could be a week or more if you are just really kind of stuck. Which happens a lot when we are really engrossed in our work. So I think that is super helpful and it is one of the things that I know I do in more than just analysis chapters, in write-up, in planning it is always good to take that step back to do something else and then to come back and look with fresh eyes. But again with the thematic analysis remember that it is an iterative process we are going to be looking at our data we are going to be looking at the codes we have generated seeing the relationships that exist and then consider developing them into themes. We are then going to take those themes right back to the data to confirm they exist and you are going to do that a few times.
There are multiple rounds to a thematic analysis you know you might do an initial round just to identify the core themes you might do a second round and identify potential sub-themes that are making up a theme or maybe a theme you thought you had might actually not have the support that you initially thought. So it is always good to come back and re-look at your data because your data is what is supporting your view. Yeah, absolutely that is so critical especially in qualitative work to demonstrate to your audience, to your committee to whomever that you have gone systematically, methodically in rounds step by step. So it is not just you read the transcripts once came up with codes, came up with themes and that was it. This should take a fairly lengthy amount of time and that is also where that putting time and distance between you and the transcripts comes into play as well. I think that is a really helpful point and it is somewhat a little unclear in the when you are reading a paper that is done a thematic analysis it sounds like they have just coded it and found the themes they do not always mention how many steps there are. But definitely take a look at any of the methodological textbooks out there any of the key resources. I swear by Braun and Clark but definitely take a look at those and they can be so helpful in the thematic analysis process. I mean if you look at the systematic thematic analysis those people they will take hours and they will be in teams they will be in committees sitting around boardroom desks before they finalise their ultimate theme. So you are absolutely right that it may look like a very short phrase okay it takes nothing to come up with that but no in fact it takes a lot of thoughtfulness, a lot of consideration, a lot of tying all of these pieces together to feel confident about what you are ultimately saying about your study is wholly reflective of what your participants actually said.
So our third tip is to expect the unexpected. Amy what is unexpected in thematic analysis? To me, this is kind of the fun of doing qualitative work is that or any research really you do not really know what you are going to find. And I think one of the things that I have found with my students that I work with is that is they are they are going into it with certain expectations and then in the findings it is not there or it is there in a different way then they feel like they have done something wrong but that is not the case. And in fact, it is it is quite the opposite it is as long as you have enough evidence to support your findings you want to have those unexpected findings. And that is kind of the unexpected and significant way that you are contributing to research and that is definitely something you will want to emphasise is this is how your study is contributing to existing research. Because let us say that you are looking at a particular leadership framework that emphasises the importance of clear communication but when you actually go to interview the employers, your participants are employers and they are not really talking about communicating with their employees then that is significant. I mean you are finding that that is not actually happening and this could have important implications for those organizations that there needs to be standardise the framework they need to better apply it or maybe the framework itself needs to be adjusted in some way. I think that is really helpful to think through especially because it is really easy to think when something does not go the way that the literature is stating that you think the problem is with you. It is very much something that happens with imposter syndrome, particularly with young researchers who are just learning the ropes. What I can say is have a bit of faith in yourself.
This is your analysis and as long as you can go back to your data that you have strong support from the interviews through the use of quotes and the analysis that you have done then it is totally okay to have these results and if anything they are going to be the surprising results that help improve your study. But just make sure not to throw out the expected findings in lieu of the unexpected. Make sure that if there are four out of five of the aims and objectives that you had that totally make sense with the literature deal with each of those. And where there is that unexpected finding then you can bring that in as needed. So do not feel you have to question your own results but also make sure you have got the data to support it. Yeah, I like the way that you say that it is about finding that confidence as a researcher and especially if this is your first time doing this a lot of the clients that we work with it is their first time that is why you want to be so methodical and so thoughtful and read, read, read get some coaching help, get outside help for each step of the process. So at the end, you can have that confidence and feel like well this is not what I thought I was going to find but I have done everything correctly so I am going to include this. Yes, I am going to stand by this this is something unexpected but I think there is something interesting here. There is so much richness to doing that it is definitely what makes for fun qualitative analysis is when you do identify these little interesting titbits that sort of enrich the concept that you are dealing with. And I guess that is why we are coming to qualitative research is for that level of richness in the data set. So our fourth tip is to not forget the importance of keeping good quality research journals. When we are doing research journaling during thematic analysis what are the things we need to be keeping in mind and why is it beneficial? Well, I keep coming back to this notion of doing qualitative work and the importance of conveying rigour and being systematic.
So one of that is transparency so you want each and every step that you are taking in your design to be clear. The logic behind each of the design decisions that you made and there is going to be a lot of decisions and a lot of thinking that you have. So keep track of that in a reflexive journal. So this start from the very beginning but you need to have this documented in some way so you can keep reflecting back to it because later on you are going to circle back and you are going to think what was I thinking there when I said that or when I coded it this way. And then if you have that there you go okay yes that was my logic there. Inevitably you are going to forget things so keeping a journal for each step will be helpful especially when you get to your coding just to get out of your head and get your thoughts onto paper start listing your codes. You have your empirical indicators those are your exemplar that reflect the examples of those codes and then you have a brief description and then maybe add a column for your own reflective thinking your own memo to fill in the dots of maybe what is not you know literally reflected in the words of the quote itself. Memos and journals are really important too in the actual interviews. So as you are interviewing a participant you have the you know over Zoom or in person you are recording the audio, okay but you are also writing down the all the whole context everything and that that is what we call thick notes and that you can actually add to your methods section as a part of your method thick notes is that you are writing down there might be something significant in the in the non-verbal communication what the participant is not saying that you might factor into your later analysis that is important. So for example if you ask a question about something and they give a long extended pause or they seem uncomfortable in some way you write that down and then later on it might make something later on, make more sense.
But the point is you know it is kind of a fairly easy thing to do keeping a research journal it is for yourself you are not going to necessarily include it in your paper. So you can write however you want to write it whatever you want to write but being able to circle back and remind yourself about why you made certain choices will help you later on, turn that into more academic writing of those explanations for those choices. I think that is really good advice and it is something that can even help as a thinking process by getting those ideas onto paper at that point and going back and reflecting on them you can generate further insights. It is also really helpful when it comes to defending your research because that inevitably happens a month or a little bit after you have handed in a little bit further since you did your analysis. So having a document that you can go back to that has sort of the outline of your thinking and how your thinking has developed is going to be super helpful in the write-up phase but also when you are defending your thesis. Simply taking a read-through of your journal prior to a defence is just going to give you so much more confidence in the way you approach to your research topic and how you answered those questions. Yeah, that is true too because inevitably in research it is an evolution and your paper is going to change probably in quite a few ways from where you initially started. And that is okay too that is totally normal that is how it should happen. But there might be some things at the beginning or along the way that are also really important and maybe it got lost as you refined and refined and everybody is giving their input and you are just hacking your paper apart and getting to the finalised version.
So going back to that journal and really reminding yourself about what is it that you originally wanted to get out of this research, what was the point you were trying to make, what were your goals, what is the story you wanted to tell that maybe got lost a little bit along the way. So that journal can help you bring you back to why you wanted to do this to, begin with. My advice is and it is the same thing I tell quantitative scientists just keep notes of every step because the worst-case scenario used up a little bit of paper or in the modern era a few megabytes of computer space but not having those notes and needing to come back to them that is always way worse than having them and not needing them. So I always suggest take notes throughout the process just keep track of your research it is only going to strengthen your final product. So our fifth tip is to take advantage of visualisation methods. Amy what can we do to use visualisation techniques to help us in the thematic approach? Well I mean I do not know about you but I am a very visual person. So it helps me to see the words on a table, a graph, a chart some pictorial form to think about things differently and see things differently. So, for example, you are trying to come up with your themes you might have some sort of chart or graph or you know it just depends on what kind of a learner you are. So if you are a software person and you work well with different software use that use PowerPoint or Microsoft Word. It does not matter what whatever makes sense to you. When I was a teacher I used a software called Inspiration it is still around it is very user-friendly and you can either use one of their templates or come up with your own. So let us say you are coming up with your themes take your codes put the codes in some sort of a shape a circle or square put it any kind of colour you want and then you will be able to see okay these codes are kind of similar so I am going to cluster them and put them into a category or conversely these codes are very different so we are going to separate them out.
But the point is getting out of just staring at the computer will facilitate a different way of thinking and that is what we are trying to get at to get that fresh perspective and those really good tight original compelling themes. And, for me, I am also very much about writing things down it is something about the act of writing it down so I have a million sticky notes everywhere. Write down your codes on the stickies put them up on a bulletin board, put them up on your desk and just move them around and in different ways because the point is you want to engage with your data with different approaches so that you can come up with the best most effective most relevant findings. I totally agree with you on using alternative methods. I will say I personally maybe it is because I come from the quantitative background do not think in pictures I think in spreadsheets and those. But I totally use Excel to help me find connections between themes. So I will do things like develop a column that is just my initial codes, develop a second column which is my sort of refined code from there I will develop some sub-themes or potential themes and then I will start colour coding. I will start using filtering, sorting and through that, I am able to tackle those codes in a different way. That said I still will take those codes take those themes and put them on a mind map. Because as much as I am a thinker in spreadsheets and hard data, it is really helpful to just have that visualisation that is helping me make connections between themes or sub-themes that I would not normally interact with. And so I always suggest to clients take a look at using a methodology that you are not familiar with just to help in the planning and analysis phase.
Does not need to be pretty you are not necessarily going to be publishing this but it is going to be really helpful for you thinking through how things are connected and how to develop your themes. Yeah, and I mean there is a variety of ways to do it and as a first step, you might even just Google codes, categories, themes. And if you just Google that and click on images a million things will come up. So that might be a place to just kind of okay how do I do this. Get out of your head and just literally type in those words and click on one of those pictures images and that will give you a direction of okay this pictorial way makes sense to me and just go with it. And do not worry about being right or wrong. Yeah, I totally agree with that particularly, at the analysis phase. It is that analysis it is an iterative thinking process. Ideas will change ideas would develop but having that on paper can just really help you out or in a visualisation. One other thing to mention is while you probably will not be publishing the thinking that you do in these initial visualisations sometimes these connections, mind maps, word maps that you generate are the seeds for a visualisation or a graphic that you will be presenting in your final dissertation. So do not just think of it as an analysis section it is also something that helps you move towards the final presentation of that data as well. I have seen some really amazing Word Clouds this was a really cool software that extracts the most commonly used words in your participants' responses and put them in a really neat visual. And so this is part of your methods as well. You can arrive there and maybe you will just starting out maybe you do not worry about it being pretty but you never know how these things can evolve maybe it gets to the point where you want to include this in your paper and then you will need to worry about you know making it look more academic.
But first starting out you know you do not have to worry so much about that. So our final tip, tip number six is to remember that you are becoming the expert and it is your analysis. So you can have some confidence there but also do not feel that you have to do everything alone. Amy, I have sort of presented two opposites here how do we put those together? Well, it is complicated right this whole undertaking of a thesis or dissertation is overwhelming and complicated and time-consuming. And by the end of it, you will have done so much reading but all of that time and by the end, you should have that confidence that you have become an expert in this. Because you have done all the reading in these different ways and these different topics different areas and you have put it all together in some kind of a unique way so you are that expert on those topics in that way. And that is kind of an exciting part about doing a research paper. So you need to trust yourself and your analysis. In a thematic analysis you come up with your themes and then in your discussion chapters, it is your job to go beyond the literal data. Your analysis is exactly that your analysis. And also I think there are some things that you can and should do to help instil that confidence both in yourself and in your audience, in your committee and that is getting outside opinions. In qualitative work, there are a few ways to do that. There is something called member checking and that is okay so you have generated your codes, the codes have been clustered into categories and then from there you have analysed and abstracted them into themes. And so once you have your final themes send them back to your participants and get their input. And so they will say okay yes you got it you got the spirit of what I was saying or they might say no that is not what I was saying at all. But that is important that you learned that okay and you can actually put that into your methods section as well that you this is a part of your triangulating of your findings of your data supporting your ultimate findings is you did some member checking.
You can also do purity briefing which is enlisting the help of someone who is not involved in your study but might have an academic background and who can look at your results look at your findings and say yes okay I can see how you got there I see this transcript and I can see the logic behind getting from there to your themes. And so having other people agree with you and sort of confirm what you found can help you as you are this emerging scholar and that confidence building that you will need when you get to the end and you have to defend all of these choices. I think that is really helpful it is also a great way to sort of avoid any bias a peer debriefer is going to be able to help you pick up if there are any biases that you have in the way that you are analysing, thinking through and working through those transcripts. But it does come up as well that if you have a strong theme that is counted to the literature and you have got a peer debriefer who has looked at it and says actually this totally makes sense then you can totally lean into it. It is a valid finding as long as it is well supported by the literature having that peer debriefer you can feel confident in that result. Even though it is counter to what was expected or what you set out to find out. So definitely keep that in mind while you are doing this. You are becoming an expert you are the individual that collected the data, you have analysed the data you have read the associated literature give yourself the confidence that you deserve. You have put the effort in now it is just about writing it in a convincing way and getting that across to your panel and your committee. Yes, absolutely and I mean think about every researcher every published article that you read those researchers started out at some point as a student who had no published articles or anything and probably felt the same sorts of doubt that we all experienced when we are writing our first paper.
But now you are becoming you are taking that leap from student to scholar becoming the person that other people are going to start citing and that is really exciting. Yeah really is. So Amy thanks so much for joining us today as we tackled a bit about thematic analysis and some tips and tricks to keep in mind. As always super great to have you joining us. Absolutely my pleasure. All right so that pretty much wraps up this episode of Grad Coach TV. Remember if you are looking for more information about thematic analysis be sure to check out our blog at gradcoach.com/blog. There you can also get access to our free dissertation and thesis writing mini-course which gives you all the information you need to get started on your research journey. Also if you are looking for a helping hand with your dissertation or thesis be sure to check out our one-on-one private coaching service where you can work with one of our friendly coaches just like Amy. For all the information and to book that free consultation head over to gradcoach.com.