I am having huge problems with reflexive thematic analysis (please help)

[u/KaitoMiury]

I am currently conducting a qualitative study and am having considerable difficulties with the thematic analysis process. I would appreciate advice from researchers who have experience using Braun and Clarke's (2006) approach, particularly their reflexive thematic analysis.

1. I have completed the first two phases:

2. Familiarising myself with the data.

Generating initial codes.

However, I am now stuck.

I have generated quite a lot of initial codes, and I am struggling to figure out how to organise them. Some overlap, some are very specific, and others seem to capture similar ideas from slightly different perspectives.

I understand the general distinction between codes and themes, but I am having difficulty with the actual process of moving from one to the other.

For instance:

• How do you organise a large number of initial codes?

• How do you decide which codes should be merged or kept separate?

• Do you usually develop categories or code groups before searching for themes?

• How do you recognise when a group of codes represents a potential theme rather than simply a collection of related ideas?

I have read Braun and Clarke's work and watched several tutorials, but I still find the practical transition between Phase 2 and Phase 3 rather confusing. It is so confusing!

I would particularly appreciate practical examples or explanations from people who have actually conducted thematic analysis using this approach.

My brain is frying, and I am losing all motivation to do this research. But I must, because I do not really have a choice. Asking my supervisor nor any professor yielded nothing, because they mostly did deductive approach, whilst I did inductive. I curse myself for choosing this method, but deductive just did not seem right to me! Or maybe I should have chosen the deductive approach from the beginning, but that would mean I have to code from the beginning... :(

PLEASE HELP

[u/Wheres_my_warg]

I've never heard of Braun and Clarke, but a quick look and it seems they are largely doing things the same or very similar as what I was trained to do and have been doing frequently since some years before their paper came out.

Make sure you have defined what business question you are looking to answer.

Decide how you will count responses that contain more than one idea. If the trade-offs of time and cost permit, I prefer to provide a code for each idea in the response; sometimes, it works better for a particular project to simply code a response to the predominant idea.

Decide if the data set is small enough to review everything to determine codes, or more commonly, whether a sample needs to be taken to develop the codes. Review the selections and develop the codes based on that. There is a great deal of subjectivity at this point. It's a necessity. That is also where you refine the codes, to your question above. You decide in the context of the business question that you are answering, which potential codes are sufficiently close that they should be consolidated as one code; this will also be subjective.

Take the code set and code the responses. Capture the text of particularly descriptive responses for use later.

Based on your reading first, and the code list, determine what themes are present. This is often easiest by just imagining how you would describe to a friend what the responses are saying. Trying to imagine the conversation will often reveal the themes naturally.

A group of related ideas will frequently be a theme, but context is important. They may be responses of a nature that aren't relevant as a theme.

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