Reflecting on reflexive thematic analysis

ABSTRACT

Since initially writing on thematic analysis in 2006, the popularity of the method we outlined has exploded, the variety of TA approaches have expanded, and, not least, our thinking has developed and shifted. In this reflexive commentary, we look back at some of the unspoken assumptions that informed how we wrote our 2006 paper. We connect some of these un-identified assumptions, and developments in the method over the years, with some conceptual mismatches and confusions we see in published TA studies. In order to facilitate better TA practice, we reflect on how our thinking has evolved – and in some cases sedimented – since the publication of our 2006 paper, and clarify and revise some of the ways we phrased or conceptualised TA, and the elements of, and processes around, a method we now prefer to call reflexive TA.

KEYWORDS:

• Big Q qualitative
• coding
• data domains
• epistemology
• ontology
• paradigm
• post-positivism
• reflexivity
• small Q qualitative
• themes
• epistemology

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We use the shorthand ‘our approach’ here for ease of reference, but we are not the only ones writing about this form of TA, nor do we wish to suggest some proprietary claim, no matter how much ‘trademarking’ TA would no doubt please some within the neoliberal university economy.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Virginia Braun

Virginia Braun is a Professor in the School of Psychology at The University of Auckland. She is a feminist and (critical) health psychologist and teaches and researches in these areas. She has an ongoing interest in qualitative research and wrote (with Victoria Clarke) the award winning textbook Successful Qualitative Research (Sage). She has written extensively on thematic analysis (with Victoria and others) and co-edited Collecting Qualitative Data (Cambridge University Press) with Victoria and Debra Gray. She also has a particular interest in the story completion method and recently co-edited (with Victoria, Hannah Frith and Naomi Moller) a Special Issue of Qualitative Research in Psychology dedicated to this method.

Victoria Clarke

Victoria Clarke is an Associate Professor of Qualitative and Critical Psychology at the University of the West of England, Bristol, where she teaches about qualitative methods and sexuality and gender to undergraduate and postgraduate students. She has published an award winning textbook Successful Qualitative Research (Sage) and numerous publications on thematic analysis with Virginia Braun, and the edited text Collecting Qualitative Data (Cambridge University Press) with Virginia and Debra Gray. Most recently, Victoria and Virginia, along with Hannah Frith and Naomi Moller, co-edited a Special Issue of Qualitative Research in Psychology on the story completion method.