“But I Am Not One to Judge Her Actions”: Thematic and Discursive Approaches to University Students’ Responses to Women Who Smoke While Pregnant

Abstract

Qualitative methodologies offer various approaches to interpreting qualitative data. Here we consider how different approaches to interpreting the same data can be useful in learning about the scope and utility of qualitative methods and in exploring the role of reflexivity in analytic decision making and interpretation. We apply both thematic and discourse analyses to university students’ responses to an open-ended question about women who smoke while pregnant. We show how our interpretations differ when analytic attention is paid to the content (thematic analysis) versus the rhetorical function (discourse analysis) of participants’ responses. We also show how reflexivity, compatible with our discursive analysis, allowed us to identify the local discursive context in which the data were produced and therefore how participants oriented to this context. We use our learning experience as a way of showcasing the value of dynamic and reflexive approaches to qualitative data.

Keywords:

• discourse analysis
• discursive psychology
• positioning theory
• qualitative
• reflexivity
• social constructionist
• thematic analysis

Acknowledgements

Thank you to the first year psychology students who participated in our survey, to our colleagues Alexandra Gibson and Claire Moran for insightful discussions that underpinned these ideas, and to two anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback on an earlier draft of this article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Britta Wigginton

Britta Wigginton is a PhD student in the School of Psychology at the University of Queensland.

Christina Lee

Christina Lee is Professor of Health Psychology in the School of Psychology at the University of Queensland.