Analysing Qualitative Data: More Than 'Identifying Themes'

Too often, qualitative researchers rely on the presentation of key themes supported by quotes from participants’ text as the primary form of analysis and reporting of their data. In this paper I argue that qualitative data require and support much deeper analysis. Strategies that might assist researchers to enrich their analysis of qualitative data are described. These strategies include improving interpretation and naming of categories; using comparison and pattern analysis to refine and relate categories or themes; using divergent views and negative cases to challenge generalisations; returning to substantive, theoretical or methodological literature; creating displays using matrices, graphs, flow charts and models; and using writing itself to prompt deeper thinking. Each strategy is illustrated by examples.  “Themes will be identified...” Reliance on the identification of themes as the goal of analysis is endemic in qualitative research. Often, in funding proposals, there will be a lengthy description of how qualitative data are going to be gathered, but the only thing said about how these data are going to be managed or analysed is that ‘themes will be identified in the data’. Similarly, writers of journal articles often simply identify and discuss four or five ‘themes’ as their analysis of the qualitative data in the study, with no attempt to link those themes into a more comprehensive model of what they have found. Researchers often use the terms concept, category and theme interchangeably in the literature. I tend to use category for the descriptive level of coding and concept for a more abstract level, and hence will often refer to categories and concepts when discussing coding (Bazeley, 2007). Others (e.g., Strauss & Corbin, 1998) use concept for the lower level, and category for a combination of several concepts. While theme is sometimes used to describe an integrating, relational idea from the data (Richards, 2005), more often it is used to describe elements identified from text and this is typically the approach which is meant when people talk about identifying themes in the data as their method of analysis. Identifying themes has its place in qualitative research. They are a starting point in a report of findings from a study. Effective reporting, however, requires your having used data, and the ideas generated from the data, to build an argument that establishes the point or points you wish to make. Strength of analysis will be recognised even by those who may work differently, while descriptive reporting is likely to be unconvincing even to those familiar with qualitative methods. The Problem with ‘Themes’ Problems in ensuring quality analysis can begin from the point of research design and data-making, through to the integration of data and drawing sound conclusions. For example, if interview questions are asked in such a way as to prompt superficial answers, there is not even a starting point for meaningful analysis. Further problems occur in interpretation of data, in the ‘emergence’ and naming of themes, and in integrating themes to provide a rich, deep understanding or a coordinated, explanatory model of what has been found.