6. The results are written up – this is the final stage, where the researcher explains the results they found.
During this stage, the researcher needs to justify the codes and themes found to show that bias did not influence them (which reduces the validity of the research).
The researcher will write the codes and themes found in the report and provide data extracts as support.
Fig. 1 - Thematic analysis is used to analyse qualitative data.
Thematic Analysis Example
A hypothetical study identified the following potential codes:
Anger (shouting).
Happiness (smiling).
Despair (phrases such as bad things keep happening to me).
Hostility (refusing to talk, holding back).
Loneliness (phrases such as I spend all my time alone).
Sadness (crying).
The potential themes the researchers may use are positive and negative emotions (this groups the coded data together and provides a broader context/explanation for the codes identified).
Using the example above that identified the themes as positive and negative emotions, the potential sub-themes identified could be negative thoughts (e.g. bad things keep happening to me) and negative actions (e.g. crying).
When writing the report, the researcher would identify all the themes and provide extracts from the data to support that such themes exist.
Content Analysis vs Thematic Analysis
Thematic and content analysis differ because the thematic analysis is used purely for qualitative research and gives a detailed account of key themes and categories.
However, content analysis uses coding units to quantify the themes within a qualitative data set.
Content analysis is used to identify words, themes, and concepts in qualitative data and transform them into quantitative data; this method uses a similar protocol to thematic analysis.
An act or theme in a transcript is given a ‘coding unit’, which is clearly defined beforehand.
The researcher may identify physical violence, e.g. pushing, kicking, hitting etc., as physical bullying.
The content analysis then analyses the data and counts how many instances of these different coding units occur, allowing for quantitative statistical analysis of the qualitative data.
In thematic analysis, a researcher codes themes in the text to then apply them and organise them into related themes, grouping them to identify key themes and categories and present them accordingly.
The type of analysis used depends on the type of data the researcher is looking for.
Suppose the researcher is carrying out a case study. In that case, they will use thematic analysis to obtain enriched data that will help them learn more about the patterns or trends concerning the phenomenon.
However, a content analysis may be used to find the relationship between specific themes/behaviours occurrences and a phenomenon.
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