Reflecting on reflexive thematic analysis, Schemes and Mind Maps of Qualitative research

Download Reflecting on reflexive thematic analysis and more Schemes and Mind Maps Qualitative research in PDF only on Docsity! 1 Reflecting on reflexive thematic analysis To appear in Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health Virginia Braun, School of Psychology, The University of Auckland Victoria Clarke, Department of Health and Social Sciences, University of the West of England, Bristol 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 Thematic analysis (TA), and specifically the approach we have developed (e.g. Braun & Clarke, 2006, 2012, 2013), is a widely used method in qualitative sport and exercise research. When we first wrote about TA, we observed that the method was “a poorly 2 demarcated and rarely acknowledged, yet widely used qualitative analytic method” (2006: 77) in psychology. This observation applies equally to the early use of TA in sport and exercise research, with common practices including both references to ‘themes emerging’ from qualitative data with little or no discussion of analytic philosophy and procedure, and the use of under- (or un-)theorised ‘mashups’ of, for example, content analysis and grounded theory techniques to identify themes in qualitative data (e.g. Bain, Wilson & Chaikind, 1988; Scanlan, Stein & Ravizza, 1989). More recently, TA is (mostly) demarcated and acknowledged as a distinct method in sport and exercise research, but limitations and confusions remain in how TA is implemented and understood. There are, of course, examples of good practice in TA in sport and exercise research (e.g. Hallett & Lamont, 2015), alongside many examples of poor and confused practice. The latter include, as we explain further below: a) untheorised mashups of our approach1 with grounded theory techniques, and/or use of coding reliability measures; b) treating TA as one approach; and c) confusing summaries of data domains or topics with fully realised themes (patterns of shared meaning underpinned by a central organising concept) (e.g. Evans, Adams & Hall, 2016; Hill, Witcher, Gotwals & Leyland, 2015). It might be inferred that our concerns about how TA is being implemented in the field of sport and exercise research indicate we’re succumbing to methodolatry (Chamberlain, 2000) or proceduralism (King & Brooks, 2017a), that we’re treating the method like a baking recipe that must be followed precisely in order to ensure a successful outcome, that we’re prioritising procedure over reflexivity, theoretical engagement and creative scholarship. We reflexively claim we are not. Our concern is not that there are mashups and other creative uses of TA per se – indeed, these are welcome, if they are done deliberately and thoughtfully, as expansion and refinement of methods is a sign of a vital field. But many of 5 who (literally, in some cases) ‘wrote the book’ on critical qualitative research – discursive, rhetorical and constructionist approaches; feminist approaches (e.g. Antaki, 1994; Billig, 1987; Edwards & Potter, 1992; Kitzinger, 1987; Potter & Wetherell, 1987; Wilkinson & Kitzinger, 1995). We’ve described this elsewhere as being “in the beating heart of critical qualitative psychology” (Jankowski, Braun & Clarke, 2017). Our PhD supervisors – Celia Kitzinger and Sue Wilkinson – and their colleagues cared about, discussed, debated, and guided others in the doing of (critical) qualitative research. They modelled the value of being a scholar who cared about the doing of qualitative research and encouraged a critical reflexivity about method. This context (unintentionally of course) turned us into intellectual terrors: at worst, we were arrogant and bratty; at best, this deep foundation in thinking about research that we had attuned us to be critical of a seeming lack of deep thinking and “knowingness” about methodology, epistemology and ontology, and the presentation of research that was (to us, at least) theoretically troubling. By knowingness, we mean evidence – in the writing – of research being treated as a deliberative process, one that involves decisions related not just to design and method, but ontology, epistemology and methodology, and rationales for these, individually and collectively. Knowingness demonstrates engagement with research as a thought-out adventure, rather than simple “recipe following” activity (to deploy Carla Willig’s [2008] expressive distinction). The roots of thinking about writing our original TA paper came from early experiences of going to conferences and seeing people claim to have used, analytically, ‘a combination of discourse analysis and grounded theory’. We’d shake our heads in confusion, thinking ‘these orientations are (typically) philosophically incompatible’, and usually seeing an analysis that really was not one or the other. This was not the ‘analytic pluralism’ that has more recently developed (e.g. Dewe & Coyle, 2014). In this, we occupied a position of superiority – we 6 looked, heard, and judged – a position akin to the idea of ‘smug marrieds’ that Helen Fielding evocatively described in Bridget Jones’ Diary. Another way to look at it – somewhat kinder to ourselves – is that our positioning reflected our educational privilege. At the time, we didn’t realise quite how lucky we were to have had supervisors and other academic role models who thought and cared deeply not only about the pragmatics of doing good qualitative research, but about the reflexive, conceptual bases for knowledge generation processes and practices. Who asked us the - sometimes painful - tough questions about what we were doing, and why. Our PhD supervisors particularly also instilled in us a sense that qualitative research is about fun, play and creativity. Instead of asking why (why do a qualitative survey?), they asked why not? Try it out, see what happens, but think deeply about your rationale before your jump in. They encouraged us – and gave us confidence – to ‘experiment’ in the broadest sense with research and research methods, something we have continued to do throughout our careers. Our 2006 paper stemmed from dual frustrations: at the “sloppy mishmash” (Morse, 1989: 4) of theories, methods and techniques we saw described at conferences and in published research; and at there being lots of research (from ourselves included) that claimed to ‘do TA,’ but that did not transparently describe the processes engaged in to produce the themes reported. We also wanted to articulate an approach to TA that reflected an orientation to qualitative research that was fully qualitative – qualitative with regard to both philosophy and procedure. Most existing TA approaches, like that expressed by US psychologist Richard Boyatzis (1998) in his book Transforming qualitative information, did not – from our perspective as terrors – quite ‘get it’: to us, then, ‘proper’ qualitative research dare not contain even a whiff of positivism. Boyatzis framed his approach as an attempt to ‘bridge the divide’ between positivist (quantitative) and interpretive (qualitative) research, and 7 advocated the use of ‘coding reliability’ measures to provide warrants of the quality and reliability of coding, and control the threat to reliability researcher subjectivity presented, in a language that would be intelligible to quantitative-positivists. For us, it was not possible to ‘bridge the divide’ and retain the integrity of qualitative research. We intended our approach to TA to reflect our view of qualitative research as creative, reflexive and subjective, with researcher subjectivity understood as a resource (see Gough & Madill, 2012), rather than a potential threat to knowledge production, as it arguably is conceptualised in Boyatzis’ and some other approaches to TA. For us, qualitative research is about meaning and meaning-making, and viewing these as always context-bound, positioned and situated, and qualitative data analysis is about telling “stories”, about interpreting, and creating, not discovering and finding the ‘truth’ that is either ‘out there’ and findable from, or buried deep within, the data. For us, the final analysis is the product of deep and prolonged data immersion, thoughtfulness and reflection, something that is active and generative. We emphasised that themes do not passively emerge from data to capture this process (for a compelling account of this process, see Ho, Chiang & Leung, 2017). We also sought to develop a way of doing TA that encouraged a rigorous and systematic approach to coding and theme development, but that was also fluid and recursive, rather than rigid and structured and requiring the use of a codebook or coding frame. We wanted a TA method that offered an adventure, not a recipe, to again paraphrase Willig (2008). We intended our approach to offer the qualitative researcher flexibility in terms of the theory informing their use of TA, and how precisely they enacted TA (a constructionist or essentialist framing, an inductive and/or deductive orientation, and latent and/or semantic coding), but in doing so, it required the researcher to articulate the assumptions that 10 Then Now Not ‘getting it’ (them) versus ‘getting it’ (us) There are several clusters of TA approaches each with different philosophical assumptions and procedural practices that reflect these assumptions (we call these coding reliability, codebook, reflexive TA, and thematic coding). TA is theoretically flexible In specific iterations of TA, flexibility is more or less constrained by paradigmatic and epistemological assumptions around meaningful knowledge production; reflexive TA procedures reflect the values of a qualitative paradigm, centring researcher subjectivity, organic and recursive coding processes, and the importance of deep reflection on, and engagement with, data. Themes are themes There are different conceptualisations of a theme – domain summaries versus patterns of shared meaning, underpinned by a central meaning-based concept. Searching for themes We now prefer the term ‘generating [initial] themes’ to emphasise that themes are not ‘in’ the data, pre-existing analysis, awaiting retrieval. Our view of different approaches to TA is that they reflect different philosophical assumptions about, and orientations to, qualitative research, rather than proponents simply ‘getting it’ or ‘not getting it’; with us taking the roles of judge and jury with regard to what 11 constitutes ‘getting it’. That said, it is not always clear to us that the proponents of specific iterations of TA have developed their approaches fully acknowledging their own underlying research values and assumptions, or indeed situating themselves within the landscape of qualitative research – which, as we’ve noted, we initially did not! Furthermore, most TA proponents do not locate their approach within the wider terrain of TA – some (e.g. Guest, MacQueen, & Namey, 2012) do not even acknowledge the existence of other approaches, and thus how they differ from the approach they outline. Recognising the diversity and patterning of the field, we are now always careful to locate our approach to TA; we encourage other TA methodologists to do the same. We also recognise that there are radically different conceptualisations of themes. We conceptualise themes as patterns of shared meaning underpinned or united by a core concept (we later conceptualised this as a ‘central organizing concept’ [Braun & Clarke, 2013; Braun, Clarke & Rance, 2014] to emphasise a uniting idea). But our understanding of themes – something that remains consistent in our thinking around TA – is neither the ‘obvious’ nor the taken-for-granted one. Too often we see these different conceptualisations evident in the implementation of what is claimed as doing TA according to our guidelines, with authors presenting summaries of data domains as ‘themes’ (Clarke & Braun, 2018). Domain summary themes are organised around a shared topic but not shared meaning – they aim to capture the diversity of meaning in relation to a topic or area of focus. Theme titles are often reflective of data collection questions (theme titles that start ‘Type of’, ‘Benefits of’ and ‘Drawbacks of’ are very common; see Evans et al., 2016) or consist of one word that identifies the domain (e.g. satisfaction). We hope it’s clear how fundamentally different these ideas are, in what they aim to do with data and analysis. In our more recent work (Braun & Clarke, 2016; Braun, Clarke, Terry & Hayfield, 2018; Clarke & 12 Braun, 2018), we have distinguished between these two conceptualisations of themes in TA, and also argued that, from our perspective, domain summary themes typically constitute under-developed themes (see also Connelly & Peltzer, 2016); they are not compatible with our approach to TA. In our most recent work, we have offered a tripartite typology of TA, consisting of what we cluster and call coding reliability, codebook and reflexive approaches (see Braun, Clarke, Terry & Hayfield, 2018). This typology has evolved and developed over several years from an initial distinction between positivist coding reliability approaches and our approach (and may evolve further) (Braun, Clarke & Terry, 2014; Clarke & Braun, 2016). In interpretively mapping the terrain of TA, we have tried out different names for our approach, seeking to avoid calling it the ‘Braun and Clarke’ approach (as some others do), not just because that feels too egotistical, but more importantly because it does not say anything useful about the distinctive characteristics of our approach. We initially thought the term ‘organic’ captured the open, exploratory, flexible and iterative nature of the approach we outlined, compared to the more structured approaches to coding and theme development associated with (post-)positivist coding reliability approaches (like those of Boyatzis, 1998, and Guest et al., 2012). In coding reliability TA, analysis begins with theme development. Themes are typically conceptualised as data domains (or ‘buckets’, as one of our students memorably dubbed this type of theme), which are often developed from data collection questions or following data familiarisation. Coding, guided by a pre- determined codebook or coding frame, is understood as a process for correctly identifying the material relevant to each bucket. Multiple coders are the norm, with coding reliability measures used to test for consistency of judgement – with an aim for ‘reliable’ or ‘accurate’ 15  Assumptions and positionings are always part of qualitative research. Reflexive practice is vital to understand and unpack these. It is good practice to reflect on and identify what you’re assuming, and then interrogate whether those assumptions hold for any particular project.  There are different approaches to TA – and they’re not necessarily compatible with each other. Being aware of this and doing TA in a deliberate (‘knowing’) way, can help avoid confusion and mismatches in concept and practice.  Use a TA approach that suits your research purpose and analytic sensibility (theoretical and conceptual frameworks).  If you’re doing reflexive TA, do read beyond our 2006 paper. Our various papers cited above signal key places to look for clarification (see also our The University of Auckland TA website: https://www.psych.auckland.ac.nz/en/about/our-research/research- groups/thematic-analysis.html).  Quality matters. Understanding what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and what the criteria for doing it well are, are vital for doing (reflexive) TA well. 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, not matter how much some ‘trademarked’ TA would no doubt please some within the neoliberal university economy. References 16 Antaki, C. (1994). Explaining and arguing: The social organisation of accounts. London: Sage. Bain, L.L., Wilson, T. & Chaikind Westoaks, E. (1989). Participant perceptions of exercise programs for overweight women. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 60(2), 134-143. Billig, M. (1987). Arguing and thinking: a rhetorical approach to social psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Boyatzis, R.E. (1998). Transforming qualitative information: Thematic analysis and code development. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77-101. Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2012). Thematic analysis. In H. Cooper (Ed.), APA Handbook of Research Methods in Psychology (Vol. 2: Research Designs, pp. 57-71). Washington, DC: APA books. Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2013). Successful Qualitative Research: A Practical Guide for Beginners. London: Sage. Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2016). (Mis) conceptualising themes, thematic analysis, and other problems with Fugard and Potts’ (2015) sample-size tool for thematic analysis. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 19(6), 739-743. Braun, V., Clarke, V. & Rance, N. (2014). How to use thematic analysis with interview data. In Vossler, A. & Moller, N. (Eds.), The Counselling & Psychotherapy Research Handbook (pp. 183-197). London: Sage. 17 Braun, V., Clarke, V. & Terry, G. (2014). Thematic analysis. In P. Rohleder & A. Lyons (Eds.), Qualitative Research in Clinical and Health Psychology (pp. 95-113). Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. Braun, V., Clarke, V., Terry, G & Hayfield N. (2018). Thematic analysis. In Liamputtong, P. (Ed.), Handbook of research methods in health and social sciences (pp. 843-860). Singapore: Springer. Braun, V., Clarke, V. & Weate, P. (2016). Using thematic analysis in sport and exercise research. In B. Smith & A. Sparkes (Eds.), International handbook on qualitative research in sport and exercise (pp. 191-205). London: Routledge. Chamberlain, K. (2000). Methodolatry and qualitative health research. Journal of Health Psychology, 5(3), 285-296. Clarke, V. & Braun, V. (2016). Thematic analysis. In E. Lyons & A. Coyle, (Eds.), Analysing Qualitative Data in Psychology, 2nd ed. (pp. 84-103). London: Sage. Clarke, V. & Braun, V. (2018). Using thematic analysis in counselling and psychotherapy research: A critical reflection. Counselling and Psychotherapy Research Journal, 18(2), 107-110. Clarke, V., Braun, V. & Hayfield, N. (2015). Thematic analysis. In J. Smith (Ed.), Qualitative psychology: A practical guide to research methods, 3rd ed. (pp. 222-248). London: Sage. Connelly, L.M. & Peltzer, J.N. (2016). Underdeveloped themes in qualitative research: Relationships with interviews and analysis. Clinical Nurse Specialist, January/February, 51-57.