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1/ Writing about quality in TA research right now - and just for the sake of clarity here are some things @ginnybraun & I don't advocate for but have all been attributed to us in several papers - codebooks, coding frames, data or theme saturation, constant comparative analysis...
2/ measurement of coding reliability, consensus coding, developing themes before coding, reporting theme frequency, themes 'emerging' from data... Seriously world, read the paper! & some of our more recent writing too - including this commentary: tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…
3/ To continue the rant, here are some common problems & assumptions we encounter in published TA - assuming TA is 1 singular approach (massive hint - it isn't! there are countless approaches differing in procedure & underlying philosophy), assuming TA is atheoretical or realist
4/ (again it's not - it's theoretically flexible, to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the iteration), assuming it's only a descriptive or summative method (nope! yes it's 'sophisticated' enough for a doctoral project, no it doesn't need to be supplemented by other methods
5/ if you want to do something beyond description/summary), assuming it's only experiential or phenomenological (nope - TA isn't limited to experiential research, it's equally suited to critical, constructionist, post-structuralist, feminist, queer... research), assuming themes..
6/ have 1 facet & therefore 18 or 28 themes is an appropriate number to capture what's going on in yr data (LOL! in reflexive TA think of themes as multi-faceted crystals, whereas codes have only 1 facet, but there's not an absolute distinction between codes & themes - complex...
7/ codes can be 'promoted' to themes - themes should be multi-faceted, rich * complex)… this leads to a related assumption - assuming that topics R themes, probably the most common confusion of all (other than 'themes don't emerge'!), & complicated by different conceptions of...
8/ themes in different TA approaches - in reflexive TA themes are patterns of shared meaning united by a central concept or idea, which are built from codes, so developed later in the analysis & can't be anticipated in advance, in other approaches themes can be developed prior
9/ to coding & consist of summaries of participant responses around a specific topic - so shared topic, but not shared meaning. Please don't confuse these conceptualisations, because it makes us very sad...
10/ The paper we're writing will include our guidelines for editors & reviewers - you can see a draft of these on our TA website: psych.auckland.ac.nz/en/about/our-r… Right now (things might change!) these guidelines consist of 20 critical questions for reviewers/editors to reflect on when...
11/ to reflect on when reviewing TA manuscripts. As the 'quality custodians' of the qualitative research community reviewers & editors have a significant role to play in ensuring TA is used knowingly & reflexively & TA reports are conceptually coherent. We often get asked by...
12/ researchers how to respond to requests from reviewers/editors (R&E) for demonstrations of coding reliability, data or theme saturation... while we always encouraging 'arguing back' & educating R&E, we think ultimately it's on R&E to up their game & review TA manuscripts...
13/ from an informed position. Although one of us was recently told by a journal editor we are obliged to review every manuscript using our approach - even if we didn't have FT jobs we wouldn't have time to review the 30 or so papers published every day citing our 2006 paper...
14/ Editors of journals publishing qual research need to ensure editorial boards include qual experts, ideally they should appoint at least one reviewer with appropriate methodological expertise to review TA papers & consider directing reviewers to our guidelines...
