1/ At the start of a new academic year, a thread for folk supervising qually projects using TA. You read B&C 2006 ages ago - what's changed? What common problems do you need to watch out for in student work? 10 things you need to know - w/ readings for those w/ a bit more time!
2/ Number 1 - we now call our approach reflexive TA to acknowledge that TA is a diverse family of methods & our approach centres the reflexive & "artfully interpretive" researcher (Finlay, 2021). Read more here: tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108…
3/ Number 2 - we've changed the name of the 6 phases to better reflect the reflexive & interpretive approach to coding & theme development (we're not searching for themes anymore!). Familiarisation, data coding (no initial any more!), generating initial themes (to capture the
4/ provisionality & tentativeness of early themes - theme development starts here, it doesn't end), reviewing & developing themes, refining, defining & naming themes (these tweaked names capture that theme development is still ongoing), and finally writing up remains the same.
5/ Number 3 - the most common area of confusion is in the conceptualisation of themes. In reflexive TA themes are stories, patterns of shared meaning not topic summaries - summarising the main things the participants said about a topic (eg experiences of X, barriers to Y).
6/ Topic summaries are common in other types of TA - eg Framework Analysis - so opt for these if the goal is to summarise what participants said about a topic rather than tell interpretive stories. A great discussion here - journals.lww.com/cns-journal/Ab…
7/ Number 4 - help students to think carefully about their theme names - do the names capture something of the story of the theme? One word theme names generally don't (but there are exceptions of course!), neither do topic summary theme names (eg Experiences of X etc).
8/ Number 5 - woah subtheme overkill! Because reflexive TA is oriented to developing rich, complex, multifaceted patterns there's unlikely to be space for lots of themes & theme levels. If a theme consists of 1 observation/paragraph it's not very themey. Other approaches to TA
9/ like Framework Analysis work better if the goal is to produce a more complex thematic structure with more theme levels - this is how these approaches capture complexity. Number 6 - TA can't be conducted in a theoretical vacuum. We get metatheory is a bit head melting but
10/ students need to be able to describe the theoretical assumptions informing their use of TA and enact these assumptions consistently. Critical realism is a pretty safe bet for lots of TA. Chapter 1 of this book is pretty accessible - uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/a-re…
11/ Number 7 - Encourage students to discuss how they specifically engaged with the 6 phases/practices of TA rather than merely recite the phases when writing up their method. This 2 part blog includes lots of tips for writing a dissertation/thesis - edpsy.org.uk/blog/2021/tips…
12/ Remind students that it's not a recipe to be followed but a starting point for their own interpretive adventure. Number 8 - a practical one, TA is not best done in a last minute panic! Moving beyond the obvious in data takes time. They need to allow time for the slow wheel of
13/ interpretation to turn. Get that ethics application in & get going! Number 9 - students can really struggle with research design & particularly with formulating research questions for qual. As an ethics scrutineer I encounter a lot of quant style research questions - the
14/ relationship between A and B. Direct students to our paper on Conceptual and Design Thinking for Thematic Analysis for guidance (there's an open access version in the UWE Bristol Research Repository) - psycnet.apa.org/record/2021-45…
15/ Finally Number 10 - good quality TA needs good quality data - encourage students to pilot things like qualitative surveys & story completion & have a review/reflection w/ you after they've transcribed their first interview/focus group. This paper is a great tool for helping
16/ students to reflect on their interviewing style - journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11… They need to avoid conducting & transcribing all of their interviews in 1 week in a panic! Interviews can be disastrous! And leave them scrabbling for something to say about them.
17/ Finally look out for our book on Thematic Analysis published by @SAGEpsychology next month! There will be an open access chapter on teaching & supervision on the companion website. It's an in depth, accessible & practical guide written for students - uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/them…
18/ Finally finally check out my pinned tweet for a list of everything we've published since 2006. And if you can't wait until Oct for a book length exposition - check out this fab book by @GarethRTerry & @drnikkihayfield - apa.org/pubs/books/ess…
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