What is Thematic Coding?

Thematic coding is most often used in qualitative data analysis by looking for patterns and themes across the qualitative data. This is done through an extensive process of data collection, categorization, and analysis. Themes are uncovered from text data through an analysis of the words and sentence structure. The major goal of thematic analysis is to identify themes and interpret the data in order to address the research or say something about the phenomenon or issue.

5 Main Steps in Thematic Coding

There are five main steps when conducting thematic analysis. These include:

Becoming familiar with the data – in all qualitative research and data analysis it is critical that researchers immerse themselves in the data and become intimately familiar with the data. This will aid in being able to delve deeply into the details of the data when it comes to analysis.
Generating the initial codes – When going through the data, the first step to thematic coding is going through a few transcripts to conduct what is called line-by-line coding. This helps pull out any minor themes and categories that will then be further categorized.[1]
Developing a thorough codebook – A thorough codebook is created by categorizing the initial codes into main concepts to develop primary and secondary codes. These codes are all defined and organized to develop the codebook that will be used to code and analyze all of the transcripts/data.
Examining and defining themes – A theme is a meaningful pattern in the data that the researcher uncovers as they conduct the data analysis. A detailed analysis of each theme is conducted and each theme is defined and named. Themes should connect in some logical and meaningful way.[2]
Writing a report – Writing up the qualitative findings is a critical part of thematic analysis and qualitative research. A detailed write-up weaves together the themes and details uncovered during the research process to create a coherent story about the data. This does not only occur post-analysis, writing and analysis are done in tandem to go beyond providing a description to making an argument that addresses the research question.

Conclusion

There are many important considerations when conducting thematic analysis for qualitative research. The five main steps when conducting thematic analysis are to get familiar with the data, line by line coding to generate an initial set of codes, categorization of initial codes to develop a thorough codebook with definitions, examining the codes for themes, and writing a report of the findings from analysis.

Take Away

This article discusses the main points of thematic coding in qualitative analysis. [1] Riger ST, Sigurvinsdottir RA. Thematic analysis. Handbook of methodological approaches to community-based research: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods. 2016:33-41. [2] Richards, K. A. R., & Hemphill, M. A. (2018). A practical guide to collaborative qualitative data analysis. Journal of Teaching in Physical education, 37(2), 225-231.

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