Introduction
User Experience researchers often employ qualitative research methods often including depth interviews, think-aloud, contextual enquiry, ethnography, diary studies, open-ended questionnaire items and many others. But how do you analyse qualitative data? Is it simply looking at walls full of post-it notes?
Of course, the process involves many steps, often transforming the data into personas,drawing scenarios, deriving storyboards, prototypes and so on. The aim of this post is to introduce a specific technique directly focused on transforming qualitative data into more insightful themes.
Thematic Analysis
Thematic analysis is a process that could be used with most qualitative information. It is a way of seeing, making sense of related material, systematically observing situations, groups, organisations, interactions, cultures and behaviours. The process is regularly used by psychologists, sociologists, ethnographers, historians, and many in other fields.
Thematic analysis enables user experience researchers, especially at the early stages of a project, to formulate their problem space and create the foundations for the design project and support knowledge sharing and communication.
The key is to transform the data into explicit codes. Encoding the data into themes, relationships, indicators and qualifications. Thematic analysis is based on three distinctive stages:
- Specify sampling criteria and research design
- Develop themes and codes
- Validate and use codes
The Analysis Process
Thematic analysis involves five main steps:
- Recognise or sense the themes using the right focal point, stepping back from the details and recognising patterns
- Develop a coding system
- Encode information
- Interpret the themes in the context of a theory or conceptaul framework with the aim of developing knowledge
- Consolidate new knowledge
The main threats to the reliability and validity of the process are projection, biased sampling and a researcher’s mood and style. It is, therefore, important to ensure that a system of codes is developed by more than one person, structured screening of participants and managing time realistically.
Good Thematic Code
A good thematic code should have three main elements:
- Name or label – should be clear, concise and conceptually relevant
- Definition – clear statement of what it is and its boundaries
- Description – how to know when it occurs
