2Research methods
Qualitative methods
Qualitative research asks what experiences mean and how people make sense of them, and it is judged by its own standards rather than by sample size.
Practice
21 questions
Level
Core
Reading time
5 min
Matching the method to the question
The method follows from the question. How many people experience something is a survey question; whether an intervention works is a trial question; what an experience is like, or how a process unfolds, is a qualitative one.
- Thematic analysis: patterns of meaning across a dataset. Not tied to one theory, so it is flexible (Braun and Clarke, 2006).
- Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA): how particular people make sense of a particular experience. Idiographic, so each case is studied in detail before any comparison across cases.
- Grounded theory: an explanatory account of a process, built from the data through constant comparison and theoretical sampling.
Worked example:Three questions for a stroke service
- A stroke service wants to understand its younger clients better, and has three questions.
- “What is it like to go back to work after a stroke in your thirties?” asks what one shared experience means to the people who have had it: IPA, with a small and fairly homogeneous sample.
- “What do clients say helped or got in the way in the service’s groups?” looks for patterns of meaning across many accounts: thematic analysis.
- “How do clients come to see themselves differently in the year after a stroke?” asks how a process unfolds: grounded theory, choosing whom to interview next as the categories develop.
Sources: Smith, Flowers and Larkin (2022), checked ; Braun and Clarke (2006), checked ; Charmaz and Thornberg (2021), checked .
Thematic analysis
Braun and Clarke’s 2006 paper sets out six phases: familiarising yourself with the data, generating initial codes, searching for themes, reviewing themes, defining and naming themes, and producing the report. The phases are recursive, not a one-way sequence.
They later called their approach reflexive thematic analysis (2019), to separate it from coding-reliability versions. In the reflexive version the researcher’s interpretation is the analytic tool, so agreement between coders is not the test of quality. Themes are made by the analyst, not found: Braun and Clarke criticise “themes emerged” because the phrase hides the researcher’s active part.
IPA and grounded theory
IPA is phenomenological, interpretative and idiographic. Its double hermeneutic is the researcher making sense of the participant making sense of their experience. Samples are small and fairly homogeneous, chosen because they share the experience in question (Smith, Flowers and Larkin, 2022).
Grounded theory collects and analyses data together. Constant comparison sets each new piece of data against the codes and categories so far; theoretical sampling chooses whom or what to sample next to develop those categories; and sampling continues until new data add nothing to them, which is theoretical saturation (Charmaz and Thornberg, 2021).
What a method assumes
Ontology is about what there is to know; epistemology is about what can be known and how. Every qualitative method carries assumptions about both, so it has to fit the researcher’s position as well as the question.
Madill, Jordan and Shirley (2000) set out three positions: realism, contextual constructionism and radical constructionism. They argue that quantitative criteria such as reliability apply to qualitative work only within a realist framework. That is why agreement between coders is no test of quality for reflexive thematic analysis.
- Realist: the data give access to experience or events, so checks such as coder agreement can make sense.
- Contextual constructionist: knowledge depends on context and on who is looking, so the researcher states their position; it cannot be removed.
- Radical constructionist: there is no reality behind the account to check it against; the question is how the account is built.
Discourse and narrative analysis
Discourse analysis treats language as action: it asks what talk does, not what it shows of the speaker’s inner state (Starks and Trinidad, 2007; Potter and Wetherell, 1987). Discursive psychology and Foucauldian discourse analysis are distinct approaches (Willig, 2022). In standard teaching, the first looks closely at talk in interaction; the second at wider discourses, power and the positions they offer people.
Narrative analysis studies the stories people tell and how they tell them. Riessman (2008) compares four approaches: thematic, structural, dialogic or performance, and visual.
How many participants
Qualitative research has no power calculation. Malterud, Siersma and Guassora (2016) propose information power instead: the more relevant information a sample holds, the fewer participants are needed. It depends on the study’s aim, how specific the sample is, whether established theory is used, the quality of the dialogue and the analysis strategy.
Saturation is often quoted as a stopping rule. It comes from grounded theory, and Braun and Clarke (2021b) argue it does not fit reflexive thematic analysis, where meaning is generated through interpretation rather than excavated from data.
Judging quality
Yardley (2000) offers four flexible principles: sensitivity to context; commitment and rigour; transparency and coherence; and impact and importance. Elliott, Fischer and Rennie (1999) add guidelines specific to qualitative work, among them owning one’s perspective, situating the sample, grounding interpretations in examples and providing credibility checks.
Qualitative findings aim to be transferable rather than statistically generalisable: the context is described well enough for a reader to judge where else the conclusions apply. The Health Research Authority’s definition of research draws the same distinction.
Kitzinger (1995) describes a focus group as using the interaction between participants as data, rather than as a quick way to interview several people at once. That is also why confidentiality within the group cannot be guaranteed.
Common mistakes
- Writing that themes “emerged”, which hides the analyst’s part in making them.
- Reporting inter-rater reliability as the quality check for a reflexive thematic analysis.
- Claiming saturation as a stopping rule without saying what it means for the method used.
- Choosing IPA for a large, varied sample or a question about a process.
- Judging a qualitative study by statistical generalisability instead of transferability.
- Mixing up ontology and epistemology: what exists, and how it can be known.
- Using discourse analysis to find out what participants really think, when the method treats talk as action.
- Choosing a method for its procedure without saying what it assumes about knowledge.
Sources
- Braun and Clarke (2006), Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77–101. Checked .
- Braun and Clarke (2019), Reflecting on reflexive thematic analysis. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 11(4), 589–597. Checked .
- Braun and Clarke (2021a), One size fits all? What counts as quality practice in (reflexive) thematic analysis? Qualitative Research in Psychology, 18(3), 328–352. Checked .
- Braun and Clarke (2021b), To saturate or not to saturate? Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 13(2), 201–216. Checked .
- Charmaz and Thornberg (2021), The pursuit of quality in grounded theory. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 18(3), 305–327. Checked .
- Elliott, Fischer and Rennie (1999), Evolving guidelines for publication of qualitative research studies in psychology and related fields. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 38(3), 215–229. Checked .
- Health Research Authority: Defining research table (October 2022). Checked .
- Kitzinger (1995), Qualitative research: introducing focus groups. BMJ, 311, 299–302. Checked .
- Madill, Jordan and Shirley (2000), Objectivity and reliability in qualitative analysis: realist, contextualist and radical constructionist epistemologies. British Journal of Psychology, 91(1), 1–20. Checked .
- Malterud, Siersma and Guassora (2016), Sample size in qualitative interview studies: guided by information power. Qualitative Health Research, 26(13), 1753–1760. Checked .
- Potter and Wetherell (1987), Discourse and Social Psychology: Beyond Attitudes and Behaviour. Sage. Checked .
- Riessman (2008), Narrative Methods for the Human Sciences. Sage. Checked .
- Smith, Flowers and Larkin (2022), Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis: Theory, Method and Research, second edition. SAGE. Checked .
- Starks and Trinidad (2007), Choose your method: a comparison of phenomenology, discourse analysis, and grounded theory. Qualitative Health Research, 17(10), 1372–1380. Checked .
- Willig (2022), Introducing Qualitative Research in Psychology (4th edition). Open University Press. Checked .
- Yardley (2000), Dilemmas in qualitative health research. Psychology and Health, 15(2), 215–228. Checked .