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03 Sep, 2025
Got an assessment to write a reflexive thematic analysis, and let me guess, you do not even know what it is, right? Well, mate, you are not the only one who is dealing with this same issue; almost every student in the UK has to search for this as soon as they are asked to write a reflexive thematic analysis. No issue, you will learn everything in this blog and will be able to score. You can take assignment help UK if, even after going through this blog, your doubts are not cleared.
This blog will make you learn everything, starting from what reflexive thematic analysis is, and how to do thematic analysis. A step-by-step explanation is provided to help you learn how to do thematic analysis. Such complex topics need proper guidance for scoring good grades, which is the reason we will be discussing some practical guidance on writing your reflexive thematic analysis. To give you a look at how your reflexive thematic analysis should look, a real-life example will be discussed so that it makes everything clearer for you.
Braun and Clarke suggest that the reflexive thematic analysis (RTA) is a theoretically adaptable method for the creation, analysis, and interpretation of trends in a qualitative dataset.
The fact that the role of the researcher and his/her input is needed, inevitable, and a component and parcel of the process is one of the most important aspects of RTA. In other words, the researcher and his/her subjectivity is a tool that can be applied consciously and proactively. It is not an asset that must be discarded, reduced, avoided, or even minimised, but a resource that must be exploited.
To take advantage of the resource, Braun and Clarke resort to the idea of applying the term of reflexive. Reflexivity is the act of depending on your experiences, previous knowledge, and social role (ethnicity, gender, class, etc.) and being able to ask how they influence and play a role in the research process and any conclusions you may make regarding qualitative information. The issues that the researcher needs to explore, understand, develop, and unfold their values, thoughts of themselves, as well as the world, and their religion. Then consider how and not whether they affect their interpretation and sense-making of the research.
Let's take a look at the six-stage process we'll be following.
This process is making oneself sink into that data, be it a survey response, interview transcript, or any other. This is to make one immensely familiar with the content.
The former is just to read and take no notes. Nothing except to acquire it, to internalise it. Don't write any notes on it. You do not need to go ahead and emphasise or underline or assign any meaning to anything, as you will have all the time to do it later. You just would like to know it, know how to look around it.
Prepare a sheet of paper and a pen, and read through the transcript of the interview or the transcript of a focus group, whichever it is. On each page of writing you have, write out two or three sentences, merely a summary of what is on it.
However, what does it imply to code the data?
The thing you are doing on this is settling on definite pieces of content that are relevant to your topic of research. You are breaking down the information into smaller and significant portions. This includes a close examination of it and literally naming some stickers on some contents. Those labels are codes.
Your data represents another aspect with every code, every label, and it is helpful to you as far as the organisation and sorting of that information is concerned.
The third stage is the preliminary theme production. We have coded data, we have those pretty labels of data. Themes is the next stage that should be moved to.
You get up with initial themes, and I am saying generate and not discover, find, or uncover since it is you who is generating initial themes.
Under the surface of your data are no themes, which you need to dig and mine. Themes are not lying there waiting to be dug up by you. They're not emerging. You are generating them.
The process, that of Braun and Clarke, also is reflexive, or, to put it another way, you are always conscious of what is happening to you, of your own positioning, of what you are bringing to the party. You have some assumptions, some preconceptions, which you put on the data, and this influences how you come up with themes.
When you do happen to come up with themes, however, you need to tell them. Debate your assumptions on which you are interpreting. Why have you understood it in that way? Suppose the relationships of that to other contexts: social, political, cultural, and theoretical. You need to construct and develop your own arguments on these themes, along with an explanation of why you did it.
The fourth stage is now prepared to study themes. This is the step of reconsideration and revision of the themes. You consider how they are linked to each other and the data set.
This can involve splitting one theme into a number of themes, or it can consist of a mixture of some themes. This also includes ignoring some themes altogether. It is basically taking control of quality. This process makes you believe that your themes are strong, unique, and authentic.
That can involve splitting one theme into several themes. It can consist of a mixture of some themes. It can involve dumping some of them altogether. It’s like quality control. You are ensuring that your themes are rock solid.
This is two-fold; it is what you have in each theme that you are looking at, and what you are looking across the themes as to whether they are making sense.
Stage five entails the description and naming of the themes. This is not an easy step as some people may consider it.
It is merely a declaration of what this theme is and what it discusses.
The themes are supposed to be clear-cut, and they are to be labelled, and a brief description of the themes is supposed to be given, which will be able to bring out the nature of the themes.
The description does not have to be an incredibly long one. It must only be a sentence or two. It is not a bad exercise to engage in as a researcher in order to literally define, name, and describe the themes in this way, since we are once again affirming that this is a good idea. When it comes time to say something to other people, when this is what we are doing here, we are giving names, we are describing this stuff to some outside audience, we think we need to think again. Does this make sense? You should not be concerned that, at this stage, you would prefer to start changing some things because that is not so bad. You will be given an opportunity to revisit and review the themes under stage four. That's absolutely okay.
Finally, the sixth phase is the writing up one. This is where you would be explaining each of these themes in more detail, how much illustrative quotes from your data, and commenting on the bigger picture of your results.
It is, in fact, vital to be aware of any requirement that is within your institution or even within your discipline in the course of writing up your thematic analysis. Your discipline is subject to some unique ways of how they would have you write this up, and you must know this!
Do take care of your writing style; you should present all the information in a simple manner with good English. Make sure you use the Grammar Checker tool to make your thematic analysis free from any kind of grammatical mistakes. No matter how good you have made your thematic analysis but if you have made such small mistakes, you can lose your precious marks.
Even when you know all the steps, it is beneficial to have someone guide you through the approach to your thematic analysis. This is the reason we have provided you with practical guidance on how to write your reflective thematic analysis in a way that will not only help you pass your assessment but also earn good grades.
Imagine that the section is storytelling. You are not just sorting, coding, and finding patterns, and now you are writing the story, which can even be read and comprehended by the person who did not spend weeks - or even months - on his transcripts. You are reporting, not interpreting what people have said, but what it is.
We may so subdivide this into super-simplicity. As an example of it, I will refer to a qualitative study that focused on the experiences of remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic. And the title of your research is: The effects of remote-working in the COVID-19 pandemic.
Once you have written your first paragraph or two by introducing the chapter, then start by telling your reader what you are going to be telling him or her. Do not keep them in suspense, according to a twisting of the plot - lay out a roadmap at the head of the table.
For example: The chapter discusses four main themes that came out of the data. These themes have emphasised the way remote work transformed social and professional relationships, made the boundaries between personal and professional lives unclear, brought new forms of communication, and provoked self-reflection about productivity. The themes were…”
Create a mental picture of each theme in miniature. Each one should include:
A description of the theme
The theme here is on the blurred work and home life of the participants having trouble because of being on remote work. Some of them had a difficult time establishing a clear line between work and personal lives and explained how this influenced their practices, health, and self-identity.
And here come in a few illustrating quotes:
The response to the emails at 11 pm is because it is no longer clear where the working day ends.
I couldn’t switch off. I also would feel the guilt if I were not online or watching Slack even on the weekends.
My place was no longer my home. It was one of the only other workplaces that had a kitchen.
These quotes do a lot of the heavy lifting - they help to bring the theme to life and to fix your analysis onto real voices. It just takes one to choose meaningful and representative quotes. They are all supposed to be merited.
We now arrive at the pleasant part - the interpretation of your theme. Here is where you connect the dots, and you give the explanation of why this theme is important.
Ask yourself:
This theme outlines the emotional and practical issues that participants were forced to manage in managing the overlap of their personal and work lives during the process of remote working. Work and living spaces were not physically segregated, since they tended to be susceptible to feelings of guilt and burnout, and a lack of a home as a place to relax. These experiences existed throughout the dataset in one form or another, and reflected that it was a widespread issue.
Remember - this is more or less reflexive thematic analysis. You are no neutral bystander. It counts your own views. So be open about it.
For example: As an individual who also worked at home during the pandemic, I was generally susceptible to the ideas of the respondents regarding the indistinct borders and emotional exhaustion. I also became aware of how my personal life would have impacted my meaning of the data, notably when the way it was analysed was through tone, emphasis, and frustrations.
This helps in injecting emotion and invigoration into your analysis and makes your reader aware of where you are heading.
Here is a real-life example of reflexive thematic analysis that is provided to us by professionals who provide Humanities Assignment Help Online service. They have been writing thematic analysis for so many years and have provided one of their best examples.
The information that is used in this example is borrowed from the qualitative phase of the mixed-method research that I did, which examined the prevention of mental health in a school. This study was the desire to understand the attitude and opinion of Irish post-primary teachers towards the fostering of social and emotional well-being of students, with the view of providing such information to the appropriate stakeholders in government and non-government agencies, who were the Department of Education and the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment. The study research questions were aimed at investigating, in general, the teachers' attitudes towards facilitating the well-being of students and towards a set of guidelines that were just underway to be implemented regarding well-being in the Irish post-primary schools. I also wanted to find out the potential barriers to wellbeing promotion and to find out the opinions of the educators as to what, in this regard, can be regarded as antithetical corrective actions.
The qualitative section of this research leads to the data of this example because eleven semi-structured interviews were carried out as an outcome of the qualitative phase, where the data were gathered, and the interviews took approximately 25-30 minutes. The sample included: core curriculum, wellbeing curriculum, pastoral care team members, and the senior management members. The respondents were questioned concerning their attitude toward promoting student wellbeing, wellbeing curriculum, wellbeing guidelines, and their views on personal wellbeing. In conducting such interviews, I used a loose follow-up of an interview agenda to ensure that all of such four major topics are covered. However, the discussions were most commonly led by what I perceived to have been pertinent to the interviewee, and would also alternate between these diverse issues.
The paradigmatic approach of interpretivism and constructivism addressed the research questions proposed in the proposed study. The first principle that I adhered to in this research was that I had to mirror the autonomous testimonies of the teachers in their attitudinal, opinions, and experience as actual as I could make it along with reflecting the impact of my own interpretations as the researcher. I felt RTA was highly appropriate to the situation of the theoretical and paradigmatic assumptions underlying my research and would allow me to attain the qualitative data collection and analysis of the data drawn in a manner whereby it would appreciate and attribute the reflexive impact of my interpretations as the researcher.
The rationale of applying reflexive thematic analysis is:
It is not merely the presence of the relevant experience, but what is more essential is the capacity to make such experience relevant to your analysis. The other ways of qualitative approaches would make you work to reduce your influence, but reflexive thematic analysis helps you to incorporate your worldview in order to make deeper and clearer revelations.
In the last, writing a reflexive thematic analysis might be quite complicated, but not hard when you know how to do thematic analysis. Following the steps mentioned in this blog can make it a lot easier to write a thematic analysis. Rather than thinking of a complex analysis, follow each step as it is mentioned here. Start by getting familiar with the information, then start with your coding of information, then generate initial themes, review those themes, and then start with defining and naming those themes, and then your final step: write up your themes.
Things are easy for someone who has already done it, but for someone who is doing it for the very first time need guidance. Which is also taken care of in this blog; proper guidance is mentioned for making everything clear for you. And as there is no better way of learning anything than learning it by example. Go through the real-life example for learning things in a better way.
There are 4 main domains of reflexive thematic analysis, which are orientation to data, focus of meaning, qualitative framework, and theoretical frameworks. These 4 domains of reflexive thematic analysis were outlined by Braun and Clarke.
A Common mistake that is found in thematic analysis is presenting themes without any proper explanation of why they were selected and how these themes were developed.
There are three primary types of thematic analysis, which include reflexive thematic analysis, coding reliability thematic analysis, and codebook thematic analysis. All of these types differ in data handling and structure.
The full names of Braun and Clarke are Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke. They are both psychologists and academics who are famously known for developing an influential method known as Thematic Analysis.
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