Victoria Clarke

University of the West of England, Bristol | UWE Bristol · Health and Social Sciences

Thematic analysis is a poorly demarcated, rarely acknowledged, yet widely used qualitative analytic method within psychology. In this paper, we argue that it offers an accessible and theoretically flexible approach to analysing qualitative data. We outline what thematic analysis is, locating it in relation to other qualitative analytic methods that...

One of us (VC) was having a conversation with a student recently about the origins and history of thematic analysis (TA). The student had read Qualitative Research in Counselling and Psychotherapy (McLeod, 2011), a text which presents TA as a variant of grounded theory. Victoria commented that she thought that TA evolved from content analysis, and...

Since initially writing on thematic analysis in 2006, the popularity of the method we outlined has exploded, the variety of TA approaches have expanded, and, not least, our thinking has developed and shifted. In this reflexive commentary, we look back at some of the unspoken assumptions that informed how we wrote our 2006 paper. We connect some of...

The concept of data saturation, defined as ‘information redundancy’ or the point at which no new themes or codes ‘emerge’ from data, is widely referenced in thematic analysis (TA) research in sport and exercise, and beyond. Several researchers have sought to ‘operationalise’ data saturation and provide concrete guidance on how many interviews, or f...

Developing a universal quality standard for thematic analysis (TA) is complicated by the existence of numerous iterations of TA that differ paradigmatically, philosophically and procedurally. This plurality in TA is often not recognised by editors, reviewers or authors, who promote ‘coding reliability measures’ as universal requirements of quality...

As the use of storytelling and doll play approaches 100 years in psychological research and clinical practice, this volume showcases narrative story completion methodologies (NSCM), a versatile research approach that uses story stems, dolls, and other visual methods to uncover our inner worlds, reveal social discourses, and communicate complex or d...

Although peer review is one of the central pillars of academic publishing, qualitative researchers’ experiences of this process have been largely overlooked. Existing research and commentary have focused on peer reviewers’ comments on qualitative articles, which are often described as indicative of a quantitative mindset or hostility to nonpositivi...

In this paper, we argue that COREQ – the consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative research (Tong et al., 2007) – is a problem, and a problem in need of a solution. COREQ is not just a problem because – as Buus and Perron (2020) argued – there are important questions about the credibility of the development of the checklist. COREQ is a proble...

Using the concept of methodological congruence—where the different elements of a study ‘fit’ together—we explore both problematic and good practice in (reflexive) thematic analysis (TA) as reported in Health Promotion International (HPI). Aligning with the importance we place on ‘owning your perspectives’ we situate this exploration in relation to...

Background Reflexive thematic analysis is widely used in qualitative research published in Palliative Medicine, and in the broader field of health research. However, this approach is often not used well. Common problems in published reflexive thematic analysis in general include assuming thematic analysis is a singular approach, rather than a famil...

The resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in the summer of 2020 following the death of George Floyd highlighted, once again, the racial and socioeconomic inequities permeating western countries, and galvanised music therapists in the UK and elsewhere to reflect on the importance of race and social class in their profession and therapeutic p...

This study explored the learning experiences of autistic university students in the UK during the Covid-19 pandemic, covering the period from the first lockdown in March 2020 to the removal of restrictions in July 2021 and the subsequent return to in-person learning. Data were generated from 17 participants using an online qualitative survey and we...

Mothers are currently under‐represented in the literature on anorexia, including research on treatment, with most research focussed on female adolescents. This raises questions about how adult women and particularly those who are mothers, experience eating disorder treatment. This study provides a phenomenological exploration of lived experiences o...

Story completion (SC) – where respondents are presented with the start of a story (the story ‘stem’ or ‘cue’) and asked to complete it – originally developed as a projective technique for clinical and research assessment. While SC continues to be used in this way, it has also evolved into a qualitative data generation technique, providing qualitati...

Reflexive thematic analysis (TA), widely used in education, social work, and counselling research, offers an accessible method for exploring and interpreting a qualitative dataset, and telling a story about patterns of meaning. Doing reflexive TA well requires a thoughtful, situated researcher or research team. As the method puts researcher subjec-...

This chapter presents the essentials of conceptualising, designing and doing reflexive Thematic Analysis (TA), in counselling and psychotherapy. The authors contextualise TA as a family of methods, with some quite radically different approaches, ranging theoretically from ‘scientifically descriptive’ to ‘artfully interpretative’. After outlining ke...

Despite the persistent dominance of a 'scientific psychology' paradigm in health psychology, the use of qualitative research continues to grow. Qualitative approaches are often based on fundamentally different values from (post)positivistempiricism, raising important considerations for quality, and whether qualitative work adheres to, and is judged...

Objectives: Problematic skin picking (SP) is a poorly understood experience characterised by a drive to pick the skin and related psychosocial impact. In the DSM-5, problematic SP is classified as 'excoriation (skin picking) disorder'. The aim of this article is to present a rare qualitative perspective on the lived experience of problematic SP, p...

Background A perinatal loss is a life-changing event that can have psychological consequences for a mother both after the loss and in a subsequent pregnancy. Aims This qualitative study aimed to examine mothers' lived experiences of the holistic journey of perinatal loss and subsequent pregnancy. Methods Qualitative data were collected via online...

The subject of female-perpetuated intimate partner violence (IPV) against men remains poorly understood and in need of further research. Exploration of societal expectations surrounding masculinity and male victimization may enhance understanding of how men experience IPV victimization. Consequently, this experiential research study explored the im...

When we first wrote about thematic analysis (TA) in a paper entitled Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology published in the journal Qualitative Research in Psychology in 2006, we thought we were writing a paper that we could give to our students, one that reflected our values and practices as qualitative researchers. We did not imagine the paper wo...

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Thematic analysis (TA) is widely used in qualitative psychology. In using TA, researchers must choose between a diverse range of approaches that can differ considerably in their underlying (but often implicit) conceptualizations of qualitative research, meaningful knowledge production, and key constructs such as themes, as well as analytic procedur...

The subject of female‐perpetrated intimate partner violence (IPV) against men has been one of controversy, with well‐rehearsed arguments surrounding both the nature and existence of female‐perpetrated abuse against men. The aims of this study were to explore men's help‐seeking experiences and/or their perceptions of utilising support services/suppo...

Qualitative story completion (SC) research involves the novel qualitative application of a technique previously used in quantitative research and clinical assessment, in which participants write stories in response to a story "stem" designed by the researcher. The resulting stories are analyzed to identify patterns of meaning using conventional qua...

Before the so-called “gayby boom” in the 1990s the most common pathway to parenthood for gay men was heterosexual marriage. Since the 1990s most research on gay parenting has focused on intentional gay fathers – those parenting after coming out as gay – and the experiences of post-heterosexual divorce gay fathers (PHGF) have largely been overlooked...

Anxieties about sex and sexual problems are widespread and are often brought to counselling and psychotherapy. Research has found that even practitioners without specialist training often work with sexual difficulties because of the prevalence of such problems. Some of the most common concerns brought to therapy centre on desire discrepancies betwe...

The “strong Black woman” (SBW) is a Western cultural stereotype that depicts African-heritage women as strong, self-reliant, independent, yet nurturing and self-sacrificing. US research indicates that this stereotype negatively impacts the emotional wellbeing of African-heritage women, while also allowing them to survive in a racist society. UK res...

With a few exceptions, the subject of social class has rarely been addressed in counselling and psychotherapy research. This study seeks to contribute to redressing this omission by exploring therapists’ accounts of how social class operates within therapy, its impact on the therapeutic relationship, and the relationship between social class and me...

As researchers continue to adapt, conduct and design their research in the presence of COVID-19, new opportunities to connect research creativity and ethics have opened up. Researchers around the world have responded in diverse, thoughtful and creative ways -adapting data collection methods, fostering researcher and community resilience, and explor...

Thematic analysis methods, including the reflexive approach we have developed, are widely used in counselling and psychotherapy research, as are other approaches that seek to develop ‘patterns’ (themes, categories) across cases. Without a thorough grounding in the conceptual foundations of a wide variety of across‐case analytic approaches, and qual...

Fully qualitative surveys, which prioritise qualitative research values, and harness the rich potential of qualitative data, have much to offer qualitative researchers, especially given online delivery options. Yet the method remains underutilised, and there is little in the way of methodological discussion of qualitative surveys. Underutilisation...

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This chapter provides a critical review of the inter-disciplinary research on voluntary childlessness, examining some of the problematic assumptions that underpin the literature and the image of the childfree woman that emerges as a result. It is not intended as a comprehensive overview of this literature, but rather a feminist engagement with the...

What opportunities are there for narrative practitioners to engage in academic research whilst retaining an alignment with poststructuralist ideas, feminist commitments and narrative practice principles? This paper considers Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke’s model of thematic analysis (TA) as an approach which can overcome some of the tensions t...

Formerly heterosexually partnered gay fathers raised with religion are an under-researched group of LGBTQ parents. This group have potentially complex coming out journeys, which can result in them seeking counselling. This research qualitatively explores the counselling experiences of 12 such men and offers suggestions for working therapeutically w...

In 2006, psychologists Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke published a paper entitled Using thematic analysis in psychology in Qualitative Research in Psychology. The paper sought to provide guidance, for psychology colleagues and students, on the conceptualisation, considerations and practice of thematic analysis (TA). Their paper proved unexpected...

Feminist scholars have identified a “motherhood imperative” in Western cultures, when heterosexual women are understood to both want and to have children. However, social shifts have resulted in a decrease in pronatalism as well as an increase in social recognition of the parenting desires of same-sex parents. Despite a resurgence of interest in ch...

Livingston et al.’s paper amply demonstrates the rich potential of qualitative methods to provide insight into the life-worlds of patients, and analysis of hitherto un(der)explored facets of mental and physical health conditions. The publication of their paper reflects increasing acknowledgement of the value of qualitative methods in medical resear...

Feminist scholars have identified a “motherhood imperative” in Western cultures, where heterosexual women are understood to both want, and have, children. However, social shifts have resulted in a decrease in pronatalism as well as an increase in social recognition of the parenting desires of same-sex parents. Despite a resurgence of interest in ch...

Attachment theory predicts that family bereavement leads even securely attached individuals to experience temporary attachment insecurity. This article explores how incoherence, a narrative marker of attachment insecurity, is displayed in the talk of families undergoing bereavement family therapy. This study uses the lens of attachment theory, and...

How does the current state of the field of feminist qualitative psychological research reflect and enact the methodological characteristics and values of feminist research-principally, the values of reflexivity, methodological diversity and innovation, and the prioritisation of feminist political goals over procedural, epistemological and disciplin...

Tematik analiz, sınırları çok iyi çizilmemiş olmasına ve az tanınmasına rağmen, psikoloji alanında yaygın olarak kullanılan nitel bir analiz yöntemidir. Bu makalede, tematikanaliz yönteminin nitel verilerin analizinde kullanışlı ve kuramsal açıdan esnek bir yaklaşım olduğu savunulmaktadır. Bu çalışmada öncelikle, tema veya örüntülerin arandığı diğe...

This chapter maps the terrain of thematic analysis (TA), a method for capturing patterns (“themes”) across qualitative datasets. We identify key concepts and different orientations and practices, illustrating why TA is often better understood as an umbrella term, used for sometimes quite different approaches, than a single qualitative analytic appr...

This chapter introduces the story completion (SC) method of collecting qualitative data, a novel technique that offers exciting potential to the qualitative researcher. SC involves a researcher writing a story “stem” or “cue” – or, more simply put, the start of a story, usually an opening sentence or two – and asking the participants to complete or...

Background Story completion asks the participant to produce a story, in response to an open, sometimes ambiguous, scenario. As a method for qualitative research, it is relatively unknown. Yet the method has deep roots, with origins in psychotherapy practice (projective techniques, such as Rorschach) and (quantitative) developmental psychology resea...

What is story completion? How come I’ve never heard of it? Can it be useful for me as a qualitative researcher? A relatively unknown method for qualitative data collection, story completion has a long history of use in psychotherapy practice and (quantitative) developmental psychology research. We believe it has untapped, exciting potential as a qu...

The authors wish to make the following corrections to this paper published in Genealogy (Tasker et al., 2018), reflecting regrettable misrepresentation of one research participant’s experience [...]

FULL TEXT NOT AVAILABLE, PLEASE DO NOT REQUEST, ANY REQUESTS WILL BE DECLINED This chapter maps the terrain of thematic analysis (TA), a method for capturing patterns ("themes") across qualitative datasets. We identify key concepts and different orientations and practices, illustrating why TA is often better understood as an umbrella term, used fo...

Virginia Braun, Victoria Clarke, Hannah Frith, Nikki Hayfield, Helen Malson, Naomi Moller, and Iduna Shah-Beckley came together at the University of the West of England (UWE) in July 2017 to discuss and share their enthusiasm for the story completion method. Virginia nominally “led” the discussion to keep us on track. This is a transcript of the di...

Do women with body hair continue to evoke disgust? Are men without body hair read only as athletes and/or gay? To explore contemporary sense-making practices around apparently counter-normative gendered body hair practice, we developed a two-stem story completion task. We collected stories from 161 undergraduate students (129 women and 32 men) abou...

Our special issue “New Frontiers of Family: LGBTQ People Pushing Back the Boundaries of Family” has brought together six exciting articles that each reconceptualize families formed by lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) people beyond the Standard North American Family model (SNAF; Smith, 1993). The SNAF has been the dominant ideologica...

Evidence suggests that most lesbians remain childless, but little is known about the childfree lesbian experience. The current study qualitatively explores the experiences of five childfree lesbians. The results show that even for a group for which childlessness is arguably still presumed, it remains socially difficult to articulate a desire to rem...

This study explores the gendered body hair removal norm and the meanings of male body hair by examining young people’s sense-making around male body hair removal. The novel technique of story completion was used to collect data from 102 psychology undergraduates. They were presented with a story “stem” featuring a young man (David) deciding to star...

Objectives Little research has examined the discourses that shape therapists’ sense‐making around heterosex. This paper explores the discourses of sexuality and gender underpinning therapists’ and non‐therapists’ responses to a sexual experimentation scenario in a heterosexual relationship. It also considers the value of the novel technique of stor...

Background Living with alopecia areata, totalis and universalis (collectively referred to here as AA) involves unpredictable, sometimes rapid hair loss. There is currently no effective treatment and patients describe feelings of shock, loss, trauma and disrupted identity. Cultural meanings attached to hair and hair loss, including associations betw...

Existing research suggests that embryo donation (ED) may be seen as similar to adoption by those who donate or receive embryos, or it may not. Our qualitative study explored whether having a child via embryo donation initiated kinship connections between embryo donor and recipient families as interpreted by recipient parents. Interviews were conduc...

Evidence suggests that most lesbians remain childless, but little is known about the childfree lesbian experience. The current study qualitatively explores the experiences of five childfree lesbians. The results show that even for a group for which childlessness is arguably still presumed, it remains socially difficult to articulate a desire to rem...

In this brief commentary, we critically reflect on the use of thematic analysis, and particularly the approach to thematic analysis we have outlined, in counselling and psychotherapy research. We identify the distinct characteristics of our thematic analysis approach, and highlight some common areas of confusion and poor practice in published thema...

This paper explores an incident involving a gay pride t-shirt, printed with the slogan ‘Some people are gay. Get over it!’, that I wore during a university lecture, and students’ predominantly negative responses to it. I use the lens of ‘modern’ prejudice research, particularly discursive psychological approaches to modern prejudice, to interpret t...

Body image pressures for heterosexual women are well established. However, lesbian body image is less well understood, while bisexual women have largely been overlooked within the psychological literature. Further, women's investment in 'traditional' appearance practices associated with femininity are underexplored. The current study explored diffe...

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In this chapter, we explore four particular ways in which innovation has pushed qualitative data collection beyond the familiar focus on face-to-face interviews. We have chosen these methods both for their practicality and because they are tools and techniques we have used ourselves; as committed qualitative researchers, we can attest to their valu...

This article examines the accounts of individuals who problematically pick their skin and explores their subjective experiences. In total, 100 problem disclosure statements were taken from posts made to a publicly accessible online skin picking support forum. These posts were systematically analysed using thematic analysis. Themes of disgust, shame...

This chapter introduces the story completion (SC) method of collecting qualitative data, a novel technique that offers intriguing potential to the qualitative researcher. Since the method is new to qualitative research, it has fewer published research studies than some of the other methods covered in this book. For this reason, the chapter aims not...

Body image pressures for heterosexual women are well established. However, lesbian body image is less well understood, while bisexual women have largely been overlooked with the psychological literature. Further, women's investment in 'traditional' appearance practices associated with femininity are under explored. The current study explored differ...

Thematic analysis (TA) is a method for identifying, analyzing, and interpreting patterns of meaning (‘themes’) within qualitative data. TA is unusual in the canon of qualitative analytic approaches, because it offers a method – a tool or technique, unbounded by theoretical commitments – rather than a methodology (a theoretically informed, and confi...

Aim Women with anorexia are often perceived very negatively – for example, as manipulative and deceitful – both by wider society and treatment providers. In this context, it is important for practitioners to understand the experience of living with this illness, but there is very little empirical research focused on the everyday phenomenology of an...

Most literature on lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans families has focused on the psychological and social well-being of school aged children with lesbian, gay and trans (LGT) parents. The aim of the present study was to explore how the adult children of LGT parents make sense of their families. The study focused both on recollections of childhood an...

March sees the first of four seminars on ‘New Frontiers of Family’, a British Psychological Society sponsored series that aims to examine the psychological implications of emerging forms of family in the UK – those beyond genetic relatedness, and those beyond the nuclear family. As two of the series organisers, we here explore two topics: conceptio...

Thematic analysis (TA) is one of a cluster of analytic approaches you can use, if you want to identify patterns of meaning across a qualitative dataset. The widely-used version of TA we outline in this chapter is fairly unique in the canon of qualitative analytic approaches in that it just offers the researcher analytic tools to make sense of data....

Evidence from numerous studies suggests that homophobia and heterosexism remain common on university campuses. Since the 1970s LGBT academics have been encouraged to ‘put themselves on the line’ and ‘come out’ in the classroom, and in so doing empower LGBT students and provide them with positive role models. Wearing gay pride badges and t-shirts ha...

Poor success rates and high levels of dropout are common features in the treatment of anorexia nervosa. Using semi-structured interviews, this study elicited the views of 12 women who were recovered, or in recovery, for anorexia nervosa and had received treatment. Results derived from a thematic analysis revealed the women's high degree of dissatis...

One thing you like about qualitative research: A sense of play, fun even, and creativity, particular when analysing (qualitative) data. Analysing data is like having a puzzle to solve. Not in the sense that the analysis is hiding in the data waiting to be found (an assumption that is another source of irritation!), but in the sense that you need to...

This chapter provides an introduction to thematic analysis (TA) as a method for identifying and interpreting patterns in qualitative data. We distinguish between two main ‘schools’ of TA – (1) approaches with a foothold in quantitative research, which are concerned with the ‘reliability’ of coding and theme development; and (2) our thoroughly quali...

This chapter provides an introduction to thematic analysis (TA). We highlight the unique features of TA, including its flexibility, and its status as a technique that can be used within a wide variety of approaches to qualitative research. We then provide a detailed description of doing TA, using Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke’s six-phase appro...

This reflective report provides another – contrasting – appearance-related example of a thematic analysis (TA) study. Whereas the worked example in Chapter X focused on gay men’s appearance and provided a predominantly latent-level interpretation of the data, this report focuses on lesbian and bisexual women’s appearance and provides a more semanti...

According to the tripartite influence model of body image, appearance pressures from family, friends, partners, and the media lead to body dissatisfaction and restrained eating behaviours. There is strong support for this model among young, White heterosexual women. Evidence suggests that women who identified as lesbian as bisexual (LB) may be prot...

The field of health and wellbeing scholarship has a strong tradition of qualitative research—and rightly so. Qualitative research offers rich and compelling insights into the real worlds, experiences, and perspectives of patients and health care professionals in ways that are completely different to, but also sometimes complimentary to, the knowled...

Abstract This study explored how British gay men make sense of their appearance and clothing practices, and the pressures and concerns they attend to in discursively negotiating their visual identities. A convenience sample of 20 mostly young, White and middle class self-identified gay men responded to a qualitative survey on dress and appearance....

Drawing on interviews with 20 self-identified bisexual women, this paper contributes to the limited psychological literature on bisexual women by exploring their experiences of social marginalisation. These (mainly white and middle class) British bisexual women reported that they did not feel at home in either lesbian or lesbian, gay, bisexual and...

This study explores conceptualisations of same- versus different-sex infidelity in the context of a heterosexual marriage using story completion. A convenience sample of 57 female and male participants completed one of four versions of a story stem featuring a husband who is either emotionally or sexually unfaithful with a woman or a man. A social...

Appearance is one way in which lesbian and bisexual identities and affiliation to lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) subculture can be demonstrated. ‘Butch’ and ‘androgynous’ styles have been used by lesbian women to communicate a non-heterosexual identity. However, some LGB appearance researchers have argued that there has been a mainstreaming and diver...

Although people with eating disorders are known to observe and assess body related stimuli, research has yet to explore these behaviors in the therapy room. Consequently, practitioners do not know if their bodies are having an impact on their clients or the therapy process. This lack of knowledge is problematic given the poor recovery rates and hig...

Thematic analysis is a poorly demarcated, rarely acknowledged, yet widely used qualitative analytic method within psychology. In this paper, we argue that it offers an accessible and theoretically flexible approach to analysing qualitative data. We outline what thematic analysis is, locating it in relation to other qualitative analytic methods that...