4 It is the researcher who has to make sense of the data that have been collected by exploring and interpreting them. Interview transcripts, field notes and observations provide a descriptive account of the study, but they do not provide explanations. Indeed, the process of thematic content analysis is often very similar in all types of qualitative research, in that the process involves analysing transcripts, identifying themes within those data and gathering together examples of those themes from the text.

4, 5 This method arose out of the approach known as grounded theory, 6 although the method can be used in a range of other types of qualitative work, including ethnography and phenomenology (see the first paper in this series 7 for definitions). Whilst a variety of inductive approaches to analysing qualitative data are available, the method of analysis described in this paper is that of thematic content analysis, and is, perhaps, the most common method of data analysis used in qualitative work. Inductive analysis is the most common approach used to analyse qualitative data 2 and is, therefore, the focus of this paper. This approach is comprehensive and therefore time-consuming and is most suitable where little or nothing is known about the study phenomenon. 3 However, while this approach is relatively quick and easy, it is inflexible and can potentially bias the whole analysis process as the coding framework has been decided in advance, which can severely limit theme and theory development.Ĭonversely, the inductive approach involves analysing data with little or no predetermined theory, structure or framework and uses the actual data itself to derive the structure of analysis. The data analysis would then consist of examining each interview to determine how many patients had complaints of each type and the extent to which complaints of each type co-occur. For example, if a study explored patients' reasons for complaining about their dentist, the interview may explore common reasons for patients' complaints, such as trauma following treatment and communication problems. This approach is useful in studies where researchers are already aware of probable participant responses. Essentially, the researcher imposes their own structure or theories on the data and then uses these to analyse the interview transcripts. 1, 2 Deductive approaches involve using a structure or predetermined framework to analyse data. There are two fundamental approaches to analysing qualitative data (although each can be handled in a variety of different ways): the deductive approach and the inductive approach.

Qualitative data analysis methods