When to use thematic analysis? Thematic analysis is a good approach to research where you’re trying to find out something about people’s views, opinions, knowledge, experiences or values from a set of qualitative data – for example, interview transcripts, social media profiles, or survey responses. Some types of research questions you might use thematic analysis to answer: • How do patients perceive doctors in a hospital setting? • What are young women’s experiences on dating sites? • What are non- experts’ ideas and opinions about climate change? • How is gender constructed in high school history teaching? To answer any of these questions, you would collect data from a group of relevant participants and then analyze it. Thematic analysis allows you a lot of flexibility in interpreting the data, and allows you to approach large data sets more easily by sorting them into broad themes. However, it also involves the risk of missing nuances in the data. Thematic analysis is often quite subjective and relies on the researcher’s judgement, so you have to reflect carefully on your own choices and interpretations. Pay close attention to the data to ensure that you’re not picking up on things that are not there – or obscuring things that are.