How codes become themes (Part 2) | Generating thematic framework

I explain how to develop themes from codes, and how thematic analysis will result in a thematic framework. I show an example data set and two ways in which a thematic framework can be created from the list of codes that I have. While doing this, I share some advice about creating themes that I think will help you with your thematic frameworks.
➡️ Part 1 of this video • How Codes become Theme...
➡️ Feel free to ask me questions in the comments, and if you feel that you may require a more guided assistance, you can book a lesson with me through the following link drkriukow.com/qualitative-res...
➡️ My self-study course on Qualitative Data Analysis www.udemy.com/course/how-to-a...
➡️ My self-study course on using NVivo 12 www.udemy.com/course/from-zer...
➡️ My "Trust the data" merchandise (sweatshirts, mugs, iPhone cases, etc.) teespring.com/en-GB/stores/tr...
Time stamps:
00:00-06:55 Introduction, introducing the study and research questions
06:55-11:30 Advice on organizing codes and generating themes
11:30-25:04 Thematic framework Version 1
25:04-34:40 Thematic framework Version 2

[@qualitativeresearcher]

Visit my website and explore the different ways in which I can support you and your study! drkriukow.com/my-services/

[@mattbagley2496]

Wish id found this channel before i spent 6 hours bashing my head against Braun & Clarke (2006)

[@qualitativeresearcher]

Lol it seems like Braun and Clarke are who 99.9% of students follow. No wonder, they are among the few that described this process in a structured way, but as I always say to my students, the risk of having these guidelines is that they tend to limit your view a little bit, because they create a false impression that the process is in fact extremely structured and you move from one phase to the other, whereas in practice the whole process is pretty much common sense and the only thing you should worry about (rather than "which stage am I in") is finding the answers to your research questions in your data

[@kjoit]

@@qualitativeresearcher My difficulty, Doctor, is that when I write my report, I am still required to use a structure, like Braun and Clarke to make my methods reputable during my defense. However I will try your method as it is very practical. I have been stuck on generating themes for months, the pandemic stress among many other factors, and I wish I discovered your videos sooner.

[@qualitativeresearcher]

@@kjoit Hi - there is nothing wrong with using Brown and Clarke's framework, as what they describe is pretty much what I do to, except that they describe this in more steps and more detail. The risk of that is that you start to worry too much about the structure, at some point, and lose touch with your own data - this is based on my observations of dozens of students who struggled with this exact thing. Therefore, you can still follow my steps, and After that, fit this Into Brown and Clarke's framework when you describe what you did

[@mikassist]

Dr Kriukow you have no idea how you have helped me to do the analysis for my dissertation. I was so lost and confused using Nvivo, after watching your videos, all makes sense. Thank you so much

[@qualitativeresearcher]

You're very welcome! I'm really glad to hear such feedback, thank you for taking the time to share it!

[@SandyYouTube374]

Another really helpful vid - thanks one again - these practical tips are a lifesaver!!

[@anj1134]

Dr. Kriukow you are a star! U r my goto guide for most of the research process ! excellent n practical tips!

[@mengistugalcho2782]

Dear Dr. Kriukow, Long life and huge thanks to you. Your contribution is beyond a coffee as I have been attending as if it is in the face-to-face classroom.

[@nicktibert4353]

I am a quantitative researcher, but have been doing qualitative research due to covid19 and have found these really useful in building my confidence! Keep up the great work! Love the humor and attitude you bring!

[@TheMotivationJoint]

You have no idea how much this has helped me. Thank you so much!!

[@qualitativeresearcher]

Glad it helped!

[@zarlaya11]

So practical and well explained. Thank you!

[@qualitativeresearcher]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@linonge1]

Extremely Helpful. Great Video

[@otengkingsley5717]

This guy is awesome, he's been such a great help....

[@qualitativeresearcher]

This guy says thank you ;)

[@katemi420]

Guiding effectively and lots of examples are given ❤

[@colemanvollrath7180]

Dear Dr. Kriukow, thank you very much for taking the time to make these videos - they have been incredibly helpful! I am using NVivo for a scoping review as part of my MSc research and your instruction has improved my approach to coding data and creating thematic frameworks that are linked to my research questions. Thank you!!!

[@qualitativeresearcher]

Thank you for these kinds words, I am really glad that my instruction helps you!

[@kemiorelaja5540]

Nice one. Bravo!

[@Chipsnsalsayumyum]

Super helpful!! I am doing a thematic analysis for the first time and this made creating themes easier to understand

[@qualitativeresearcher]

I'm glad that you feel this way Erica, and thank you for the kind feedback. Hopefully you will also find the other videos in the series equally useful!

[@doristitus-glover3399]

Love the advice! Thanks for sharing.

[@qualitativeresearcher]

Glad it was helpful!

[@ameliak1210]

Excellent video! Thanks!

[@acmilanibra]

Thank you Dr Kriukow for this amazing video, you are truly the Wladimir Klitschko of coding - both in terms of looks and level. Top lad.

[@qualitativeresearcher]

"Wladimir Klitschko of coding" I love this !! In fact, I will announce this on my FB page lol :)

[@paandrews1]

Such a great video...seeing how you actually apply the idea of thematic analysis to a data set has been a massive help. Thank you for this.

[@yalla.arabic1555]

Very helpful! Thank you so much

[@liaferrer7779]

Extremely helpful! Thanks for this

[@qualitativeresearcher]

Thank you!

[@aizenFA]

Thank you so much Dr 👍

[@monirarina]

Excellent!

[@qualitativeresearcher]

Many thanks!

[@ndutasamwa9114]

Love this

[@katemi420]

Appreciate Dr😊 You are the best ❤

[@qualitativeresearcher]

Thank you! :)

[@spencerdoku2299]

Very useful

[@maggienoodl3s]

Just came across your channel through a friend. Love your videos and your accent 😍🙏

[@qualitativeresearcher]

Thank you!

[@lizadawna.r.8679]

Thanks!

[@qualitativeresearcher]

Thank you!

[@fionamcn2008]

You really are an excellent teacher . Fiona

[@qualitativeresearcher]

Thank you!

[@bartooma]

Very useful. But, in the last steps, the more I merge subthemes and shorten their numbers, the most difficult to link them in the discussion to make a connected story.

[@roksanajahan5262]

Hi Dr Kriukow, Many thanks for such helpful videos. I would like to book an appointment with you if possible. Much appreciated. Thanks 😊

[@qualitativeresearcher]

Hi Roksana, you can do it through my website at www.drkriukow.com

[@fakhrakhurshid7712]

Love your video, very helpful. A quick question, when defining themes, can I really similar ones when each Interview Question asks a different thing?

[@qualitativeresearcher]

The themes will depend on the content of the interview and what the participants are talking about. Yes you can have similar themes from different interview questions, if the participants' responses are similar I suppose

[@jyamamoto4435]

Dear Dr. Kriuknow, thank you so much for clearly explaining how we can turn codes into themes. I have a favor. I would like to read the article you showed very briefly (<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1676">27:56</a>-<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1678">27:58</a>). Could you please tell us the link where we can read your article, probably about English mediated instruction? I read these two pages and felt I definitely want to read the rest of the paper. Thank you!!

[@qualitativeresearcher]

Thank you for your interest :) You can read the article here (just click "Access the document" on the right hand side, it's free to read) www.research.ed.ac.uk/en/publications/internationalisation-higher-education-and-the-growing-demand-for-

[@dr.sallyduncanlcswduncreek6415]

I am stuck and I know this will help me. Thanks

[@qualitativeresearcher]

I hope it will!

[@yaohuang2788]

Hi! Dr. Kriukow, thank you so much for the wonderful video to show how to generate themes in the thematic analysis. However, do you have a video to show how to generate themes in content analysis? Thank you so much!

[@qualitativeresearcher]

I do not, but there will be many similarities between the two

[@yaohuang2788]

@@qualitativeresearcher Thank you for the quick reply. Dr. Kriukow.

[@olliebunbun]

Hi Dr. K, I was wondering. When developing a thematic framework, do we have to pay attention at all to the prevalence of the codes (number of references for a given code) in the data? I mean, for example, is a code that appears only once but an important remark made by a participant not as significant/strong as a code that appears 15 times in 10 different sources? Is it okay to include that one little code as evidence for a theme/sub-theme? I'd appreciate your insight. Thank you for the videos, btw. Very helpful!

[@qualitativeresearcher]

As I explained in some other videos, the number of references does not have to be the indication of how important something is. Having said this, it would be rather uncommon if a comment that was made once by 1 person became a Theme, but it can definitely be a sub-theme

[@mirjanagreen]

i got so confused by the tongue slip music time at first i thought my computer had gotten a virus XD Then I rewound and understood it was on purpose haha. Thanks for a very educative video!

[@qualitativeresearcher]

Lol for confusing you :)

[@qualitativeresearcher]

... And I confused you further. I meant "sorry for confusing you" :)

[@mirjanagreen]

@@qualitativeresearcher Haha no you helped thank you! Speak soon!

[@carmenvannoort5328]

Thanks for the video! I have a question. I'm halfway interviewing (6/13) and started making themes already in NVivo 12 for Mac to already visualize the data (it's for my thesis so I have to start reporting the results already at this point because of the deadline). I made themes in a new folder (beside the 'nodes' folder, I also made an 'initial codes' folder and a 'thematic framework' folder as you showed in your video). If I start coding new interviews from now on, how do I add this new data to the framework I already made (it doesn't sync automatically). Is that possible or do I need to wait with creating themes untill I coded all the interviews? Because then I maybe need to use Word beside NVivo..Thanks!

[@qualitativeresearcher]

you can code the remaining transcripts with the themes you already created. I am not sure what you mean by saying it does not sync

[@carmenvannoort5328]

@@qualitativeresearcher Thanks! Is it also possible to export the coded transcripts from NVivo? This would be nice so I can share my transcripts + codes with another researcher.

[@Nudo1985]

"Considering we are doing data analysis it's not that interesting in the first place... too some people it can be interesting [...]" And here I am spending my free time looking at this video because I really like qualitative data analysis. I'm even trying to get my job to see it's benefits... Hmmm, am I the weird one?! 😛 #B2BCustomerResearch

[@qualitativeresearcher]

You're not, I also enjoy it! :)

[@carlettenorwood2935]

I've been ready to scream, but finally found the video I needed. The key for me is to remember to constantly refer back to the research questions. (which seems obvious, but erm, no. lol) Thank you!

[@qualitativeresearcher]

exactly, obvious but not obvious. In constantly trying to follow (and make sense of) the guidelines, we tend to forget about our study. Guidelines are good but they may also "dumb us down" a little bit

[@carlettenorwood2935]

@@qualitativeresearcher Totally agree. I may still sign up for the private tutorial if I get stuck again. Thanks again.

[@qualitativeresearcher]

@@carlettenorwood2935 Hopefully you don't but fi you do - you know where to find me ! :)

[@dianaishak2064]

A very practical and helpful video! I was struggling with generating themes for months. Is it true that the theme/sub-theme name needs to describe my finding? can it be just "understanding of..... " instead of labeling it with "good understanding of...." thanks!

[@qualitativeresearcher]

it is true that it should describe your findings, and if Good understanding was the finding, that's what I would call this. If , for example , "Understanding of English" was one of factors that determine academic success in UK universities, I would call it that. So, what you call your theme and sub theme will only depend on your findings

[@katiehornsey5632]

Thank you so much for this! As someone who has never undertaken qualitative data analysis before, these explanations have been so helpful! I was wondering, in Version 1, you created the themes based on the 2 research questions - would you recommend this as the way to categorise the codes? Or would you recommend grouping them in different ways which could answer the research questions but not necessarily labelling as the research questions themselves?

[@qualitativeresearcher]

Hi Katie, I do not recommend focusing on creating themes based on the RQs straight away. While it is usually the case that this will happen eventually anyway, doing that too early may limit your findings , not to mention pose a risk of researcher bias. Also, doing this will result in you forcing your data into these 2 (or whatever teh number of RQs) categories, whereas in practice what usually happens is that the content of the interviews falls into more than 1 category (which is reflected in a single sentence often being coded by 2 or more codes)

[@katiehornsey5632]

@@qualitativeresearcher That's really helpful, thank you so much!

[@kellynicholas1862]

These videos have been so helpful, thank you. Could I just ask, once you are happy with your coding and theme categories what would be the next step that you would take here? Would you be able to progress straight from this point to the right up, or would you usually transfer the themes over to a word/excel document so that you can then decide which quotes are most meaningful to capture the essence of each theme. Hope that makes sense? Thank you.

[@qualitativeresearcher]

Thank you for your question. What I usually do once I am happy with this thematic framework is: 1) Export it to an MS Word file 2) Clean up the table in MS Word and prepare for the write up (plan the sections, etc.) 3) As I write the results, I have NVivo opened and each time I am discussing a theme/sub-theme, I open it in NVivo and go through interesting extracts to decide which ones I will use Therefore, to answer your question, I do not decide and transfer the quotes upfront, but rather as I write up the results

[@kellynicholas1862]

@@qualitativeresearcher That's great to know, thank you! It all feels quite overwhelming when you have hundreds of quotes to trawl through so this is good to know. Thanks again for your help.

[@dinaayman9767]

I hope u can do a video about your experiences with supervising qualitative analyses sent by students

[@qualitativeresearcher]

I have been experimenting with the idea of showing specific examples of "good" or "bad" analysis, as well as showing how I correct and improve it, as I do this pretty much every day with my students, but the concern is that I cannot show this due to the ethics in research, and to change things so much that this cannot be recognized takes a lot of time and effort. I will still think of how to do this, however

[@dinaayman9767]

@@qualitativeresearcher thank you dearest Dr, am an avid follower and fan of all ur videos + udemy

[@mariasultana1541]

How to collect data transcript in qualitative analysis if no interviews were presented in my research paper

[@Meiaximilian]

Where is the part one video? Thank you for your help=)

[@qualitativeresearcher]

just look at the uploads section on my channel, part 1 is there

[@thechannelname81]

based on the type of your bed and radiator, I am assuming that you are from the UK, particularly, Scotland? ) by the way, thank you very much for simplifying our lives with such good tutorials)

[@qualitativeresearcher]

Thank you and you're welcome, Mr Holmes :) (yes, I am in Scotland)

[@kootsroots]

Great videos! I am struggling because my Nvivo is not allowing me to merge my codes. I expect it is user error. Perhaps my settings are not setup correctly?

[@qualitativeresearcher]

As far as I know, there are no settings that would not enable merging. Are you sure you are doing everything correctly? Remember, first cut the code that you want to merge into another, and then select the new code and choose "merge into the selected node". Also, if you are using a MAC, this will be slightly different, just type "merging codes NVivo MAC" and you will find guidelines for this

[@jsbart96]

I second this persons query. I'm using a mac, and when i right click on a code, there is no 'cut' function, only 'copy'. This means I have to find the original code and delete it after i've merged it into another one. There must be a quicker way to do this?

[@qualitativeresearcher]

@@jsbart96 there is, if you want to merge the code, select it and go to the HOME tab, the Clipboard group, at the very top. Choose copy, and then select the code INTO which you want to merge the previous code, again look at the HOME tab, Clipboard view, press the Option key when you click the Merge command, and then click Merge into Selected Node Removing Original.

[@qualitativeresearcher]

Hopefully this works for you , do let me know please, as I am still trying to learn to work around the various inconveniences of the MAC version (which is quite hard considering I do not have the MAC version lol)

[@Reyhanearts]

Great video, tnx. I have a question. Were'nt we supposed to make the categories with negative or positive directions?

[@qualitativeresearcher]

Not necessarily - there is no such rule, and the "mood" of your categories depends only on your particular study and its aims

[@Reyhanearts]

@@qualitativeresearcher thank you very much

[@dadanzhao4207]

Dear Dr Kriukow, I'm enlightened by your video and I'm clearer about how to develop themes from codes now. Thank you :) However, I'm still confused about the differences between content analysis and thematic analysis. It is required to justify the data analysis method in the thesis. So, how do you think of their differences? Also, in content analysis, can I stop at the category stage rather than develop them into themes? How can I make the decision and justify for it? Thank you.

[@qualitativeresearcher]

There are lots of similarities between the two, and differences usually depend on individual studies and what you are looking for. Thematic analysis is usually more inductive, where you are more "open minded" towards exploring what the data shows you, while content analysis is usually more deductive and oriented towards finding specific things (e.g. description of teachin methods in a teaching curriculum, mentions of culture and religion in university mission statements, etc.). This is a rather general distinction however, so you will still need to explore this topic further

[@dadanzhao4207]

@@qualitativeresearcher Dear Dr Kriukow, thank you so much for sharing these. Do you have any recommended books or articles about this? Thank you.

[@qualitativeresearcher]

@@dadanzhao4207 not really, one of the reasons I record these is specifically because I believe this is either being over-complicated in methodological books and articles or missing from them completely. I do recommend, however, as a generally good resource for qualitative data analysis, a book by Pat Bazeley. I review it in one of my videos in which I review several books that I recommend

[@meaghanwellsliddy3048]

How do you know if you are coding "correctly", I get that its subjective but I am just curious to know if there is such a thing as incorrect coding or "bad" coding? I am currently creating themes from my codes but I always question if I am doing it correctly. And I do also connect it back to my research question like you said to do in the video.

[@qualitativeresearcher]

really hard to say what a good or bad code is, this will of course depend on individual contexts, and sometimes on teh methodology of a given study, but generally if they are detailed enough, and clear to you, they are good. You are not being evaluated on the basis of your codes, but rather on the basis of the final product that these codes help you work out (that is, the themes)

[@meaghanwellsliddy3048]

@@qualitativeresearcher Thank you !

[@fakhrakhurshid7712]

My research question is the role of AI in Supply chain to make it more resilient and I asked 13 different Interview Questions

[@Mskhosravi5506]

Excuse me Dr, thanks a lot for this video, but I have confused the main difference between these 2 versions, could you please explain for me?

[@qualitativeresearcher]

In version 1 I decided to have a theme called "ways to improve" mental health access, and this influenced what sub-themes I put there and how I named them. In version 2, I decided to instead have a theme called "factors that benefit ..." - this, again, influenced how I worded the same sub-themes from Version 1 but in another way. I do explain this in the video

[@blackbohemianmama]

If you find a code that is very important to the study but isn’t mentioned often, is it ok to still include it as a theme?

[@qualitativeresearcher]

definitely as a Sub-theme (e.g. one of the "Challenges of online education" theme maybe something just 1 person metnioned). Although it would not be common to create a theme based on something that only 1 person said

[@ESelma-li1rb]

Would this process work for large datasets? Mine has over 50k comments and my supervisor keeps saying to follow braun and clark and I want to hit my head against the wall :')

[@qualitativeresearcher]

it's a lot of work (regardless of the approach you adopt) but yes, this will work on any data set. This is just a practical explanation of the common sense procedure for data analysis. Once you do this, you can easily fit this into Braun and Clarke's framework (since you are expected, as a student, to state what exact approach you are following in your analysis)

[@leecurtispt1477]

I have sent you a message via Facebook asking for one on one coaching prices. Thank you.

[@kizzynanik]

why did i only find this tutorial 3 days before my results section was due?!?!?!??!?! 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺

[@khonggianpetstore7351]

kki ốt ccc fci,,,

[@peterpradeep212]

Dr. Kriukow, i Wish to contact you for my reaseach, Can you please let me know how to contact you. Thanks