Expanding Approaches to Thematic Analysis: Creative Engagements with Qualitative Data

Expanding Approaches to Thematic Analysis: Creative Engagements with Qualitative Data springboards readers into a world where generating themes from qualitative data is a creative, experimental, and wondrous process!

While no one ever said it had to be, thematic analysis is invariably described as a step-by-step process that involves coding. Yet qualitative data analysis is more than a technical procedure―it invokes imagination and inspiration―intuitional engagements that are as vital to the data analysis process as they are difficult to describe. This edited book begins with two premises: (1) there is more than one way to theme data, and (2) qualitative researchers do not have to code to get to themes. Each chapter introduces readers to a different approach to thematic analysis, explores that approach’s theoretical and disciplinary roots, and illustrates how that approach can be used to generate themes. Approaches include annotating, memoing, storying, writing, composing poems, artmaking, meditating, and more, expanding conceptualizations of what themes and thematic analysis can be. The book also includes ‘methodologies in action’: helpful examples of creative theming from doctoral students and early career scholars.

This book is as much a provocation for engaging thematic analysis beyond/without/in addition to coding as it is a resource for anyone interested in the rationale, justification, and examples for doing so. As such, it is a source of inspiration for any qualitative student, researcher, and scholar who wishes to expand their repertoire of approaches to thematic analysis.

Jennifer R. Wolgemuth is Associate Professor of Qualitative Research at the University of South Florida. Drawing on critical, poststructural, and new materialist theories, she explores inquiry as an agential process that simultaneously investigates and creates lives and communities to and for which researchers are responsible.

Kelly W. Guyotte is Associate Professor of Qualitative Research at the University of Alabama. Always inspired by her background in the visual arts, her research interests include issues of gender and equity in higher education and artful inquiry practices, as well as qualitative pedagogy and mentoring.

Stephanie Anne Shelton is Associate Professor of Qualitative Research at the University of Alabama. Guided by her extensive background in K–12 and teacher education, and situated within queer and feminist theories, she often engages in interview, focus group, and observation-based research that explores LGBTQ+ issues in educational research.