Qualitative Analysis in Gay Men's Health Research: Comparing Thematic, Critical Discourse, and Conversation Analysis

Abstract

Gay men's health typically relies on traditional forms of qualitative analysis, such as thematic analysis, and would benefit from a diversity of analytic approaches. Such diversity offers public health researchers a breadth of tools to address different kinds of research questions and, thus, substantiate different types of social phenomenon relevant to the health and wellbeing of gay men. In this article, I compare and contrast three qualitative analytic approaches: thematic, critical discourse, and conversation analysis. I demonstrate and distinguish their key analytic assumptions by applying each approach to a single data excerpt taken from a public health interview conducted for a broader study on gay men's health. I engage in a discussion of each approach in relation to three themes: its utility for gay men's health, its approach to dilemmas of voice, and its capacity for reflexivity. I advocate that qualitative researchers should capitalise on the full range of qualitative analytic approaches to achieve the goals of gay men's health. However, I specifically encourage qualitative researchers to engage with conversation analysis, not only because of its capacity to resolve dilemmas of voice and to achieve reflexivity, but also for its ability to capture forms of social life hitherto undocumented through thematic and critical discourse analysis.

Understanding motivations for large US cannabis firms' participation in the cannabis space: Qualitative study exploring views of key decision‐makers

“…Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. Thematic analysis is apt for detailing the views of a multitude of research participants , and reducing large data sets into easily identifiable categories . Given the nature of the study and the authors' familiarity with the area, there were likely to be several possible preconceptions around the motivations for cannabis firms' participation in the space.…”

Factors Influencing Performance Management of Non-Equity Joint Ventures in the Oil Sector

“…I was keen to amalgamate and combine similar codes into a clear group of subcategories, then establish further categories to organise and reduce the data withdrawn from the ten interviews. In doing so, I was very cautious to perform the combination of the similar codes without touching the richness and integrity of the data, while simultaneously creating transparent links between the objectives of my thesis and its derived findings (Thomas, 2006;Braun and Clarke, 2006;Aguinaldo, 2012).…”

“…Generally, thematic analysis is a tool for sharing the generic skills of 'thematising meanings' across the qualitative analysis spectrum (Holloway and Tordes, 2003). It organises and describes data into themes and reports those themes as findings, allowing simplicity and richness in the data (Braun and Clarke, 2006;Aguinaldo, 2012). In line with that, I had ten transcripts from ten interviews with a total of 64,000 words, and so 69 the aim was to simply identify the relevancy of the content, group the data into meaningful categories allowing reduction of redundancies and sustaining the integrity of the data (Aguinaldo, 2012).…”

“…Thematic analysis is criticised as a tool that works without association to a specific philosophical stance (Barun and Clarke, 2006). Additionally, it doesn't allow data reflexivity, meaning that the voice of the interviewee is not reflected in the analysis itself (Aguinaldo, 2012). Arguably, the fact that thematic analysis is independent of any philosophical position proves its reflexivity as it can be used with a wide range of qualitative studies (Aronson, 1994;Roulston, 2001;Brooks, McCluskey, Turley and King, 2015).…”

“…The unit of analysis in a thematic technique focuses on describing the experiences, thoughts, behaviours or feelings of participants (Aguinaldo, 2012). In this thesis, I focus on identifying and understanding the factors influencing performance management of the Egyptian petroleum joint ventures through interpreting the meaning of participants' views, thus I am not looking at the motivations behind these views.…”