Thematic analysis: A practical guide
| Published date | 01 June 2022 |
| Author | Melissa Forbes |
| Date | 01 June 2022 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1035719X211058251 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
Book Review
Evaluation Journal of Australasia
2022, Vol. 22(2) 132–135
© The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1035719X211058251
journals.sagepub.com/home/evj
Thematic analysis: A
practical guide
Braun Virginia & Clarke Victoria, Thematic analysis: A practical guide. SAGE Publications, 2021.
ISBN 978-1-4739-5323-9.
Reviewed by: Melissa Forbes, Academic Quality Unit, University of Southern Queensland,
Toowoomba, QLD, Australia
For many qualitative researchers and evaluators using qualitative methods, the names
‘Braun and Clarke’roll off the tongue as easily as their own. Virginia Braun and
Victoria Clarke have become synonymous with ‘thematic analysis’(TA), an analytic
method (or rather, a family of methods) for identifying patterns of meaning across
qualitative data sets. Their article ‘Using thematic analysis in psychology’(Braun &
Clarke, 2006) put TA on the map as a clearly demarcated and legitimate method of data
analysis. As of writing, that article has received over 114,000 citations according to
Google Scholar.
Since 2006, Braun and Clarke have written extensively on thematic analysis, re-
fining their thinking and approach, culminating in a new book, Thematic analysis: A
practical guide (2021, SAGE). For researchers and evaluators alike, thematic analysis
is a ‘go to’method for analysing and synthesising qualitative data such as stakeholder
interviews and focus groups. However, as Braun et al. (2019) have noted, TA is not a
homogenous approach and is better understood as an umbrella term under which can be
found a range of different thematic approaches to data analysis. More recently, Braun
and Clarke (2020) refer to TA ‘methods’rather than TA as a single method, to em-
phasise the existence of different approaches to conducting TA. It is important for
anyone seeking to use TA to make an unambiguous and reflexive decision on the type
of TA they wish to employ when analysing qualitative data.
Thematic analysis: A practical guide is the first book-length exposition of Braun and
Clarke’s version of TA, which they refer to as ‘reflexive TA’. They have previously
written about the differences between other approaches such as coding reliability and
codebook TA and reflexive TA (Braun et al., 2019). Here again, they include a chapter
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