Virginia Braun

University of Auckland · School of Psychology

Using the concept of methodological congruence—where the different elements of a study ‘fit’ together—we explore both problematic and good practice in (reflexive) thematic analysis (TA) as reported in Health Promotion International (HPI). Aligning with the importance we place on ‘owning your perspectives’ we situate this exploration in relation to...

Background Reflexive thematic analysis is widely used in qualitative research published in Palliative Medicine, and in the broader field of health research. However, this approach is often not used well. Common problems in published reflexive thematic analysis in general include assuming thematic analysis is a singular approach, rather than a famil...

In contexts marked by neoliberal ideology and a claimed “crisis” in men’s health, men are responsibilized to be/come healthy. Eating has long been a gendered practice in Western cultures, and recent cultural shifts have produced ways of eating that are both masculinized and (claimed) healthy. Online healthy eating advice, which encourages and suppo...

Reflexive thematic analysis (TA), widely used in education, social work, and counselling research, offers an accessible method for exploring and interpreting a qualitative dataset, and telling a story about patterns of meaning. Doing reflexive TA well requires a thoughtful, situated researcher or research team. As the method puts researcher subjec-...

This chapter presents the essentials of conceptualising, designing and doing reflexive Thematic Analysis (TA), in counselling and psychotherapy. The authors contextualise TA as a family of methods, with some quite radically different approaches, ranging theoretically from ‘scientifically descriptive’ to ‘artfully interpretative’. After outlining ke...

Despite the persistent dominance of a 'scientific psychology' paradigm in health psychology, the use of qualitative research continues to grow. Qualitative approaches are often based on fundamentally different values from (post)positivistempiricism, raising important considerations for quality, and whether qualitative work adheres to, and is judged...

Recent upheaval in racism debates across western countries is exemplified in New Zealand in the decision to compulsorily teach Māori histories in schools. Until recently this history has been largely marginalised and ignored by settlers/ Pākehā who maintained a belief in histories which served to legitimise the Pākehā position of power. Earlier ana...

Eating healthily is widely understood as a key way for individuals to achieve and maintain good health, but how people make sense of what healthy eating involves is more complex. In a context characterised by shifts in authority around health and knowledge, and neoliberal and healthist discourses, we ask how the task of ‘eating healthily’ is made s...

When we first wrote about thematic analysis (TA) in a paper entitled Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology published in the journal Qualitative Research in Psychology in 2006, we thought we were writing a paper that we could give to our students, one that reflected our values and practices as qualitative researchers. We did not imagine the paper wo...

I am not allowed to share the full text - please don't request - thank you! https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/thematic-analysis/book248481

Feminism & Psychology ( F&P) was launched in 1991 with a sense of possibility, enthusiasm and excitement as well as a sense of urgent need – to critique and reconstruct mainstream psychology (theory, research methods, and clinical practice). Thirty years have now passed since the first issue was produced. Thirty volumes with three or four issues ha...

The psychological wellbeing of Queer and Gender Diverse Young People (QGDYP) has received attention of late, and increasing research evidences much higher rates of psychological distress experienced by these groups, compared to their straight, cisgender counterparts. Far more limited is research exploring queer and gender diverse young people’s own...

Thematic analysis (TA) is widely used in qualitative psychology. In using TA, researchers must choose between a diverse range of approaches that can differ considerably in their underlying (but often implicit) conceptualizations of qualitative research, meaningful knowledge production, and key constructs such as themes, as well as analytic procedur...

Qualitative story completion (SC) research involves the novel qualitative application of a technique previously used in quantitative research and clinical assessment, in which participants write stories in response to a story "stem" designed by the researcher. The resulting stories are analyzed to identify patterns of meaning using conventional qua...

As researchers continue to adapt, conduct and design their research in the presence of COVID-19, new opportunities to connect research creativity and ethics have opened up. Researchers around the world have responded in diverse, thoughtful and creative ways -adapting data collection methods, fostering researcher and community resilience, and explor...

Thematic analysis methods, including the reflexive approach we have developed, are widely used in counselling and psychotherapy research, as are other approaches that seek to develop ‘patterns’ (themes, categories) across cases. Without a thorough grounding in the conceptual foundations of a wide variety of across‐case analytic approaches, and qual...

Fully qualitative surveys, which prioritise qualitative research values, and harness the rich potential of qualitative data, have much to offer qualitative researchers, especially given online delivery options. Yet the method remains underutilised, and there is little in the way of methodological discussion of qualitative surveys. Underutilisation...

Developing a universal quality standard for thematic analysis (TA) is complicated by the existence of numerous iterations of TA that differ paradigmatically, philosophically and procedurally. This plurality in TA is often not recognised by editors, reviewers or authors, who promote ‘coding reliability measures’ as universal requirements of quality...

This chapter provides a critical review of the inter-disciplinary research on voluntary childlessness, examining some of the problematic assumptions that underpin the literature and the image of the childfree woman that emerges as a result. It is not intended as a comprehensive overview of this literature, but rather a feminist engagement with the...

The concept of data saturation, defined as ‘information redundancy’ or the point at which no new themes or codes ‘emerge’ from data, is widely referenced in thematic analysis (TA) research in sport and exercise, and beyond. Several researchers have sought to ‘operationalise’ data saturation and provide concrete guidance on how many interviews, or f...

What opportunities are there for narrative practitioners to engage in academic research whilst retaining an alignment with poststructuralist ideas, feminist commitments and narrative practice principles? This paper considers Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke’s model of thematic analysis (TA) as an approach which can overcome some of the tensions t...

In 2006, psychologists Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke published a paper entitled Using thematic analysis in psychology in Qualitative Research in Psychology. The paper sought to provide guidance, for psychology colleagues and students, on the conceptualisation, considerations and practice of thematic analysis (TA). Their paper proved unexpected...

Livingston et al.’s paper amply demonstrates the rich potential of qualitative methods to provide insight into the life-worlds of patients, and analysis of hitherto un(der)explored facets of mental and physical health conditions. The publication of their paper reflects increasing acknowledgement of the value of qualitative methods in medical resear...

Those investigating neoliberal and postfeminist subjectivities have argued that continuous self-improvement and self-surveillance have become everyday life strategies for many women. It has been suggested that these strategies have also re-organised women's friendships, where women support each other in the anxiety provoking work of self-perfection...

Since initially writing on thematic analysis in 2006, the popularity of the method we outlined has exploded, the variety of TA approaches have expanded, and, not least, our thinking has developed and shifted. In this reflexive commentary, we look back at some of the unspoken assumptions that informed how we wrote our 2006 paper. We connect some of...

How does the current state of the field of feminist qualitative psychological research reflect and enact the methodological characteristics and values of feminist research-principally, the values of reflexivity, methodological diversity and innovation, and the prioritisation of feminist political goals over procedural, epistemological and disciplin...

Tematik analiz, sınırları çok iyi çizilmemiş olmasına ve az tanınmasına rağmen, psikoloji alanında yaygın olarak kullanılan nitel bir analiz yöntemidir. Bu makalede, tematikanaliz yönteminin nitel verilerin analizinde kullanışlı ve kuramsal açıdan esnek bir yaklaşım olduğu savunulmaktadır. Bu çalışmada öncelikle, tema veya örüntülerin arandığı diğe...

This chapter maps the terrain of thematic analysis (TA), a method for capturing patterns (“themes”) across qualitative datasets. We identify key concepts and different orientations and practices, illustrating why TA is often better understood as an umbrella term, used for sometimes quite different approaches, than a single qualitative analytic appr...

This chapter introduces the story completion (SC) method of collecting qualitative data, a novel technique that offers exciting potential to the qualitative researcher. SC involves a researcher writing a story “stem” or “cue” – or, more simply put, the start of a story, usually an opening sentence or two – and asking the participants to complete or...

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note...

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note...

Background The ways people eat is of interest to many, from government level instruction to the populace on ‘healthy eating’ (e.g. through guidelines, such as the UK’s Eatwell Guide; eatwell.gov.uk), to the individuals who may be making choices around their food practice. Food – what and how we eat – is deeply implicated in health and wellbeing, an...

Background Story completion asks the participant to produce a story, in response to an open, sometimes ambiguous, scenario. As a method for qualitative research, it is relatively unknown. Yet the method has deep roots, with origins in psychotherapy practice (projective techniques, such as Rorschach) and (quantitative) developmental psychology resea...

Female Genital Cosmetic Surgery - edited by Sarah M. Creighton February 2019

An analysis of the cultural and economic drivers of the growing phenomenon of FGCS, written by cross-disciplinary experts, this book challenges the concept of individual consumer choice in FGCS: A decision that is rarely exercised in a socio-cultural vacuum. Four distinct aspects of FGCS are covered: Variations in female genital anatomy; surgical t...

What is story completion? How come I’ve never heard of it? Can it be useful for me as a qualitative researcher? A relatively unknown method for qualitative data collection, story completion has a long history of use in psychotherapy practice and (quantitative) developmental psychology research. We believe it has untapped, exciting potential as a qu...

FULL TEXT NOT AVAILABLE, PLEASE DO NOT REQUEST, ANY REQUESTS WILL BE DECLINED This chapter maps the terrain of thematic analysis (TA), a method for capturing patterns ("themes") across qualitative datasets. We identify key concepts and different orientations and practices, illustrating why TA is often better understood as an umbrella term, used fo...

Virginia Braun, Victoria Clarke, Hannah Frith, Nikki Hayfield, Helen Malson, Naomi Moller, and Iduna Shah-Beckley came together at the University of the West of England (UWE) in July 2017 to discuss and share their enthusiasm for the story completion method. Virginia nominally “led” the discussion to keep us on track. This is a transcript of the di...

Do women with body hair continue to evoke disgust? Are men without body hair read only as athletes and/or gay? To explore contemporary sense-making practices around apparently counter-normative gendered body hair practice, we developed a two-stem story completion task. We collected stories from 161 undergraduate students (129 women and 32 men) abou...

This study explores the gendered body hair removal norm and the meanings of male body hair by examining young people’s sense-making around male body hair removal. The novel technique of story completion was used to collect data from 102 psychology undergraduates. They were presented with a story “stem” featuring a young man (David) deciding to star...

The (older) single woman has evoked numerous negative sociocultural stereotypes in recent (Western) history, with “being single” a fraught position for (heterosexual) women. Have shifts toward gendered equality changed this stereotype? We interviewed 21 young heterosexual women in Aotearoa (New Zealand) about their experiences of being single. We f...

Heterosexual casual sex is routinely depicted as a physically, socially, and psychologically "risky" practice. This is the case in media accounts, psychological research, and other academic work. In this article, we examine 15 men's and 15 women's talk about casual sex from a discursive psychological stance to achieve two objectives. Firstly, we co...

In this brief commentary, we critically reflect on the use of thematic analysis, and particularly the approach to thematic analysis we have outlined, in counselling and psychotherapy research. We identify the distinct characteristics of our thematic analysis approach, and highlight some common areas of confusion and poor practice in published thema...

Indigenous (Māori) psychologies of sexual health occur at the cultural nexus of Indigenous and Western knowledge, colonising influence and intervention. Formal school-based sexuality education holds potential to intervene in this psychological space by decolonising notions of Māori sexuality, relationships and reproduction. This research utilises a...

Mātauranga Māori (knowledge and wisdom pertaining to Māori, the Indigenous people of New Zealand) has long been suppressed and invalidated in psychological paradigms, and the practice of whanaungatanga (relationships, connection, and practices among a family collective) undermined in colonising practice. Utilising a mana wāhine methodology (an appr...

Hair removal amongst Western women is ubiquitous, and research continues to highlight the ongoing conformity of almost all women with hair removal practices. Often women are presented as either cultural dupes, following the expectations of the Western hairless ideal without question, or highly engaged participants in the rigours of aesthetic labour...

Abortion is an under-researched, sensitive and politicised topic, but in the New Zealand context, there is a conspicuous dearth of exploratory research on Indigenous (Māori) perspectives on abortion, despite some indication that Māori seek abortion services. International research that attends to the socio-cultural context of abortion evidences a f...

In this chapter, we explore four particular ways in which innovation has pushed qualitative data collection beyond the familiar focus on face-to-face interviews. We have chosen these methods both for their practicality and because they are tools and techniques we have used ourselves; as committed qualitative researchers, we can attest to their valu...

Admission to an acute mental health inpatient unit is a significant event for a young person. The interface between inpatient and community teams negotiating the admission and later discharge can be fraught. To understand how to improve the transition between inpatient and community care, we interviewed 48 community clinicians about their experienc...

We look at the past through contemporary eyes, understand it from our present, and can use the familiarities and unfamiliarities in what we see as a tool for critical insight—to render strange what has come to be taken for granted. Here I take a particular historical event—the non-consummation and eventual annulment of the marriage of UK art histor...

Building on theoretical discussions regarding the institution of heterosexuality and heteronormativity, this chapter demonstrates how language and heterosexual sex (that is, heterosex) are intimately intertwined. The chapter teases out the ways in which the norms of heterosexuality have changed over time yet also remained the same in several fundam...

Thematic analysis (TA) is a method for identifying, analyzing, and interpreting patterns of meaning (‘themes’) within qualitative data. TA is unusual in the canon of qualitative analytic approaches, because it offers a method – a tool or technique, unbounded by theoretical commitments – rather than a methodology (a theoretically informed, and confi...

Pubic hair removal, now common among women in Anglo/western cultures, has been theorised as a disciplinary practice. As many other feminine bodily practices, it is characterised by removal or alteration of aspects of women's material body (i.e., pubic hair) considered unattractive but otherwise “natural.” Emerging against this theorisation is a dis...

Vaginal steaming made global headlines in 2015 after its promotion by celebrity Gwyneth Paltrow. One of many female genital modification practices currently on offer in Anglo-Western nations - practices both heavily promoted and critiqued - vaginal steaming is claimed to offer benefits for fertility and overall reproductive, sexual or even general...

One of us (VC) was having a conversation with a student recently about the origins and history of thematic analysis (TA). The student had read Qualitative Research in Counselling and Psychotherapy (McLeod, 2011), a text which presents TA as a variant of grounded theory. Victoria commented that she thought that TA evolved from content analysis, and...

The reproduction of Indigenous people, who have experienced ongoing cultural and ethnic marginalization, has long been a source of contention in colonizing contexts. There is scope to further decolonize and reinvigorate traditional Indigenous knowledge that has relevancy and utility in contemporary lives. The present article engages a püräkau (narr...

Men's hair removal practices are becoming mainstream, seen as a consequence of changing masculine norms and men's relationships to their bodies. This is often presented as a straightforward 'shift' from men's ideal bodies as naturally hairy, to increased hairlessness, and the consequence on men's body concerns as inevitable. This paper analyses qua...

Discussions of heterosexual casual sex are often imbued with (gendered) assumptions regarding the motives for, and drawbacks of, such a practice. The pulls of casual sex are often depicted as sexual gratification and the drawbacks relayed in terms of physical risk, for example, sexually transmitted infections (STIs)/human immunodeficiency virus (HI...

Recent shifts in the western cultural landscape mean that practices such as casual sex are contradictory terrains for women. Although permissive and liberal discourses construct women’s casual sex as acceptable, and even desirable, traditional discourses and a sexual double standard, do not. This article examines 15 young women’s negotiation of the...

Men's hair removal practices are becoming mainstream, seen as a consequence of changing masculine norms and men's relationships to their bodies. This is often presented as a straightforward 'shift' from men's ideal bodies as naturally hairy, to increased hairlessness, and the consequence on men's body concerns as inevitable. This paper analyses qua...

Thematic analysis (TA) is one of a cluster of analytic approaches you can use, if you want to identify patterns of meaning across a qualitative dataset. The widely-used version of TA we outline in this chapter is fairly unique in the canon of qualitative analytic approaches in that it just offers the researcher analytic tools to make sense of data....

This chapter provides an introduction to thematic analysis (TA) as a method for identifying and interpreting patterns in qualitative data. We distinguish between two main ‘schools’ of TA – (1) approaches with a foothold in quantitative research, which are concerned with the ‘reliability’ of coding and theme development; and (2) our thoroughly quali...

This chapter provides an introduction to thematic analysis (TA). We highlight the unique features of TA, including its flexibility, and its status as a technique that can be used within a wide variety of approaches to qualitative research. We then provide a detailed description of doing TA, using Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke’s six-phase appro...

Understanding how people in any given population think about and experience their sexuality is fundamental to developing and implementing good health policy, research, and practice. Yet despite several decades of focus on sexual identity and HIV risk within health research, gay men as a category are often treated in an uncomplicated way. This artic...

The field of health and wellbeing scholarship has a strong tradition of qualitative research—and rightly so. Qualitative research offers rich and compelling insights into the real worlds, experiences, and perspectives of patients and health care professionals in ways that are completely different to, but also sometimes complimentary to, the knowled...

This study explores conceptualisations of same- versus different-sex infidelity in the context of a heterosexual marriage using story completion. A convenience sample of 57 female and male participants completed one of four versions of a story stem featuring a husband who is either emotionally or sexually unfaithful with a woman or a man. A social...

Media forums that provide “sex advice” are a rich source of (sexual) information for heterosexual individuals and have been critically examined for the ways in which they construct heterosexuality (and sexual subjectivities). The representations of (heterosexual) casual sex are also prevalent across the mass media. This paper uses a Foucauldian/pos...

Thematic analysis is a poorly demarcated, rarely acknowledged, yet widely used qualitative analytic method within psychology. In this paper, we argue that it offers an accessible and theoretically flexible approach to analysing qualitative data. We outline what thematic analysis is, locating it in relation to other qualitative analytic methods that...

TA as a method was first developed by Gerald Holton, a physicist and historian of science, in the 1970s. In the social sciences, TA has been extensively used for analysing qualitative data, but until recently there has been little discussion of TA as a method or guidance provided for its use. In 2006, Braun and Clarke proposed a ‘systematic’ and ‘s...

Empirical research within critical psychology is strongly associated with the use of qualitative methods. In the field of qualitative psychology a distinction can be made between experiential and critical approaches (Braun & Clarke, 2012a, Reicher, 2000), both of which involve some kind of critique of mainstream psychology. Experiential approaches...

This chapter introduces you to thematic analysis (TA), one of the many methods of analysis for qualitative research. Qualitative research, like all research, begins with a research question. In contrast to quantitative research, in which the research question is determined at the start of the research process, qualitative research questions are flu...

Women’s and men’s bodies and sexuality can be understood as socially situated and socially produced. This means they are affected by, and developed in relation to, patterned sociocultural meanings and representations. We aim here to understand a recently emergent, and potentially gendered, body practice—pubic hair removal—by examining the meanings...

Research and anecdotal evidence suggest women continue to remove body hair, and there is some evidence for cultural changes in men's hair removal practices. This paper reports on data collected using an online mix-methods survey from 584 New Zealanders between the ages of 18-35 (mean age 26, 48.9% male, 50.6% female). The data demonstrated that sub...

This paper analyses online texts concerning the supposed ‘rules’ and ‘etiquette’ of heterosexual casual sex, exploring how ‘ideal’ casual sex was constructed – as object and practice. We examine how casual sex was constituted by authors who positioned themselves as knowledgeable and/or expert in relation to casual sex and demonstrate the discourses...

Condoms can be highly successful in preventing transmission of many common sexually transmitted infections, and are integral to many safer-sex campaigns. However, this relatively simple strategy is not effectively utilised, and research demonstrates intense, diverse, but patterned dislikes of condoms. In this article, I provide a discursive analysi...

Orgasm is a "goal" of much sexual activity, and a source of potentially intense pleasure and fulfillment, yet can be fraught with difficulty or distress. Relatively little social science research has explored people's experiences around, and their meanings related to, orgasm, and indeed other sexual pleasures, especially with young adults. This stu...

Little is known about the health views of gay men. In this article we report on how gay men explained health and the ways they discussed how health for gay men can be improved. We conducted a thematic analysis of data collected from 45 gay men in 11 focus groups and identified that health was mainly explained in individual terms, as were the ways t...

With qualitative research methods an integral part of the psychology curriculum, questions arise of what approaches to teach, and how to teach them. We think thematic analysis (TA) offers a useful – and a relatively easy to teach and learn – basic introduction to qualitative analysis (see Braun & Clarke, 2006; 2012, 2013; Clarke & Braun, 2013); yet...

Objective: The relatively recent interest in critical men's health research has largely focused upon men's experiences of managing or preventing ill health. There has been limited discussion on the decision making that men engage in with health practices that are not constructed as immediately imperative for their own well-being-such as vasectomy....

New Zealand’s bacterial sexually transmitted infection (STI) rates are considered the worst in the OECD. Policy within New Zealand (NZ), as in many Western countries, often takes a particularly individualistic approach to reducing STI rates, but this has proved unsuccessful. This paper presents a thematic analysis of interview data from 32 key info...

Defining and describing health has traditionally been the role of medical experts. Although a rich literature has recently established the importance of lay accounts of health, one important gap relates to gay men's accounts of health. Data from 11 focus groups involving 45 gay men were thematically analyzed to investigate gay men's views of health...

Until recently, thematic analysis (TA) was a widely used yet poorly defined method of qualitative data analysis. The few texts (Boyatzis, 1998; Patton, 2002), chapters (Hayes, 1997) or articles (Aronson, 1994; Attride-Stirling, 2001; Fereday & Muir-Cochrane, 2006; Tuckett, 2005) often came from outside psychology, and were never widely taken-up wit...

Every woman in the world has the right to control her own body, plan her family, receive good quality medical care, and give birth to a healthy baby. This book takes a comprehensive look at the status of women's reproductive rights from a transnational, human-rights perspective. "Reproductive justice" is a relatively new term that underscores the f...

This article examines vasectomy as a gendered practice of (non)reproductive masculinity. Reporting on interview based data, in which a number of New Zealand men made sense of the operation, this article used critical thematic analysis to extract themes from semi-structured interviews with participants who had vasectomies in ‘typical’ circumstances....

Men’s interest in the contraceptive and reproductive spheres is often considered to be minimal, with management of these domains traditionally constructed as ‘feminine’. Despite this, some men, who have no interest in having children, choose to take a higher degree of control over their reproductive bodies, voluntarily seeking a ‘pre-emptive’ vasec...

Background: More than 15 years ago, the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) identified men’s involvement with reproductive and contraceptive tasks as vital for improving women’s reproductive health worldwide. The uptake of vasectomy provides one measure of men’s involvement in reproductive and contraceptive actions, but up...