I am writing my master thesis, currently analysing qualitative data. I read several papers on content and thematic analysis. It created kind of confusion because there are diverse opinions which overlap each other. I would appreciate any advice, input or relevant paper to understand both concepts specifically.
Hi Qamer,
This article may help you.
Vaismoradi, M., Turunen, H., & Bondas, T. (2013). Content analysis and thematic analysis: Implications for conducting a qualitative descriptive study. Nursing & health sciences, 15(3), 398-405.
File attached.
Thanks Arumugam for sharing the article. It really helped me to understand the difference.
Thematic analysis is looking for ideas that appear again and again in your "text." Content analysis includes thematic analysis, but also other ways of looking at data in your text.
For example, you could perform content analysis of newspaper articles to find out how many fatal traffic accidents occurred in a city in a certain time period. This would be content analysis, but not thematic analysis.
Both the terms are very self explanatory. Through content analysis you are able to make cull out various findings of the textual data. Themes could be one of them. But if the textual data set has visuals as well then content analysis may need to include semiotic analysis as well.
Themes will emerge from the content. I rightly agree with Jaromir Volek. Thematic analysis is an off shoot of the content analysis. You can decide to further explore emerging themes from the contents you are analysing.
The content analysis offers a method to analyse a variety of forms of data including media and self-report methods so that insights into cultural trends and experiences can be understood.The identification of suitable themes and codes is subjective and decided by the researcher alone, meaning that conclusions lack any scrutiny or objectivity. On the other hand, the themes identified within thematic analysis are re-analysed so that they become more refined and relevant and given short hand codes. The researcher can then annotate the transcript with the codes that have been identified.The themes identified can be used to support or challenge existing theories, with specific examples of data or quotes being used as supporting evidence.
In content analysis we may or may not come up with some themes as what we do in analyzing the interview data/content but in thematic analysis our main objective in analyzing the qualitative data is to have 3 to 5 major themes.
Good discussion on a very relevant topic. I must say content analysis is more broad and complex compared to thematic analysis, and the main difference lies in the quantification of codes, which is possible in content analysis. iI agree with the point made by Ariful Islam on objectivity / subjectivity of the analysis. I would also recommend to read the article shared by many member: Content analysis and thematic analysis: Implications for conducting a qualitative descriptive study
Content analysis and thematic analysis: Implications for conducting a qualitative descriptive study
Hello everyone, Thanks a lot for the insightful discussion. I noticed that several researchers mentioned that. thematic analysis is a sub0analysis of content analysis. However, I was not able to find a reference for that. Can someone share with me one?
I am asking because I conducted thematic analysis for press news in my research, I am not sure if I should state that the first stage was a content analysis (or a broad thematic analysis, allowing themes to emerge inductively).
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