I Tried Getting Themes in MAXQDA — Here’s the Exact Process

 In my previous article, we looked at how we can generate codes in MAXQDA, we defined what a qualitative code is and we went ahead and did some coding inside MAXQDA.

This is a continuation of that article.

In this article, we are going to see how we can develop themes in MAXQDA.

Who am I, and why should you listen to me?

I’m Bernard Mugo and I see myself as a qualitative research specialist.

In the past four years, I’ve helped nearly 500 PhD students to analyze their data, especially through the thematic analysis approach and finally complete their thesis and dissertations, which has helped them to finally graduate.

Some of them were stuck and they just needed some consultation or some coaching to get them unstuck.

Some of them needed more hands-on assistance and I was able to assist them to get through their PhD.

Now, with the introduction out of the way, let’s go and generate some themes inside MAXQDA.

Before we begin finding the themes, I want to remind you of the research questions that we are looking at and show you some of the codes that we generated in our past article.

 So the research questions were: How do Filipino migrant teachers with prior school leadership experience in the Philippines apply their leadership skills in classroom settings within a foreign academic environment?

And the research question number two was what factors influence how Filipino migrant teachers apply their leadership skills in classroom settings within a foreign academic environment?

 So these are the main objectives. 

And ofcourse the objectives remain at the back of our minds because they guide our themes.

Now, let’s remind ourselves some of the codes that we were able to develop.

Some of the codes from participant B included:

•  Assessing needs
•  Building rapport
•  Embracing change
• Encouraging motivation
•  Encouraging critical thinking
•  Communicating effectively
•  Being authentic
•  Encouraging collaboration

 From participant A we have:

•  Modeling behavior
• We are providing clear instructions
• Making lessons more engaging
•  practicing reward systems, and so on

Remember we said that codes are labels or interpretive statements to any information that’s important to our research questions.

We went through the transcripts, we read and understood them, we looked at the nuance, then we started developing qualitative codes.

After coding, we now want to get the themes.

Let’s define what a theme is.

A theme is made up of a collection of codes with a shared pattern of meaning.

So codes with a shared pattern of meaning form a theme irrespective of the questions they came from.

 Remember we used color codes to show where the codes came from.

 If we are doing inductive thematic analysis now, and I consider the questions I was asking and look at some of the codes it will shows the relationship between the codes even before we begin developing the themes.

For example, these green codes are related.

 If you look at the question that was color-coded green, how do you adapt your leadership style to fit the culture or expectations, policies and teaching methodologies of your new academic environment?

This theme can be adaptation of leadership style to fit new academic environments.

 The best way to create themes is to duplicate the MAXQDA file, make changes on it, then preserve the original initial codes folder.

Let me copy this MAXQDA.

Then duplicate it because I want to preserve the original codes.

Then we rename the file as MAXQDA themes.

And then we open the themes file and start looking for the themes.

 As we  stated, we only combine codes with a shared pattern of meaning to  get themes, and that’s what we are going to do.

As I said, if you look at the green codes,

•  Encouraging innovation
•  Embracing change
•  Building rapport
• Assessing needs
•  Going above expectations to help students

They talk about how these teachers adapt their leadership style to fit their new academic environments.

 I want to have that theme.

 I go to codes, click on the plus signs.

Remember that themes must sound like a heading.

Approaches of adapting leadership style to meet new teaching environments.

 So that will be my first theme. 

 Why will this be a theme?

Because I must have a description for that theme, what does this theme mean?

So , I right click.

I click on memo.

Then write a description for this theme.

This theme highlights the different strategies adopted by the interviewed teachers to adapt their leadership styles to fit in new teaching environments including new expectations, policies, and teaching methodologies.

 We can end it there, it could be better, but this is just an example.

So that’s how we define every theme.

It must have a clear description.

Remember if you’re following the Braun and Clarke method, the first step is familiarizing the data.

 The second step is generating initial codes, which we did last time.

This is a step of coming up with themes and then reviewing and refining them, and adding descriptions.

We do the the three steps together, and that is what I am doing to make sure that every themes is clearly defined.

So if you double click on the memo , you can see the description for that theme.

 And now let’s go and drag all the green codes, and put them under that theme.

Look at that.

All those codes now belong to that theme.

 Remember, I was color coding this because I knew I might need to classify these codes based on shared meaning, and I have to explore this so we can see the first theme.

 We can develop another theme.

For example, if you look at the yellow color-coded codes,  then read the question, what leadership strategies or techniques from your experience have you found most effective in your foreign classroom setting?

So here we can have a theme called effective leadership Strategies or Techniques.

Then we can provide a clear description of what we mean.

We can right click and add a memo and say that this theme highlights the different leadership strategies and techniques that the interview teachers found to be the most effective in their classroom settings.

That is the description.

We go and select all the yellow codes, then drag and drop them inside the theme.

These codes have the same meaning.

So that’s how we get another theme.

We can attempt another theme.

We asked them a question of challenges they faced in applying their leadership skills.

So we can have a theme called challenges in application of leadership skills.

 So challenges in application of leadership skills, and we get all the blue color-coded codes inside the theme created.

We can go on and on looking at the codes and putting them in themes.

 Remember, themes are as a result of a shared pattern of meaning across the code.

So basically that’s how we do themes in MAXQDA, and those are the practical steps that we do.

We create the themes, we drag and drop the codes inside there.

Once we are done with themes, we can always go and do what we call finding the reports.

We are going to look at it later when we are looking at how we write or report our findings.

If you go to export.

 Go to code system.

 click on Word document  and see the code system we just created.