Step by step example of the Braun and Clarke Reflexive Thematic Analysis Approach using MAXQDA

In this article I’m going to show you how to conduct reflexive thematic analysis using MAXQDA.

This is a step by step article, that means we’re going to follow the six-steps proposed by Braun and Clarke to conduct a reflexive thematic analysis so that we are able to go from raw transcripts like this.

To a final findings Report like this.

The steps that we are going to be following to conduct reflexive thematic analysis were proposed by Braun and Clark in their 2022 book titled thematic Analysis Are Practical Guide.

These steps include:

1. Familiarizing with the data

2. Generating initial codes.

3. Generating themes.

4. Reviewing themes.

5. Defining and naming themes.

6. Producing the report.

My name is Bernard Mugo. I like to refer to myself as an academic.

In the past three years, I’ve helped more than 200 PhD students analyze qualitative data and finally complete their thesis and dissertations.

In the course of helping such a large number of students, I’ve gained invaluable experience in the best practices that you can use to perform qualitative analysis of your interviews and be able to retrieve quality findings.

Before we go through the six-steps proposed by Braun and Clarke on how to conduct reflexive thematic analysis,

I would like to clarify why this approach has the word “reflexive” which is a new addition to what was initially referred to as the Braun and Clark six-steps of doing Thematic analysis.

Reflexive Thematic analysis as proposed by Braun and Clarke differs from the general approaches of doing thematic analysis because it emphasizes the reflexivity of the researcher.

The reflexivity of the researcher simply means that the researcher has to remain aware of their experiences, background, perceptions, environment and general biases that may affect their interpretation of certain qualitative data.

For example a researcher might have been born from a privileged position or even belong to a certain gender for example a man evaluating issues related to women, which may contribute to introducing biases to their interpretation.

In reflexive thematic analysis Braun and Clark advocate for the researcher to maintain reflexivity by noting down all the influences that may affect their interpretation of data in documents called reflexive journals.

So when conducting reflexive thematic analysis, a researcher has to keep reflexive journals which is simply notes on their objective thoughts and feelings as they code data and the changes in thoughts as they analyze the data.

The researcher can also note down their biases in reflexive journals.

All these issues and all these reflexive journals that the researcher writes down during the process of reflexive thematic analysis should be highlighted in their thesis, dissertation or research paper in a section called the role of the researcher.

By keeping reflexive journals, a researcher is able to maintain reflexivity which is important in conducting reflexive thematic analysis.

So before we begin conducting reflexive thematic analysis through the six-steps highlighted by Braun and Clark, let’s look at some examples of reflexive journals that they give in their book on thematic analysis a practical guide.

Let us have an example of a journal so that we can understand what kind of journals we should keep as we continue to conduct reflexive thematic analysis.

Here is a journal that’s given in the Braun and Clarke latest book on thematic analysis a practical guide.

This is a journal on the latest version of a Practical Guide to Thematic Analysis by Braun and Clarke.

These are reflective journal entries.

You can see they begin with a date and then this researcher is reflecting on their first focus group.

Let me read for you to get an idea of what reflexive journals are.

I had my first focus group today after the group I did try to write some reflections, but I was feeling so full and heavy with emotion.

I needed some time to process what I was feeling.

Having had some time to do this I now know I was simply overwhelmed with the emotional content of the focus groups.

Through the focus groups I was shocked at how often the participants experiences mirrored my own and how their feelings were similar to mine.

I also felt grateful and humbled by their openness I’m not sure if I would’ve been so honest, willing and comfortable to talk about my own vulnerabilities in a group to that extent unless it was a friendship group.

I admire their honesty and courage.

I think that however I was reluctant to probe deeper with some members of the group because of my own uncomfortable feelings about sharing my own emotions with others.

I feel that this limited the types of questions that I asked in hindsight I could have asked for clarification on several comments which would’ve provided more insights.

It’s important for me in the next focus group to not be afraid to probe deeper.

This is a reflective journal that this researcher wrote down.

These are the kind of reflexive journals that we should be writing when we are conducting reflexive thematic analysis according to the six-steps proposed by Braun and Clark.

Let’s look at just another random example of a reflexive journal so that we may proceed

This one they entered it on the 15th of January in the year 2017.

I think I now have a hang of coding It was very tricky at the beginning, I was not sure what I was doing.

My code seemed more like sentences than codes.

I was also finding the coding unbelievably slow since I was constantly evaluating and re-evaluating every code to make sure that I was capturing what participants are saying rather than imposing my own assumptions into the codes.

Although it’s currently going slightly faster since I’m more familiar with the coding process, one topic that is jumping out at me is the participants’ perceptions of black men.

I find it interesting how they were speaking about them in such a negative way, almost burdensome.

They implied how black men lacked emotional strength and thus felt that being strong was not a choice but a necessity.

Since it compensated for the black man’s inability to be emotionally strong.

So Basically these are just examples of the kind of reflexive journals that we should be keeping when we are conducting reflexive thematic analysis by Braun and Clarke.

Now having differentiated reflexive thematic analysis from other general approaches of thematic analysis, let’s go through each of the six-steps proposed by Braun and Clarke on how to conduct reflexive thematic analysis using MAXQDA.

Remember MAXQDA is one of the most popular computer aided qualitative data analysis software.

So for the purposes of this transcript, we are going to be using MAXQDA 24 to conduct reflexive thematic analysis.

let’s conduct the first step of reflexive thematic analysis which is familiarizing ourselves with the data.

For this transcript the example study that I’ll be using is student views on teaching strategies used in a college.

We have three transcripts.

But we are going to analyze maybe one or two transcripts.

And the first step of reflexive thematic analysis is familiarizing with the data

when you are conducting a real study of-course you are familiarizing the transcripts by Conducting the interviews, transcribing, proofreading and editing.

Then after you edit you go and read the transcripts like a story and note the important issues, that would include noting down the main points.

So that’s how you familiarize.

You read them sentence by sentence.

Word by word.

So you go to student one for instance here we have student one transcript and student two transcript.

So you read all the transcripts sentence by sentence, word by word.

After you familiarize the transcripts, you are ready to move to the second step of reflexive thematic analysis which is generating initial codes.

We have first to understand what a code is and before I define what a code is for you, I like to give an exact example to show examples of codes first and then we define a code.

Let’s look at an example of a code.

Here we have an example of a paragraph that has been coded.

Let’s read through it and see some codes that this person came up with and by the way, this is coded from a book called the Coding Manual by Johnny Saldana.

He cares about me, he has never told me but he does.

He’s always been there for me even when my parents were not.

He’s one of the few things that I hold as a constant in my life, so it’s nice.

I really feel comfortable around him.

So he cares about me he has never told me but he does.

So that code is sense of self worth.

So sense of self-worth is the first sentence.

He cares about me he has never told me but he does sense of self-worth.

He’s always been there for me even when my parents were not, he’s one of the few things that I hold concern in my life.

So that stability or this was coded as stability.

And three, I really feel comfortable around him.

Comfortable.

What do these three codes show?

The sense of self-worth is an interpretation of the quote which is concise.

Let me define a code for you.

A code is a label or an interpretive statement to any information that’s important to our research questions or objectives.

So we code quotes or statements from participants that we believe are important to our research objectives or questions.

With this in mind we can go and open our data set and import the transcripts into MAXQDA and start generating initial code because we already know the initial code will be interpretive statements to any information that we think is important.

So let me go and open MAXQDA.

When you open MAXQDA, you can see we get this menu.

so I’m going to open a new project and call this RTA reflexive thematic analysis or initial coding.

Now when you open MAXQDA you’ll see just the top menu which has:

1. Home

2.Import

3. Codes.

4.Memos.

5. Variables.

6. Analysis.

7. Mixed methods.

8. Visual tools.

9.Report.

10. Maxdictio.

11. AI assist.

Then we have the secondary menu.

For now just focus on these two sections where we are going to import our transcripts and bring our codes.

To import transcripts, we can either drag and drop them or we can come here to transcripts.

And click on transcripts without timestamps.

Then of course we go to our folder and we select the three transcripts.

Then we select open.

And that’s how we import transcripts or documents easily into MAXQDA.

To open a document or a transcript you just double click on it.

You can see something in my transcript.

Previously I had gone and color coded my questions with specific colors.

It’s good to color code questions sometimes so that we assign the code a certain color, which can help us combine the codes to form themes later or we can know where the codes came from when we are generating initial codes.

After I import the transcript, I will create the codes here.

Remember this folder is called initial coding.

Let’s go read and generate initial codes.

Remember, a code is a label or an interpretive statement to any information that’s important to our research questions.

So let’s do some coding.

What is your experience as a student at the institution?

Let me read the paragraph first and then I’m going to come back and code as I show you.

The college is nice, they make a new paint job in the beginning of theyear.

They redo the roof also because it was bad here in the winter.

The classrooms leak but the toilet it’s not nice.

Toilet is always dirty yes also classrooms are not clean all the time.

But I think its students they eat in class and they leave paper.

They are on the desk on the floor.

Why at this institution must I buy textbooks? At other institutions they get textbooks for free. They get all the drawing equipment and calculator here I must pay.

Management is a problem and they don’t communicate.

The timetable is very confusing when I came here in N four, I didn’t know where I needed to be in class. Nobody explains it to me I wasn’t sure if I was in group A or group B I just follow the class.

Sometimes I sit here the whole day and there is no class.

They start with what’s your experience as a student at the institution?

The college is nice, they make a new point job in the beginning of theyear.

They redo the roof also because it was bad here in the winter.

The classrooms leak but the toilet it’s not nice.

so we can say

the college is nice, they make a new paint job in the beginning, so their experience is, this one we can say.

We can right click select with new code

And say Classrooms repainted.

And I want to observe the color codes here because the question is color coded as red.

So we can mark those codes as red so that we know where they came from originally, we are just marking the codes.

You see that code as a color red so I know they came from question one.

Then they redo the roof also because it was bad in the winter.

Let me just code this as roof repairs or repairing the roof.

Roof repairs.

Again, the color code for that code is red because it came from question one which is red.

Toilet is always dirty.

So let me highlight that sentence.

And code that as dirty toilets.

Also, classrooms are not clean all the time.

so

Dirty classrooms.

Again, the color code for that is red.

Remember, my coding is very natural I’m not trying to overthink because I can always come back and redo the codes, so I’m just tagging quotes that I believe are important to my objective I’m tagging such quotes with concise statements.

What at this institution must I buy textbooks at other institutions they get textbooks for free they get all drawing human and calculator, here I must pay.

So experience here is Insufficient learning aids.

Again, we mark that code as red, you can see all codes from question one are red.

I just want to know where they came from so I’m using color codes.

Management is a problem and they don’t communicate.

The timetable is very confusing when I came here in N four, I didn’t know where I needed to be in class. Nobody explains it to me I wasn’t sure if I was in group A or group B I just follow the class.

Sometimes I sit here the whole day and there is no class.

So this whole paragraph can be, right click select with new code.

Mark that code as red then type Poor communication from the management.

That’s another code.

you can already see MAXQDA is counting my initial codes and I already have 6.

Let’s go to question two.

What’s your current experience as a student with teaching strategies used in the classroom?

The lecturers don’t explain very nicely sometimes I leave class not knowing what is going on.

I feel sometimes the lecturers are not just understanding at all when they ask to explain.

Again lecturers don’t follow the right timetable.

Sometimes I’m not sure if it has changed but lecturers say that they had class beforehand or after the period that they were supposed to have class.

Most times I think lecturers arrive late to class then change the timetable.

After a lesson, it’s difficult to know whether we are understanding the work or not as it seems.

lecturers assume that we understand lecturers fail to give relevant feedback after we come with homework that was given.

Let me read the question again before I start initial coding.

What is your current experience as a student with teaching strategies used in the classroom of lecturers?

The lecturers don’t explain very nicely sometimes I leave class not knowing what is going on.

I feel sometimes the lecturers are not just understanding at all when they ask to explain.

So let’s say Inadequate explanations from the lecturers.

Remember this one is not color code red.

This one is color code green.

So right click with new code choose this green and say Inadequate explanations from the lecturers.

You can see that code is green in the code section green because we are color coding that.

Again lecturers don’t follow the right timetable.

Sometimes I’m not sure if it has changed but lecturers say that they had class beforehand or after the period that they were supposed to have class.

Most times I think lecturers arrive late to class then change the timetable.

So lecturers do not adhere to set schedules that’s another code where they’re explaining that lecturers do not follow the right timetable.

Let’s highlight another thing here, Most of the times I think lecturers arrive late for class then change the timetable.

If I right click code with new code, say.

Punctuality challenges among lecturers

We can see that they are trying to say that the lecturers have punctuality issues after the lesson.

It’s difficult to know whether we understanding the work or not.

As it seems lecturers assume that we understand lecturers fail to give relevant feedback after you come with homework that was given.

So Lecturers failed to give relevant feedback.

Let’s code another question.

Question three, what do you expect from the college?

You can see the color code for that question is blue.

They expect what?

Education and work placement.

Let’s highlight that, these are two codes the first code I’m going to code In vivo.

In vivo means the code and the quote are the same, so I code In vivo, so that one is education.

Then I right click on the code and code In vivo.

I change the color to green initially it was blue and then code.

And then code work placement.

We right click code In vivo again.

So they want education and work placement.

There’s a follow up question here which the researcher is asking.

Are you saying that education given is not good at a college?

The lectures are constantly rushing through some of the work.

I don’t understand half the things they are saying.

Maybe it’s because of the pandemic.

If you look at this question, you can see it relates to question number two rather than question number three.

It’s like the experience of teaching strategies.

So lecturers rush and do not take sufficient time to explain concepts.

That one I color coded it as green because it relates to question number two.

And by the way, I want to go back and redo the color codes for question number three.

They should not be green they should be blue because blue is the color code for question number three.

Let me right click.

And then I select color blue on the color code there.

So let’s code another question.

Question number four.

Do you experience challenges and difficulties that deter you from achieving academic success?

New lecturers struggle in class.

Sometimes student tease them because he’s new.

We struggle because there is a new lecturer that comes in to teach in the other lecturer’s place, but we don’t learn anything from her.

I have to work so I can feed me and my brother every day.

We don’t have parents who help us. My parents died a long time ago, so I don’t have support, I don’t have money to come to school or for office.

I do not have good results at the end of grade 11, so the college put me in the NCV program.

I finish up till level four, but now I’m struggling in N four because I didn’t do the work that is being taught.

What are the challenges and difficulties that deter this student from achieving academic success?

One of the challenges is.

New lecturers that are not able to teach effectively

So they said their challenge is new lecturers that are not able to teach effectively.

Another challenge is finance, so this student says they have financial challenges as they don’t have parents.

So I code that as Financial challenges as a result of being an orphan.

Financial challenges as a result of being an orphan.

So that’s another code.

I’m not trying to get the right codes in this step, because normally we’ll conduct another step called revising codes.

Now let’s move to the third step in the Braun and Clarke reflexive thematic analysis which is generating initial themes.

How do we generate themes?

So normally I’ll come and copy that project.

Then paste the project

Then rename the copy to RTA preliminary themes.

So I’m going to do my edits and I’m going to still preserve the original copy.

Let’s open the second copy called Preliminary themes and we can close the initial coding copy.

Now before I to start to generate or combining codes to get themes, what I would do is to review the codes.

So I double click on the code, I click on the quote, I check the quote, and revise the codes accordingly before I start combining them to form themes or preliminary theme.

So they redo the roof also because it was bad in here in the winter.

That’s roof repairs, I think that’s good.

So how do I combine codes to form themes?

First we look at the original question or the code if you read them you’ll start seeing some emerging patterns of shared meaning.

So student experiences in the institution.

Or we look at the codes, here we have poor communication, insufficient learning aids dirty classrooms, roof repairs, classrooms painted.

So I can come here and click on plus.

And this one will be a theme and I want to mark it as red and I want to call this Student Experiences at the institution.

Remember this software is called Everything Code.

So that’s not a code.

Now I will show you why this is a preliminary theme, actually I can right click and go to properties and call this theme one, It’s a preliminary.

We are going to have a description for this theme.

And to have a description, you right click, click on memo and you say, This theme represents the different student experiences at the learning institution including positive and negative experiences.

So I’m adding a memo.

If you look at the Braun and Clarke six steps of conducting reflexive thematic analysis, it’s like I’m doing generating themes, reviewing themes and defining themes at the same time but that’s a description I was just adding student experiences at the institution.

If you remember all the codes marked as red I can move them there.

They are related to student experiences at the institution.

So I can drag and drop those codes in there.

You see, now we have a theme and codes.

Let’s look at another shared pattern of meaning.

If you look at the codes in green, inadequate explanation from the lecturers lecturers not adhering to set schedules, punctuality, challenges among lecturers, lecturers not providing sufficient feedback to students, lecturers rushing and not taking sufficient time to explain concept.

Actually let me rename this code to not taking sufficient time to explain concepts to lecturers rushing and not taking sufficient time to explain concepts.

You can see I just revised that code.

When you look at the question the person was asking here, what is your current experience as a student with teaching strategies used in the classroom?

When you look at the question the person was asking here, what is your current experience as a student with teaching strategies used in the classroom?

I go to codes, plus sign.

So experiences of students with teaching strategies in the institution this one is Green

Remember, I can right click select code properties and edit this this one can be theme hashtag two or theme number two.

For that I want to select all these issues, drag and drop them.

That’s the second preliminary theme.

It’s not a final theme I’m going to come and review this later.

So we are going to review, refine and then we are going to add descriptions.

There’s this question they asked, what do you expect from the college?

This one can be and the color code for that is blue it can be student expectations from the college.

Student expectations from the college.

You can see work placement and education.

I drag those two codes I assign them or drag and drop them under theme three, look at the final.

Do you experience challenges and difficulties that deter you from achieving academic success?

So Challenges detering students from achieving academic success.

So that one will be navy blue.

Then Drag and drop the codes.

So that’s how we move from initial codes to generating initial themes.

Let’s go to the fourth step reviewing themes.

How do we review themes?

So with these preliminary themes, I can copy.

And paste this version then rename these to revised or final themes.

So this is another MAXQDA file remember we have initial coding another one called preliminary themes and another one called final themes.

We export anything from MAXQDA, which I’m going to show you how we are going to export the code system.

And how we can even go and report our findings and extract codes.

How do we review and refine?

We look at the codes and we read the theme again then we ask our-self, what do we need to do more?

What does this mean?

If you look at student experiences at the institution, you can see poor communication from the management, insufficient learning aids, dirty classrooms, dirty toilets, roof repairs, and classrooms repainted.

If you look at this you can see experiences related to facilities, so facility related experiences which we can subdivide positive and negative experiences.

If we go to the theme and say, or highlight positive experiences.

You can see still under the theme student experiences at the institution, I’ve created another sub theme called positive experiences, So positive experiences is sub theme one.

And then let’s go under the theme and click on the plus sign and call these sub theme two negative experiences.

Sub theme one positive experiences and sub theme two negative experiences.

Let’s read the codes again, Poor communication from the management that is a negative experience

Insufficient learning aids, that’s a negative experience,

Dirty classroom, negative.

Dirty toilets, negative.

Roof repairs positive experience.

classrooms repainted Positive experience.

You can see how we review and refine themes to make them better.

We can conduct this in the fourth step together but for this let me just focus on this step of Braun and Clarke which is reviewing themes.

We review the themes to organize them to have more nuanced meaning.

Experiences of students with teaching strategies in the institution lecturers rushing, inadequate explanations, lecturers not providing sufficient feedback, punctuality, challenges, and lecturers not adhering to set schedules not adhering to set schedules and punctuality.

This challenges might be the same thing.

So how do we match?

Let’s say the two codes say the same thing, I go and copy the coded segment.

Then I go and paste the coded segment.

You see the numbers here have changed to two that means I can go and delete the previous code.

And before I delete it, let me double click on it so that you see the quote that was in here.

Lecturers do not follow the right timetable.

So let’s double click the other code and see.

Lecturers do not follow the right timetable.

So we have imported the code and now we can delete the previous code.

And that’s how we merge codes, that’s how we review themes.

Theme number three.

Student expectations from the college.

Work placement and education that makes sense.

And theme number four.

Challenges deterring students from achieving academic success.

New lecturers that are not able to teach effectively and financial challenges as a result of being an orphan.

That’s how we conduct the fourth step of reflexive thematic analysis which is reviewing themes.

How do we conduct the fifth step of reflexive thematic analysis which is defining and naming themes.

We right click on sub-theme two, select memo and write descriptions for the sub theme.

So let’s write here this sub theme represents the negative student experiences at the institution.

And then under sub-theme1 we go and do memos again and say this sub represents the positive experiences of the students in other institution.

You can see we are adding memos or we are adding descriptions.

Now, there’s one thing before I keep editing you can see the way my themes are dis-organized it’s like they’re in descending order.

How do we fix that?

We right click, go to sort A to Z, that will tell MAXQDA that we want to reorganize, sort A to Z.

Let’s look at theme two experiences of students with teaching strategies at the institution.

So if I go to Memo, I’ll say this theme represents the diverse experiences of students with the different teaching strategies employed by lecturers in the institution.

Then let’s write for theme three, let’s right click and go to memo and let’s write this.

This theme represents the different student expectations of what they want to gain from attending the college.

Finally challenges deterring students.

This theme represents all form of challenges that can deter students from achieving academic success.

Look at that, we have added clear descriptions for our themes, which is the

fifth step of reflexive thematic analysis by Braun and Clarke Perfect.

That’s how we move all the way from initial transcripts all the way to having clearly defined themes with descriptions.

After we are done with that step in MAXQDA, we are done with our analysis.

And we can go and click on reports.

Export code system and I want to export this code system because we were just writing memos.

So I want you to see what these memos are and how we are using them.

So this is what we just exported, look at it, this is the code system that we just made in MAXQDA.

you see zero, zero for the frequencies I don’t like that.

What do I do?

I normally fix that manually.

You can see theme one has six frequency or six quotes.

I’ll come to theme one and add the number six manually.

MAXQDA doesn’t aggregate and I think it’s a problem with the software that they need to address so that it can aggregate everything.

I go and fix that in the code system by putting numbers there manually.

Basically this is the code system that we have clear themes, Clear descriptions, clear codes and that’s how we conduct the Braun and Clarke six steps of reflexive thematic analysis.

So after exporting the code system, another thing we can export from MAXQDA is click on the theme.

then activate all the themes.

Then control click to activate one of the transcripts by the way I used one transcript.

If I click on that and I go to retrieve segments down here.

If I go to export, export Excel file and let’s save this somewhere as coded segments

So let’s see the coded segments.

Look at that, we can extract the quotes that we just coded in an Excel format and we can know where they came from.

For example, the one called student experiences at the institution.

Under that they are positive experiences which is a sub theme, which is classrooms repainted and then the quote is, the college is nice they make a new painting job in the beginning of the year.

You see? That makes sense.

Let’s look at another example theme one student experiences at the institution, Sub theme one positive experiences.

Roof repairs.

What’s the quote? They redo the roof also because it was bad in here in winter, the classrooms leak now.

That’s how we export a code system from MAXQDA.

Basically that’s the way it is.

What’s another thing that we can get from that?

Now we go and write the findings report, I had covered the writing of the findings report in other previous transcripts even by using N-Vivo which I think still works the same.

But the issue is how do we handle this?

We just go and start giving or using the descriptions to narrate our story and providing evidence from different participants and quotes.

Basically that’s what I’m going to do. To write the finance report. So I’ll attach a video where I go in detail on how to do this and write the findings report or another strategy, and that’s how we can go and write the findings report.

Those are the five steps of reflexive thematic analysis which include:

1. familiarizing with the data.

2. Generating initial codes.

3. Generating themes.

4.Reviewing themes.

5.Defining and naming themes.