Qualitative Research: Interviews, Focus Groups and Thematic Analysis

Decide what understanding the study seeks

Qualitative research is useful when the question concerns experiences, meanings, practices or processes that need detailed interpretation. Start by identifying what needs to be understood and why participants' accounts or observations are relevant. A request to prove that people like a programme is not an open qualitative question.

Clarify the conceptual approach and the role of the researcher. A study exploring personal experience may require different assumptions and methods from one examining how institutional language shapes decisions. Methodological coherence matters: the recruitment, interaction with participants, analysis and claims should fit the approach being used.

Choose between interviews and focus groups

Individual interviews can provide space for detailed accounts and subjects that participants may not wish to discuss publicly. Focus groups allow the researcher to examine how views are discussed, supported or challenged in a group. They are not simply a faster way to conduct several private interviews at once.

Consider relationships between participants. Combining supervisors and junior staff may discourage disagreement. Groups cannot offer the same control over confidentiality as a private interview because other participants hear the discussion. Explain this limitation and establish respectful ground rules, while avoiding promises that the research team cannot enforce.

Recruit for relevant and varied perspectives

Define the experiences or positions relevant to the question. A purposive strategy might seek variation across subjects, stages of study or patterns of participation. Explain the rationale rather than claiming that a small group statistically represents a wider population.

Prepare an interview guide with open prompts and possible follow-up questions. Pilot the guide for clarity and flow. Ask for concrete experiences, decisions and examples rather than only general opinions. Leave room for participants to introduce issues the team did not anticipate. Record contextual notes and reflections, separating observation from interpretation wherever possible.

Select a coherent analytic approach

Thematic analysis includes different approaches, and their procedures should not be mixed without justification. Braun and Clarke's resources describe reflexive thematic analysis as an interpretive process in which researcher engagement contributes to theme development. ^[1] Other approaches may use structured codebooks or reliability procedures for different reasons.

Begin by becoming familiar with the data, then develop codes and examine patterns in relation to the research question. A theme should communicate a meaningful interpretation rather than merely repeat an interview heading. Revisit extracts that complicate the emerging account. Software can help organise material, but it does not decide what an account means or whether an interpretation is persuasive.

Illustrative example: transition into doctoral study

Imagine a team interviews new doctoral researchers about seeking help. Early coding identifies supervision, peers and administration. These are topic areas, but they do not yet explain the experience. Further reading reveals a pattern: participants describe judging whether a question will make them appear unprepared before deciding whom to approach.

The team develops an interpretation about managing perceived competence, examines cases that do not fit and relates the account to the institutional setting. It explains how researcher assumptions influenced questions and coding. The result goes beyond reporting that participants mentioned supervisors, while remaining grounded in the material actually collected.

Make the interpretation reviewable

Keep records of changes to questions, sampling decisions, coding development and analytic memos. Include carefully selected extracts to illustrate the interpretation, with enough context to make their meaning understandable. Protect identities when quotations or combinations of details could reveal a participant.

SRQR provides guidance on reporting qualitative research, including information readers need to understand how a study was conducted. ^[2] Reporting guidance supports transparency; it does not prescribe a single analytic philosophy or certify quality. Explain the methods used in the actual project rather than reproducing a generic description of an ideal process.

Prepare a quality and ethics review

• Does the method fit the research question and conceptual approach?
• Have relevant perspectives and recruitment limitations been considered?
• Are consent and confidentiality arrangements realistic?
• Are interviewer relationships and researcher assumptions discussed?
• Do themes develop a coherent interpretation supported by evidence?
• Have contradictory or unusual accounts been examined?
• Are conclusions appropriately bounded by setting and participation?

Qualitative findings can offer insight into processes and experiences without estimating how common they are in a whole population. Explain what readers may learn from the account and what would require further investigation. Strong interpretation combines depth, transparency and restraint.