Finding Themes

Finding Themes

1. Discovering Themes and subthemes

   • Induced themes
   • Priori themes

2. Describing the core and periheral elements of themes

   • in looking for themes
     • Repetitions
     • Indigenous categories
     • the use of metaphors and analogies
     • Shifts in content
     • similarities and differences in pairs of statements about a topic
     • Use of linguistic connectors
     • Missing data
     • theory-related material

3. Building hierarchies of themes or codebooks

   • Structural Codes
   • Thematic codes
   • memos
     • Code memos
     • theory memos
     • operational memos

4. Applying themes

5. Linking themes into theoretical models