Chapter 9Qualitative data analysisUsing thematic analysis
Background
The origin of thematic analysis (TA) can be traced back to the American physicist and science historian Gerard Holton (Merton, 1975; Joffe, 2012; Braun et al., 2019) and his work on the use of themata
in scientific inquiry (Holton, 1996). According to Holton, themata
refer to those concepts that are tacitly accepted and shared by certain groups of people without conscious recognition (Joffe, 2012). Whilst Holton is known for the introduction of themata in the scientific discourse, the role of themes was already discussed by researchers in sociology, psychoanalysis and musicology as early as the 1940s (Braun et al., 2019). For instance, ...
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