(Mis)conceptualising themes, thematic analysis, and other problems with Fugard and Potts’ (2015) sample-size tool for thematic analysis

One of us (VC) was having a conversation with a student recently about the origins and history of thematic analysis (TA). The student had read Qualitative Research in Counselling and Psychotherapy (McLeod, 2011), a text which presents TA as a variant of grounded theory. Victoria commented that she thought that TA evolved from content analysis, and therefore predated grounded theory, and discussed her recent discovery of the use of a variant of TA in psychotherapy research in the 1930s-1950s. The student let out a heavy sigh and slumped in her chair, bemoaning her ability to ever fully grasp qualitative research in all its complexity. This reaction is not uncommon. Students learning and implementing qualitative…