Research Note: Thematic analysis in qualitative research

Qualitative research, the analysis of language and other nonnumerical data, is critical to applied (including interventional) research. 1It provides unique insight into peoples' experiences, including those related to healthcare systems, services and programs, in a manner that quantitative methods cannot. 1 Its value is increasingly being recognised by public health and funding bodies such as the US National Institute of Health. 2 However, qualitative research tends to be underrepresented in musculoskeletal and pain literature, 3 despite the highly subjective and complex nature of the topic area.Added to this, applied health science researchers must often manage tension between practical constraints (such as time, funding, discipline-specific standards and required outputs) and the depth of qualitative analysis.This research note focuses on a type of qualitative analysis that is widely used in applied sciencesthematic analysisand aims to help readers reflect on how this qualitative analysis method can best achieve their research goals. When should I conduct qualitative research?Qualitative research can be undertaken before, during or after an intervention or program of implementation, and with patients, clinicians and other stakeholders (Table 1, Figure 1).Some qualitative research may not be directly tied to the development of an intervention or implementation effort, and the study simply aims to better understand a phenomenon (termed 'Standalone' in Table 1); this type is common in social science disciplines.Before quantitative research is undertaken qualitative research can help to understand the underlying context of the target population, their needs and their preferences for intervention goals, content and delivery formats.The goal of this research is often to inform intervention design; this can include analysis of qualitative data from co-design workshops (eg, transcripts, field notes) that depict how stakeholder input shaped the resulting intervention.Qualitative research undertaken concurrently with quantitative research can take several forms.For example, 'think-aloud' studies, in