Content Analysis or Thematic Analysis: Doctoral Students' Perceptions of Similarities and Differences

This paper is a review of content analysis or thematic analysis which is further explored though the lens of impressions of doctoral students who attended a presentation on the subject.The long tradition of quantitative research still dominates many university courses on research methodology and data analysis. During the 20th century the field of qualitative research has had a growing need for new analysis methods that accommodate qualitative data and two frequently used methods are content analysis and thematic analysis. They have several things in common and sometimes, they have been understood by researchers to be interchangeably. It has been argued by some researchers that conventional content analysis has really the same functional approach to analysing data as an inductive thematic analysis. This study reports on two webinars on qualitative analysis involving doctoral students and facilitated by the authors. The webinars presented, discussed content analysis and thematic analysis, and gathered participants’ reflections on these methods using a Padlet (padlet.com). The aim of the study was to analyse and describe doctoral students' perceptions of content analysis and thematic analysis. The data collected has been analysed using conventional content analysis applying an abductive coding approach. The study identifies several perceived similarities and differences between the two methods, but also opportunities and challenges for applying them. Findings highlight that the two methods are perceived to be applicable to different types of research. Furthermore, they offer similar challenges to the researcher including their potential for bias and could be considered a choice between an intuitive and a practical approach to analysis. Many of the identified perceptions can be related to previous literature on content analysis and thematic analysis. However, other perceptions seems to indicates a need for more thorough and nuanced discussions on methods for qualitative analysis. The study suggest that more efforts should be made to support doctoral students in attaining a nuanced understanding of qualitative methods for analysis.