[RM] Thematic or narrative

[Richard]

Let's suppose you have interviewed 12 expatriate (i.e. non-Thai) teachers working at 3 secondary schools in Bangkok about whether and how they feel privileged or marginalised in their work. Your questions included issues about their contracts, their working conditions, and their involvement in decisions, as well as their reactions to these issues. Do you think you should treat the data thematically or as 12 case studies? Why?

[ronnakritong]

I think, to use which one, it depends (yes, this word sounds annoying) on the purpose of conducting a research. From the proposed questions, it seems that this research aims to collect the feedback from the teachers for maybe future improvements...? In this regard, I'd use thematic analysis approach since the data treated thematically would read easier among the school administrators. And, to me, treating the, as 12 case studies could be possible, but we should be really selective about choosing the data.

[Richard]

A key issue here is whether you expect that the 12 teachers will be reasonably similar or not. If you have reason to believe that they have similar concerns, then you can treat them as a single group and do a thematic analysis. This prioritises themes over individuals, so basically you're treating the 12 teachers as exemplars of a norm. (This approach is the norm when looking at students who we normally treat as a big undifferentiated blob).

If you expect the 12 teachers to have different concerns and attitudes, it would be better to treat them one by one. From this, there are 2 directions. First, each teacher may be very individual in their responses in which case you have 12 case studies. Second, you might be able to identify groups of teachers with similar concerns, so you might end up with 5 Type A teachers, 5 Type B teachers, and 2 Type C teachers; you might then look at thematising within these groups.