A supervision meeting about themes often goes the same way. The student describes the analysis in words, the supervisor tries to hold the structure in their head, and by the time both have the same picture the hour is nearly gone. The useful conversation, about whether the themes work, gets the last ten minutes.
It does not have to go that way. A little preparation, and something on the screen to point at, moves the meeting from describing the analysis to discussing it. This article sets out one way to do that, with Themescape and without it.
Decide what the meeting is for
Supervision about themes can serve different purposes at different points. Early in phase 3 it might be about whether the candidate themes are themes at all. In phase 4 it might be about one theme that is not holding together. In phase 5 it might be about definitions and names, or the order of the findings chapter.
Saying which of these the meeting is for, in the email that arranges it, helps both of you prepare. It also stops the meeting turning into a tour of everything, which is rarely the best use of an hour.
Send the right things beforehand
A supervisor who has read your working definitions before the meeting can spend the meeting on them. A table of themes, codes and definitions is usually the most useful thing to send. In Themescape the Export panel writes your definitions as a table for Word, ready to paste into a document or an email.
If your supervisor also uses Themescape, you can send your progress files, the same CSV files and layout file you load yourself, and they can open the map in their own account. There is no shared link, because Themescape never holds your data. Before sending any files, check that your ethics approval allows it, and share them in the way it describes.
Prepare the map
Ten minutes before the meeting is enough to prepare the map.
- Star your favourite quotes. In Work mode, star up to three for each code you plan to discuss. These are the quotes Present mode will bring forward.
- Choose the view. The node network shows how themes cluster and relate; the hierarchy shows how they nest and is closer to the shape of a chapter. Pick whichever suits the question the meeting is about.
- Arrange it. Custom placement, a Work mode tool, lets you group the themes you want to talk about together.
- Save your progress, so the arrangement and the stars are in your files.
In the meeting
Present mode hides the tools and opens on your themes alone. Clicking a code brings its quotes forward as speech bubbles, favourites first, using refined wording where you have it. You can talk through one theme at a time, open the codes you want to discuss, and leave the rest closed.
When the conversation turns to changing something, switch to Work mode. You can rewrite a definition while your supervisor watches, star a different quote, or record a connection they have suggested, with a note on why. Exit Present mode, at the top left of the screen, returns you to View, and from there Work is one choice away under Interaction.
Questions worth asking
A supervisor's questions are often more useful than their answers. If yours does not ask these, you can ask them yourself:
- Is each theme a pattern of shared meaning, or a summary of what people said about a topic?
- Does the working definition hold for every quote under the theme?
- Is any theme doing too much, or too little?
- Which connections between themes rest on the data, and which are interpretations? In Themescape these are drawn differently: Empirical connections as solid lines and Theoretical connections as dashed ones.
- Whose voices are missing from the quotes I have chosen?
- Does the structure answer my research question?
Braun and Clarke's discussion of quality in reflexive thematic analysis is a good source of further questions, and of reassurance that themes are meant to change through review (Braun & Clarke, 2021).
After the meeting
Save your progress before you close the tab, since Themescape keeps nothing in the browser. Then write down what was decided and why. The notes column of the spreadsheet is one place; a reflexive journal is another. A few lines written the same day are worth more than a page reconstructed a month later, and they make the method section much easier to write.
If the meeting changed the structure of the analysis, for example merging two themes or moving a code, make those changes in your spreadsheet, where the coding lives, and load the files again. Definitions, favourites and connections you refined in Work mode travel in your progress files.
Supervising online
Present mode suits a screen shared in a video call as well as a projector, since nothing on the screen is small. Two cautions apply. If the call is recorded, the recording may contain quotes, so check what your ethics approval says about recordings. And any screenshot or slide taken from the map should carry no names or quotes that could identify a participant.
For supervisors
Supervisors with several students may find it helpful to ask each student to bring the same three things: a table of working definitions, the map in the view of their choice, and one question they want help with. It keeps meetings comparable across students and puts the student's thinking at the centre of the hour.
Further reading
- Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2021). One size fits all? What counts as quality practice in (reflexive) thematic analysis? Qualitative Research in Psychology, 18(3), 328–352.
Charlotte Price is the founder of Themescape.
