Steps

Purpose

Methods used in present study

1. Become familiar with the data.

Getting a sense of the participants’ experiences.

Evaluation forms were rigorously explored one at a time and notes were made to log early impressions.

2. Generate initial codes.

Start organising the data in a meaningful and systematic way.

Data were organised into small “chunks” of information by highlighting any passage or word that seemed relevant to the research question. This process is known as open-coding.

3. Search for themes.

Capturing the patterns in the text that were specific to the research question.

Themes were initially developed by grouping the related codes together based on their overall significance to the research question and theoretical similarities.

4. Review themes.

Reviewing, modifying and developing the preliminary themes into meaningful and authentic units.

This process involved combining some of the existing themes and eliminating any that did not appear to fit in with the emerging structure. The aim here was to ensure that the themes accurately reflected what was evident in the data and that when connected they would provide a richer account of the overall experience.

5. Define themes.

Identifying the essence of each theme―Braun & Clarke [28] .

Consideration was given to the naming of each theme so that an immediate indication of a particular theme’s essence could be clearly conveyed to the reader.

6. Writing up.

Reporting the findings.

Words, extracts and comments from the original evaluation forms were chosen to help illustrate and exemplify elements of each theme.