Lucy Hives

Main Themes SubthemesThe conflict of positive and negative feelings about smoking

1. The brain and nicotine2. The good feeling3. A bad habit4. Arranging your time around

smoking5. Willpower to quit6. Cigarette accessibility

Smoking duration and age of onset 1. Smoking has little effect on health in the short-term

2. Smoking only affects people later in life

3. Other behaviours improve health quicker

The choice to quit smoking 1. Not a personal choice2. The feelings of other people3. The impact on sense of achievement

PS4700 Interview and Thematic Analysis Assignment

Summary of themes

Analysis

During the course of the 20-minute interview, the interviewee was asked questions, by the researcher, about his experience of health-related behaviour change. With focus mainly on the topic of giving up smoking, as indicated the most important of his behaviour changes, the interviewer explored the participant’s motivations and influences to quit, any barriers which made quitting difficult and how these were overcome, specific setbacks the participant encountered, and the support the participant sought out and received.

On completion, the interview was transcribed by the researcher using the orthographic transcription method, and this stage was also used to become more familiar with the data. Once the whole interview had been transcribed, the researcher entered the initial coding phase, each line was coded. Lines with similar codes were grouped together and re-named as appropriate to form themes; and within these, subthemes.

Three main themes were ‘actively created’ (Braun & Clarke, 2006) from the data: Conflicting thoughts, defined as the complex interplay of positive and negative feelings about smoking; Duration, defined as the beliefs about how smoking duration and the age of onset have a large impact on the damage smoking can do to health; and the choice to quit, defined as who initiated the behaviour change, whether it was the individual themselves or whether it was somebody else.

The first theme of conflicting thoughts refers to the participant having positive and negative beliefs about smoking and the struggle to quit smoking due to this perceived balance. The theme included six subthemes: nicotine and the brain, the ‘good feeling’, cigarette accessibility, routine, bad habit, and willpower, which will now be discussed.

Lucy Hives

The participant stresses that ‘there are a lot of things against you when you are trying to give up’ [line: 95] smoking. Firstly, he emphasises that his ‘brain didn’t want [him] to [give up smoking]’ [line: 78] because of the ‘nicotine receptors… in your head… screaming out for nicotine’ [line: 78-79]. He explains that ‘the way that you know of getting it is through smoking’[line: 79-80], so it seems that he is stuck between what his brain wants and finding something other than smoking to provide the nicotine, although this is the only way he knows. The way he describes his brain is almost as if it is a completely separate entity which he feels he must satisfy in terms of supplying it with enough nicotine.

The second subtheme was devised from the participants describing the good feelings that come as a result of smoking. He explains that smoking

‘either gets rid of stress or relaxes you or makes you feel better in some ways… your mind and your body knows that feeling that can result from it, then you just… continuously want to go back to it’ [lines: 82-83 & 116-118].

Here the participant is battling with the perception that smoking makes him feel good, but also describes his mind and body almost working together and wanting the same outcome, for smoking to begin again.

The participant explains that a further reason behind it being so difficult to quit smoking was knowing that cigarettes are easy and quick to buy,

‘The fact that you know that they’re there and you can go and buy ‘em from practically any shop. All it takes is you know a couple of seconds to buy a packet and light one and you’re sorted aren’t you’ [lines: 106-107].

The final reason the participant gives for him finding it difficult to quit smoking is the routine and fitting other activities in and around smoking. He explains that

‘You get into the habit of saying to yourself okay I’m only going to have you know five or six today but I’m gonna have them every hour and a half so you get into a habit of when you have them’ [lines: 88-90].

Despite all of these reasons why giving up smoking is difficult, the participant is still aware of smoking being ‘a dirty habit’ [line: 80] and explains that ‘when you’re doing it, you don’t feel great for doing it’ [line: 81]. Also, despite all of the positive feelings that smoking brought him, he clarifies that ‘with enough willpower you can do it, it’s not impossible’ [lines: 95-96] to give up.

Overall, there does seem to be a constant push away from and pull towards smoking that seems very difficult to manage. The participant remembers ‘having to constantly remind [himself] of the reasons why [he’d] given up’ [lines: 130-131].

Lucy Hives

Evaluation

I think the rigor and trustworthiness of my analysis is quite good because I studied the data from the interview in a lot of depth and took quite a lot of time trying to formulate ideas for my themes, using Howitt’s (2010) chapter as a guide. I felt that the theme of conflicting thoughts was central to the difficulties the participant faced in trying to quit smoking and that this is theoretically sound because it would explain why a lot of other people find it difficult to quit smoking. I also outlined the steps I took to arrive at my themes and so it is clear to the reader, the reasoning behind my formulations.

The credibility of the analysis is good because the data comes from the participant’s reflections in their own words (Patton, 2002). Schultz explains that rigor is increased when the participant’s experiences and opinions are included as quotations within the analysis and that these are kept in the context they were said (Fereday & Muir-Cochrane, 2006).

References:

Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3, 77-101.

Fereday, J. & Muir-Cochrane, E. (2006). Demonstrating Rigor Using Thematic Analysis: A Hybrid Approach of Inductive and Deductive Coding and Theme Development. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 1, 82.

Howitt, D. (2010). Chapter 7: Thematic Analysis. An Introduction to Qualitative Methods in Psychology. Essex: Pearson Education Ltd, 163-186.

Patton, M. (2002). Qualitative research & evaluation methods (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.