Defining, naming and elaborating and cross-checking themes across the range of data.
Transcripts were coded separately by two researchers and compared to cross-check themes and ensure rigour [ 26, 27].
The discussions with the supervisor (JP) during the development of the instrument's model and following the interviews and focus group for checking final themes and sub-themes of data analysis should have reduced the impact of this.
Thematic analysis includes six phases: familiarizing with data (e.g., reading the data), generating initial codes (e.g., coding interesting features), searching for themes (e.g., collating codes into potential themes), reviewing themes (e.g., checking codes represent the themes), defining and naming themes (e.g., refining analysis), and producing the report.
RG undertook the initial analysis and SH cross-checked the themes, labelling of tracts and allocation of these to themes from which illustrative tracts were extracted.
The transcripts were manually reviewed to check for themes which shed more light on the topic of understanding The study was reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board of the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health in the United States as well as by the local Institutional Review Boards of the University Teaching Hospitals at the study sites.
We then returned to the data to check the themes against the interview narratives, carefully considering counterexamples or negative cases from a theme to ensure that the similarity and diversity of experiences were captured [ 30].
To increase reliability and concordance of the three steps of analysis, AS and CB who participated in course development read half of the evaluations, assessed and checked analysis themes.
These were then reviewed through "checking if the themes work in relation to the coded extracts and the entire dataset", before arriving at the final themes [ 32].
For this purpose the data had to be reviewed with the aim of checking whether the themes 'work' in relation to the data and if new codes had to be created.
