Methods for the thematic synthesis of qualitative research in systematic reviews



BMC Medical Research Methodology 2008, 8:45
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2288/8/45

ing in research synthesis.) This process created a total of
36 initial codes. For example, some of the text we coded
as "bad food = nice, good food = awful" from one study
[56] were:

'All the things that are bad for you are nice and all the
things that are good for you are awful.'
(Boys, year 6)
[[56], p74]

'All adverts for healthy stuff go on about healthy things. The
adverts for unhealthy things tell you how nice they taste.'
[[56], p75]

Some children reported throwing away foods they knew had
been put in because they were 'good for you' and only ate
the crisps and chocolate
. [[56], p75]

Reviewers looked for similarities and differences between
the codes in order to start grouping them into a hierarchi-
cal tree structure. New codes were created to capture the
meaning of groups of initial codes. This process resulted
in a tree structure with several layers to organize a total of
12 descriptive themes (Figure 2). For example, the first
layer divided the 12 themes into whether they were con-
cerned with children's understandings of healthy eating or
influences on children's food choice. The above example,
about children's preferences for food, was placed in both
areas, since the findings related both to children's reac-
tions to the foods they were given, and to how they
behaved when given the choice over what foods they
might eat. A draft summary of the findings across the stud-
ies organized by the 12 descriptive themes was then writ-
ten by one of the review authors. Two other review
authors commented on this draft and a final version was
agreed.


Figuire 2ips between descriptive themes
relationships between descriptive themes.

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