Editorial
Volume 18 Number 6
Confusing Categories and Themes
D espite the fact that categories and themes are
different—they are used for different purposes in
the research process, are developed from data using
different strategies, and capture different forms of
knowledge—I see that the terms are sometimes used
almost interchangeably in completed research. This
matters for the conceptual and theoretical structure of
the completed research, and if there is a lack of cohe-
sion between the methods and the results, the study
becomes less comprehensible.
Basically, a category is a collection of similar data
sorted into the same place, and this arrangement
enables the researchers to identify and describe the
characteristics of the category. This, in turn, enables
the category itself to be defined, and then compared
and contrasted with other categories, or if broad in
scope, to be divided into smaller categories, and its
parts identified and described.
A theme, on the other hand, is a meaningful “essence”
that runs through the data. Just as a theme in opera
occurs over and over again, sometimes in the fore-
ground, sometimes in the background, and sometimes
co-occurring with other tunes, so does the theme in our
research. It is the basic topic that the narrative is about,
overall.
This comparison of categories and themes becomes
clearer if we carry our opera metaphor one step further.
Once I heard on the radio a content analysis of an opera.
The writer had sorted all the trills and all the “Ah-has”
into separate categories, and the result was ludicrous.
But this example makes the difference between a cate-
gory and a theme immediately obvious.
Now, categories are important for determining what
is in the data (the “what”). So they are used in ethnog-
raphy and in the initial analytic phase of grounded
theory. The ultimate use of categories is in the develop-
ment of a taxonomy, in which the researcher identifies
relationships between categories and smaller units, or
subcategories. In some models (and again grounded
theory is a good example), categories are sorted in tra-
jectories over time, with some categories (or forms of
the category) preceding or following others. Pushing
the analysis further, the researcher can then determine
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what triggers the change, and move into theory devel-
opment. But themes are used in the later phase of
grounded theory to tie it all together (as the core vari-
able or Basic Social Process), and they are the basic
strategy of analysis in phenomenology, where the pur-
pose is to elicit meaning or the essence of the experi-
ence for the participant.
Analytic strategies for categorizing and “theme-
ing” differ. Categories are developed using content
analysis, in which similar chunks of text are ordered or
placed proximally. They are separated from the inter-
view or document itself; they are positioned so that
example after example of the same thing may be exam-
ined, and the major commonalties may be identified,
coded, explicated, and described. If a category becomes
large (i.e., it contains a lot of examples), it may be
separated into smaller units or subcategories. To iden-
tify a theme, the researcher reads the interview or doc-
ument paragraph by paragraph, asking, “What is this
about?”, and thinking interpretively. Analytic strate-
gies may ease the process. Using the computer pro-
gram’s highlighting features, emphasize key words and
phrases. Then, using the footnote feature of the word
processing program, make footnotes about the major
(and sometimes the minor) emphasis of each section of
text. Then the “convert footnotes to endnotes” feature
places all of the footnotes together, and enables the
footnotes themselves to be examined as a whole. This
eases the process of making the themes identifiable.
If we compare these two strategies for creating a
category and identifying a theme, a category may
appear at one part of a process (or appear in different
forms in different stages), while a theme should go
right through the data.
Can a theme also be a category? Let’s consider love
as an example. Examining it as a category, we would
have categories of instances of love, targets of love, and
perhaps even instances of love scorned. We may have
the data to identify the characteristics of love of money
(greed), puppy love, being in love, love of work, or love
of play. We may even be able to differentiate between
affection and passion. Creating such definitions decon-
textualizes, strips the link to a particular individual, but
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with the loss of context makes any resulting definitions
and models more generalizable. But as a theme we
would have data about what it meant to love and would
be able to describe the essence of love. Our description
would keep the individual in the text, keep the stories
contextualized, and maintain meaning. The tradeoff of
contextualizing the phenomena is that the resulting
phenomenological story is less generalizable than
decontextualized forms of analysis, and only gener-
alizable when we recognize ourselves, or can per-
sonally identify with the data/stories. This is the
basis of the “phenomenological nod” as a strategy of
verification.
Janice M. Morse
Editor