**7. Conclusion**

As a qualitative research method that offers a simultaneously flexible and rigorous approach to data, thematic analysis allows social work students and novice social work researchers to approach the discourses, opinions, and visions of respondents both analytically. These qualities make it particularly applicable to social work research. Thematic analysis also represents the intellectual and ethic challenge, for experienced and novice researchers alike, of attempting to reveal and interpret themes and subthemes in the participants' discourse. The ethical challenge for researchers is to avoid substituting personal objectives for research objectives, since this may impact the interpretation of data collected from participants and, consequently, skew study results.

The other challenge facing social work researchers employing thematic analysis is to keep their subjectivity in check. When describing and categorizing testimonies

**197**

*Thematic Analysis in Social Work: A Case Study DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.89464*

**Limitations**

**Thanks**

article.

of the thematic analysis approach.

students from two different realities interest in social work.

of human experiences, perspectives, and emotions, whether expressed in words or communicated inadvertently by respondents through behavior during interviews, researchers must remain especially vigilant so that their author's own personal histories and professional experiences do not contaminate their interpretation of the data, altering the significance of participant testimonies. Indeed, this reflects one of the fundamental principles of social work practice and research methodologies that knowledge and techniques must always be applied methodically and objectively. From the example that is present in this work and following the six stages of the thematic analysis, the researcher can draw inspiration to use this method of analysis and to apply other research designs. Finally, the qualitative research in Trabajo Social students from the two participating universities allowed us to use thematic analysis to better understand the motivations, difficulties, and anchors that make

The thematic analysis approach discussed in the present paper must be interpreted with prudence. The article cited above provides a case example of how thematic analysis was applied in one study examining why men choose to undertake social work as an area of study. An additional limitation is the difficulty for researchers to ignore previous, tacit knowledge, which may have influenced the analysis of results [68]. Furthermore, the construction of certain themes and subthemes cited in Labra [54] may have been influenced by social desirability, that is, formulated so as to correspond with researchers' expectations, given that Nvivo® software was not used to manage qualitative data. Nevertheless, the research design of the case example presented above, in which the interview guide was elaborated in reference to both the specific problem under study and a directly relevant conceptual framework, constitutes a significant element underpinning the validity

We would like to thank Normand Brodeur, professor at the School of Social Work of Laval University, Canada, and Hugo Asselin, professor at the School of Aboriginal Studies of the University of Abitibi-Témiscamingue, Canada, for the reading and his valuable recommendations to this article. Similarly, we would like to thank in a very special way Carlos Contreras and Jorge Lara, students of the School of Social Work of the University of Concepción, Chile, who have been testing through research verbatim, the phases of the thematic analysis described in this

*Thematic Analysis in Social Work: A Case Study DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.89464*

of human experiences, perspectives, and emotions, whether expressed in words or communicated inadvertently by respondents through behavior during interviews, researchers must remain especially vigilant so that their author's own personal histories and professional experiences do not contaminate their interpretation of the data, altering the significance of participant testimonies. Indeed, this reflects one of the fundamental principles of social work practice and research methodologies that knowledge and techniques must always be applied methodically and objectively.

From the example that is present in this work and following the six stages of the thematic analysis, the researcher can draw inspiration to use this method of analysis and to apply other research designs. Finally, the qualitative research in Trabajo Social students from the two participating universities allowed us to use thematic analysis to better understand the motivations, difficulties, and anchors that make students from two different realities interest in social work.
