What is it about?

In qualitative research, theme names strongly shape how readers understand participants’ experiences. This paper shows that poorly chosen theme names can unintentionally change or oversimplify what participants actually said. Drawing on descriptive phenomenology, the study presents seven practical rules for naming qualitative themes, such as using participants’ own words, bracketing researcher assumptions, and testing theme names through imaginative variation. These guidelines help ensure that themes accurately represent lived experience and improve the trustworthiness and clarity of qualitative research in health, psychology, and social care.

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Why is it important?

Qualitative findings are widely used to inform healthcare practice, psychological understanding, and social policy, yet theme naming is rarely treated as a methodological issue. This paper addresses a timely gap by showing how theme names can subtly distort meaning and by offering clear, practical guidance to prevent this. By improving how themes are named, the study strengthens the credibility, transparency, and real-world usefulness of qualitative research, making findings easier for clinicians, researchers, and decision-makers to interpret and apply.

Perspectives

I wrote this paper out of repeated frustration while reviewing and reading qualitative studies where powerful participant accounts were weakened by vague or overly theoretical theme labels. My hope is that this work helps researchers slow down at the point of naming themes and treat it as a methodological responsibility, not a cosmetic step. If it encourages more careful, experience-near language in qualitative research, then it has achieved its purpose.

Daniel Abraham
Christ University

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: Articulating the essence: developing and naming themes in descriptive phenomenological research, Qualitative Research Journal, February 2026, Emerald,
DOI: 10.1108/qrj-11-2025-0430.
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