Now that I have begun collecting written questionnaire responses from autistic adults, I wanted to decide on a clear and appropriate way of analysing the qualitative data. Rather than simply looking for the most common answers, I need a method that will allow me to identify patterns across participants while still recognising individual experiences and differences.

This feels particularly important for my research because one of the strongest things I have already found through my secondary research is that there is no single autistic traveller profile. I therefore do not want my analysis method to flatten participants’ responses into one assumed experience.

Different approaches I considered

Qualitative Content Analysis

Content analysis could be used to organise responses into categories and identify recurring subjects or ideas.

• It could help show which barriers or experiences appear frequently across my questionnaire responses.
• It would give me a fairly clear and structured way of sorting a large amount of written information.
• However, I felt it could become too focused on what is mentioned most often, rather than exploring what participants actually mean and how different ideas connect.

This could still be useful for simple descriptive information, but I do not think it is strong enough on its own for the main qualitative analysis.

Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis — IPA

I also considered Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis because it focuses closely on how individuals make sense of their lived experiences.

• This would fit well with my interest in autistic lived experience.
• It allows researchers to explore individual experiences in considerable depth.
• However, IPA is normally suited to small, detailed datasets such as lengthy interviews rather than a wider collection of written questionnaire responses.

Because my aim is to identify patterns across multiple autistic adults rather than produce an intensive analysis of only a few individuals, I decided this was not the best fit for this stage of the project.

Reflexive Thematic Analysis

The method that appears most appropriate for my research is Reflexive Thematic Analysis, particularly the approach developed by Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke.

Rather than simply counting repeated words or responses, thematic analysis allows me to identify and interpret broader patterns of meaning within the data.

This means I can move from:

participant response → initial code → related codes → potential theme → interpretation

Importantly, the themes should not be decided before I begin analysing the responses.

Reading Byrne’s Worked Example

To understand how this process could work in practice, I looked at David Byrne’s paper:

Byrne, D. (2022) ‘A worked example of Braun and Clarke’s approach to reflexive thematic analysis’, Quality & Quantity, 56(3), pp. 1391–1412.

I found this particularly useful because rather than only explaining thematic analysis theoretically, Byrne demonstrates how Braun and Clarke’s approach can actually be applied to qualitative data.

Three things I took from the paper were:

• Codes and themes are not the same thing. A code identifies something specific within a response, while a theme represents a broader pattern of meaning developed across the dataset.
• Themes should be developed through engagement with the data, rather than deciding what I expect participants to say and then looking for evidence to fit those categories.
• Analysis involves interpretation. I am not simply reporting how many participants mentioned security, sensory overwhelm or uncertainty; I need to consider what their responses collectively tell me about their experiences of independent travel.

This is particularly relevant to my project because something mentioned less frequently may still reveal an important barrier, and participants may also disagree with one another.

The Approach I Have Chosen

I have therefore decided to use Braun and Clarke’s Reflexive Thematic Analysis as the main approach for analysing the qualitative responses from my autistic-adult questionnaire.

My process will broadly involve:

1. Familiarising myself with the responses by reading the complete dataset several times.
2. Coding the data, giving short labels to relevant pieces of individual responses.
3. Looking for relationships between codes and beginning to group them.
4. Developing candidate themes based on broader patterns of meaning.
5. Checking those themes against the original responses, including contradictions and experiences that do not fit neatly into them.
6. Refining and naming the final themes.
7. Using participant quotations alongside my interpretation and comparing the findings with my secondary research.

I also want to keep my research question in mind without using it to force the data into predetermined answers.

Why This Method Fits My Project

Reflexive thematic analysis feels appropriate because I am not trying to prove that every autistic adult experiences travel in the same way.

Instead, I am trying to understand:

What patterns exist? Where do experiences differ? What do those experiences reveal about barriers to independent international travel, and what might that mean for design?

This also gives me a clearer route from my primary research into my Studio Practice:

raw responses → codes → themes → design implications → scenarios to explore through design

The design outcome should therefore respond to what emerges from the research rather than being justified retrospectively.

References

Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2006) ‘Using thematic analysis in psychology’, Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), pp. 77–101.

Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2021) Thematic Analysis: A Practical Guide. London: SAGE.

Byrne, D. (2022) ‘A worked example of Braun and Clarke’s approach to reflexive thematic analysis’, Quality & Quantity, 56(3), pp. 1391–1412.