Methodology of Thematic Analysis and its Application in Public Policy Studies

Public Policy studies, examines the factors influencing on public policies, the impact of policies on society and uses various methods in this regard. The complexity of the public policy environment, the different dimensions of policy issues, and the various factors affecting the variables studied in the field of public policy in different societies, requires that policy analysts be equipped with appropriate methodological approaches So that they can study these phenomena in their own context. In the meantime, the thematic analysis is a method for determining, analyzing and expressing the existing patterns within the data. This method, at least, organizes the data and describes it in detail but it can go beyond that and interpret different aspects of the subject matter of the research. This paper, considering the importance of the qualitative research methods in the policy researches, explained the features and stages of thematic analysis and described the examples of the application of this method in policy researches and finally introduced suitable software for implementation of this method.