What is it about?
Qualitative research helps us understand people's experiences of health, illness and care, but analysing large amounts of qualitative data can feel overwhelming, particularly for clinicians undertaking research alongside practice. This article introduces framework analysis, a structured and transparent approach to qualitative data analysis that is widely used in applied health research. Using a real-world example from a children's hospice psychological safety project, the paper explains the five stages of framework analysis and demonstrates how researchers can move from raw data to meaningful and actionable findings.
Featured Image
Photo by Gaining Visuals on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Healthcare organisations increasingly rely on qualitative evidence to improve services, understand patient and staff experiences, and evaluate new ways of working. However, many clinicians and novice researchers lack confidence in qualitative data analysis. Framework analysis offers a practical and accessible method that supports transparency, rigour and collaboration while remaining focused on producing findings that can inform service improvement and clinical practice. By making qualitative analysis more approachable, this method can help ensure that valuable experiences and perspectives are translated into meaningful improvements in care.
Perspectives
Framework analysis occupies an important place within applied healthcare research because it balances methodological rigour with practical usability. Its structured matrix approach allows researchers to compare experiences across individuals, groups and timepoints while maintaining a clear audit trail from interpretation back to the original data. For nursing, midwifery and allied health professionals seeking to undertake research, service evaluation or quality improvement, framework analysis provides a pragmatic route to generating credible evidence from qualitative data. As healthcare increasingly recognises the importance of patient, family and staff experiences, accessible approaches such as framework analysis can help practitioners engage confidently with qualitative inquiry and strengthen evidence-informed practice.
Prof Michael J Tatterton
University of Bradford
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Using framework analysis in applied qualitative health research, Evidence-Based Nursing, July 2026, BMJ,
DOI: 10.1136/ebnurs-2026-104731.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
