Qualitative analysis in gay men's health research: comparing thematic, critical discourse, and conversation analysis

Gay men's health typically relies on traditional forms of qualitative analysis, such as thematic analysis, and would benefit from a diversity of analytic approaches. Such diversity offers public health researchers a breadth of tools to address different kinds of research questions and, thus, substantiate different types of social phenomenon relevant to the health and wellbeing of gay men. In this article, I compare and contrast three qualitative analytic approaches: thematic, critical discourse, and conversation analysis. I demonstrate and distinguish their key analytic assumptions by applying each approach to a single data excerpt taken from a public health interview conducted for a broader study on gay men's health. I engage in a discussion of each approach in relation to three themes: its utility for gay men's health, its approach to dilemmas of voice, and its capacity for reflexivity. I advocate that qualitative researchers should capitalise on the full range of qualitative analytic approaches to achieve the goals of gay men's health. However, I specifically encourage qualitative researchers to engage with conversation analysis, not only because of its capacity to resolve dilemmas of voice and to achieve reflexivity, but also for its ability to capture forms of social life hitherto undocumented through thematic and critical discourse analysis.