Dr Victoria Clarke's Outputs (183)

“I am secretary, therapist, maid, nurse”: A qualitative exploration of lived experiences of caring for a family member with a BPD diagnosis (2025)
Journal Article

Background: Informal caring is an increasingly common phenomenon. Experiences of mental health caring are not well-researched, and few studies focus on experiences of family carers supporting individuals with a Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) d... Read More about “I am secretary, therapist, maid, nurse”: A qualitative exploration of lived experiences of caring for a family member with a BPD diagnosis.

‘Go with the "wave of music" to dive deep’: Exploring perceptions of psychedelic-assisted therapy and the role of music within this practice (2025)
Journal Article

There is increasing interest in psychedelic-assisted therapy (PT) as a mental health intervention; however, there is a long history of stigma associated with psychedelics, which may be a barrier to implementation. For this reason, it is important to... Read More about ‘Go with the "wave of music" to dive deep’: Exploring perceptions of psychedelic-assisted therapy and the role of music within this practice.

Exploring Black women’s experiences in psychotherapeutic training and practice in the UK (2025)
Journal Article

Background: Discussions around racial disparities and injustice have gained increasing prominence in psychotherapy and counselling research. However, research in this area has been criticised for its omission of Black women's experiences, including a... Read More about Exploring Black women’s experiences in psychotherapeutic training and practice in the UK.

Reporting guidelines for qualitative research: A values-based approach (2024)
Journal Article

Evaluative tools for qualitative research need to be developed and designed in a way that allows them to be used by the research community to assess qualitative research on its own terms, and thus strengthen, rather than undermine, research quality.... Read More about Reporting guidelines for qualitative research: A values-based approach.

‘I’m coming out’: The role of music in LGBTQ+ identities (2024)
Journal Article

Research shows that music holds great importance to the LGBTQ+ community. However, only a handful of studies have explored personal and private music consumption and particularly its role in individual identity formation and the coming out process –... Read More about ‘I’m coming out’: The role of music in LGBTQ+ identities.

“Being really confidently wrong”: Qualitative researchers’ experiences of methodologically incongruent peer review feedback (2024)
Journal Article

Although peer review is one of the central pillars of academic publishing, qualitative researchers’ experiences of this process has been largely overlooked. Existing research and commentary have focused on peer reviewers’ comments on qualitative manu... Read More about “Being really confidently wrong”: Qualitative researchers’ experiences of methodologically incongruent peer review feedback.

Thematic analysis (2024)
Book Chapter

This chapter introduces the thematic analysis (TA) family of methods, highlights characteristics shared by the various branches of the TA family, as well as important philosophical, conceptual and procedural differences. We discuss various ways of di... Read More about Thematic analysis.

“Difficulty mentioning the M word”: Perceptions of a woman disclosing negative menopause symptoms in the workplace (2024)
Journal Article

Purpose
This qualitative study explores general perceptions of a woman experiencing negative menopausal symptoms in the workplace. It examines the socio-cultural understandings informing the responses of a mixed participant group, including those un... Read More about “Difficulty mentioning the M word”: Perceptions of a woman disclosing negative menopause symptoms in the workplace.

A critical review of the reporting of reflexive thematic analysis in Health Promotion International (2024)
Journal Article

Using the concept of methodological congruence - where the different elements of a study 'fit' together - we explore both problematic and good practice in (reflexive) thematic analysis (TA) as reported in Health Promotion International (HPI). Alignin... Read More about A critical review of the reporting of reflexive thematic analysis in Health Promotion International.

Thematic analysis: A reflexive approach (2024)
Book Chapter

This chapter introduces the thematic analysis (TA) family of methods. We highlight key features of TA, including theoretical and design flexibility and its status as a technique that can be used within a wide variety of approaches to qualitative rese... Read More about Thematic analysis: A reflexive approach.

Supporting best practice in reflexive thematic analysis reporting in Palliative Medicine: A review of published research and introduction to the Reflexive Thematic Analysis Reporting Guidelines (RTARG) (2024)
Journal Article

Background: Reflexive thematic analysis is widely used in qualitative research published in Palliative Medicine, and in the broader field of health research. However, this approach is often not used well. Common problems in published reflexive themat... Read More about Supporting best practice in reflexive thematic analysis reporting in Palliative Medicine: A review of published research and introduction to the Reflexive Thematic Analysis Reporting Guidelines (RTARG).

“One dead bedroom”: Exploring the lived experience of sex and sexuality for women with self-reported obsessive-compulsive disorder (2024)
Journal Article

This study explored lived experiences of sexuality for women with self-reported obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), with a particular focus on the felt impact of OCD on their sexual identities, practices and relationships, and their experiences of h... Read More about “One dead bedroom”: Exploring the lived experience of sex and sexuality for women with self-reported obsessive-compulsive disorder.

"Music therapy is the very definition of white privilege": Music therapists' perspectives on race and class in UK music therapy (2024)
Journal Article

The resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in the summer of 2020 following the death of George Floyd highlighted, once again, the racial and socioeconomic inequities permeating western countries, and galvanised music therapists in the UK and e... Read More about "Music therapy is the very definition of white privilege": Music therapists' perspectives on race and class in UK music therapy.

The learning experiences of UK autistic university students during the Covid-19 pandemic (2023)
Journal Article

This study explored the learning experiences of autistic university students in the UK during the Covid-19 pandemic, covering the period from the first lockdown in March 2020 to the removal of restrictions in July 2021 and the subsequent return to in... Read More about The learning experiences of UK autistic university students during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Approaches to thematic analysis: Becoming a knowing researcher (2023)
Book Chapter

Thematic analysis is a common choice for analysing qualitative data, involving processes of coding and theme development to generate understanding around patterned meaning. It is typically understood as an analytic method (a theoretically flexible to... Read More about Approaches to thematic analysis: Becoming a knowing researcher.

Being a mother with anorexia: A phenomenological study of seeking and receiving professional support for white heterosexual women in the UK (2023)
Journal Article

Mothers are currently under-represented in the literature on anorexia, including research on treatment, with most research focussed on female adolescents. This raises questions about how adult women and particularly those who are mothers, experience... Read More about Being a mother with anorexia: A phenomenological study of seeking and receiving professional support for white heterosexual women in the UK.

Thematic analysis (2023)
Book Chapter

The aims of this chapter are to: a) introduce readers to thematic analysis; b) illustrate the phases and practice of reflexive TA – one specific approach to TA – using a worked example of a study exploring constructions of a (hypothetical) gay couple... Read More about Thematic analysis.

Qualitative story completion: A creative and novel method for psychotherapy and counselling psychology research (2023)
Journal Article

Story completion (SC) – where respondents are presented with the start of a story (the story ‘stem’ or ‘cue’) and asked to complete it – originally developed as a projective technique for clinical and research assessment. While SC continues to be use... Read More about Qualitative story completion: A creative and novel method for psychotherapy and counselling psychology research.

Thematic analysis (2023)
Book Chapter

In the social and health sciences, TA has been extensively used for analyzing qualitative data, but until the last decade or so, there had been little discussion of TA as a method or guidance provided for its use (Aronson, 1994; Boyatzis, 1998; Patto... Read More about Thematic analysis.

Doing reflexive thematic analysis (2023)
Book Chapter

This chapter presents the essentials of conceptualising, designing and doing reflexive Thematic Analysis (TA), in counselling and psychotherapy. The authors contextualise TA as a family of methods, with some quite radically different approaches, rang... Read More about Doing reflexive thematic analysis.