Premature Closure of Analysis in Qualitative Research: Identifying Features and Mitigation Strategies

Premature closure of analysis refers to finishing data analysis too early, leading to underdeveloped qualitative findings. It is a critical issue in qualitative research affecting the rigor and trustworthiness of qualitative findings. While much has been written about how to conduct rigorous data analysis across a range of qualitative approaches, there has been no discussion of the features of premature closure of analysis and strategies for addressing it. The purpose of this paper is to outline how to spot premature closure of analysis and to describe strategies to mitigate this issue. Three identifying features of premature analysis are: providing thin descriptions with loaded participant quotes, presenting conventional concepts as themes, and using topic summaries as themes. Using a First Approach to qualitative analysis, working in segments to generate a wholistic thematic output, and critical reflection and examination before finalizing the thematic output can be useful strategies to mitigate premature closure of analysis. Themes and patterns that are too vague and meaningless to provide a comprehensive account of the studied phenomenon are a threat to the validity of the study and a waste of researchers’ effort and time. Premature closure of analysis is one of the most common problems affecting the quality of thematic outputs in quality studies. Therefore, researchers should be mindful and critical in their analytical decision-making to prevent this problem.