Get a First Pass at the Themes in an Interview
Thematic analysis starts with getting to know the data. After a long interview you have an hour of talk and a vague sense of what mattered, and you have to turn that into something you can reason about.
Upload the recording and ask ScreenApp for the themes. You get suggested themes, each with the quotes, the speaker and the time behind it. Treat them as a starting point to check, not a result. ScreenApp does not do thematic analysis for you, and it does not provide qualitative coding or a codebook. The reading, the coding and the interpretation stay with you.
Suggested Themes
Ask what the main themes are and get a short description of each.
Quotes Behind Each One
Every suggested theme comes with the words that support it, so you can judge it.
Check the Audio
In ScreenApp, clicking a moment in the transcript jumps the player to that point in the recording.
Across Many Interviews
ScreenApp has one AI chat that searches and answers from every recording in your library, or a single folder.
How the First Pass Works
It reads the transcript
The AI works from the transcript text and proposes themes with supporting quotes. Its suggestions can be wrong, shallow or miss what matters most to your question.
You do the analysis
You read the quotes, reject themes that do not hold up, and build your own codes. Whether a theme exists is a judgment about your data, and it is yours.
What You Get Back
An example of the shape of an answer to the question “What are the main themes in this interview?”
The themes, quotes and times in this table are made up for the example, and real results depend on your recording.
| Suggested theme | Supporting quote | Speaker and time | Your check |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feeling unheard at work | ”Nobody ever asked me why I was unhappy.” | P03, 31:05 | Verify |
| Workload and time pressure | ”I was doing three jobs by the spring.” | P03, 12:40 | Verify |
| Trust in the manager | ”She kept her word, which mattered more than the pay.” | P03, 44:18 | Weak support |
Test a theme before you keep it
Open the quote
Play the moment in the recording.
Look for a counter case
Ask where the participant says the opposite.
Reword it yourself
Keep the theme only in your own words.
Suggested themes are a prompt for your thinking. Record in your methods how you used AI and how you checked it.
How to Use It
- Add the interview. Upload the audio or video file, or paste a link, using the box above.
- Ask for the first-pass themes. Use the prompts below, or ask about your own research question.
- Check every theme. Open each quote in the recording, then keep, change or drop the theme yourself.
What You Can Do With It
Get to know the data
Get a quick sense of what an interview covers before a careful read.
Spot candidate themes
Collect early ideas to test, then refine them in your own coding.
Prepare for a team discussion
Bring a short list of suggested themes with quotes to a research meeting.
Look across interviews
Ask the same question of a whole folder and see which ideas recur.
This tool is one of the research interview tools, built around a recording, a transcript and the questions you ask of it.
To check each suggested theme against exact wording, use the interview quote finder.
Questions to Ask
What It Can and Cannot Do
Good at
- Suggesting first-pass themes with quotes you can verify
- Showing the speaker and time for each quote
- Looking across a folder of interviews
Not built for
- Doing thematic analysis: ScreenApp does not provide qualitative coding, a codebook or a coded dataset
- Following a specific method such as Braun and Clarke for you
- Being right every time: AI answers can be wrong, so every theme needs your check
Who Uses It
Qualitative researchers getting familiar with the data before careful coding.
Graduate students looking for early ideas to test against their own reading.
UX researchers preparing a quick readout from interviews.
Research teams who want a shared starting list to argue about.
