Reflective practice has been adopted by many teachers, including dissertation advisors who provide 1:1 teaching of research students. This paper discusses issues arising from our use of qualitative data analysis software (QDAS) for reflective practice and provides an analysis of the thematic coding and word/pattern searches of feedback given to postgraduate research students. We subjected written feedback provided by one dissertation advisor to three different analyses: thematic, text-string and text-pattern search. We found that use of QDAS in a thematic analysis of feedback provides new insights by indicating areas of strength and areas for improvement. Text and pattern searches are more useful in flagging students with specific learning issues.