In-depth interrogation and interpretation of the participants' experiences and the interrelationships between cases led to the development of super-ordinate themes with quotes to illustrate the content of themes.
The inter-rater agreement calculation took the form of a quantification of the content of themes between raters and resulted in the above mean inter-rater agreement value.
In previous research in China we have used combinations of both, but usually where time is short the data coding, categorisation and identification of themes is done manually and in Mandarin, with discussion of important content of themes aided by English summaries [ 18].
The exercise involved the second researcher reading through the codes and a sample of the transcripts, and asking critical questions about the content of themes and possible alternative explanations, alongside suggesting text and concepts for inclusion or exclusion in the analysis.
The content of each theme was expanded or reduced and sub-themes were formed by reflecting and bringing new questions to the text, such as: what does this specific statement say about experience?
Free-text feedback from the remaining 73 responders was summarised into six emergent themes (see table 4 for details of the content of each theme): (1) Florence system empowers patients and puts them in control of their health/condition, (2) use of appointments, (3) ease of use, (4) acceptability of the system, (5) acceptability of the protocol(s) and (6) support with using the system.
Similarly, questions about the content of specific themes, the relative proportions of themes and the absence of certain themes from the list could be explored in much greater depth.
After collating the information resulting from these discussions for each of the seven themes, this four-point structure was used to present the content of each theme to the other participants and to discuss their findings in an open forum.
To illustrate the content of the themes and sub-themes we use excerpts that refer to the identity (PACP member/HCPs) of the individual participants' statements.
But that you have to kind of "guess" the content of the theme and work those Down entries to piece it together is what makes this a Thursday and not an early week puzzle.
