thematic analysis

Looking into quality of life after a medical procedure. Data collected with a quality of life scale and an open question asking participants to describe their QOL (answers are usually 1 or 2 lines at the most). A simple thematic analysis will need to be carried out by coding and grouping the words used by the patients. This will investigate both how patients describe their quality of life in relation to the presence of the medical procedure and also how they describe the changes in quality of life associated with the procedure. This then has to be compared with the finding of quality of life scale to see if there is any correlation with the qualitative data from thematic analysis. This quality of scale 5 different domains; total of 40 questions with answers on a likert scale of 0 – 4. Total 21 participants with 3 sets of results : at 3 months, 6 months and 12 months. Only 9 participants remaining at 12 months. Will need to see the trend of results over 3, 6 and 12 months. This is the protocol STATISTICAL ANALYSIS Quantitative data Scores will be computed for each of the 5 domains of the quality of life scale. For each subscale, exploratory analyses will be carried out using summary statistics (e.g. mean, standard deviation) with 95% confidence intervals, and graphical plots of scores over time for each patient. Scatter plots and correlations will be used to investigate associations between scores Qualitative data A simple thematic analysis will be carried out by coding and grouping the words used by the patients. This will investigate both how patients describe their quality of life in relation to the presence of the procedure and also how they describe the changes in quality of life associated with the procedure