Discussion Questions
Q1) Suppose you are interested in the behaviors of physicians that have high ratings of patient satisfaction. The research goal is to identify the behaviors in the natural clinical settings of these successful physicians so that these behaviors can be built into the curricula of medical preparation programs. The main data were collected by the video recording of five randomly selected physician-patient encounters from 10 physicians who have been rated highly by patients in a reliable satisfaction survey.
In analyzing the recordings, what would you define as the unit for analysis? Why? How many data units (in rough estimates) are you likely to get based on this decision? Does the estimated number of data units seem adequate? Why or why not?
Q2) Suppose you are interested in the behaviors of physicians that have high ratings of patient satisfaction. The research goal is to identify the behaviors in the natural clinical settings of these successful physicians so that these behaviors can be built into the curricula of medical preparation programs. The main data were collected by the video recording of five randomly selected physician-patient encounters from 10 physicians who have been rated highly by patients in a reliable satisfaction survey.
Assume that you reviewed the literature on physician communication skills as a major component of patient satisfaction. Based on this idea, what might be some of the initial codes that you could use to label the data units? How would you justify this set of codes in your research report?