Qualitative_data_analysis

142 QUALITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS
incongruity in task or temperament which results in torture being inflicted upon the
patient. In this event, we may anticipate a possible comparison between the databits
we have assigned to the categories ‘task’ and ‘temperament’ and the databits assigned
to the subcategories ‘dentist suffering’ and ‘patient suffering’. We won’t be able to
make this comparison unless we so subcategorize the data.
Our distinction between ‘dentist suffering’ and ‘patient suffering’ was prompted
initially by comparison between the databits, and confirmed by reference to our
conceptual concerns. Now let us try to reverse this process, and start with some
ideas about the category ‘suffering’. There may be several different distinctions
which occur to us in relation to this category. We can distinguish between physical
and mental suffering, for example. Or we can focus on the kind of ‘suffering’ we
associate with the dental chair, and reflect on its various aspects, such as the physical
pain and discomfort, the (hopefully temporary) disfigurement, the more subtle sense
of entrapment, the embarrassing invasion of personal space, or the appalling
vulnerability to the dentist’s drill. (No, I don’t like going to the dentist!)
These distinctions make sense, but do they relate to the data? A review of the
databits confirms that we can indeed distinguish between different forms of
‘suffering’ experienced by patients. For example, Mrs Sol Schwimmer seems to
suffer in a number of ways. We can presume she suffers discomfort as Vincent
‘forces’ the false plate in; she suffers disfigurement because it ‘sticks out like a star
burst chandelier’; and she suffers disability because she ‘can’t chew’ as a result. Mrs
Wilma Zardis, on the other hand, suffers the fate of being left for several days ‘in
the chair’—a fate which plays at once upon our sense of entrapment in the dental
chair, and our dread of delay while we are trapped there. Cézanne meanwhile
‘knocks out teeth’, behaviour which certainly implies discomfort and perhaps even
subsequent disability and disfigurement. It certainly seems that the kind of
distinctions we can draw conceptually have some relevance to the data. We could
proceed to subcategorize ‘suffering’ into a number of subcategories, which are both
conceptually and empirically grounded. Using ‘discomfort’ to refer to either
physical or mental suffering, and including ‘disability’ as an additional dimension,
we can identify three subcategories which might prove useful in the analysis
(Illustration 10.3).
We could make finer distinctions than these, distinguishing, for example,
between physical and mental discomfort, or within mental discomfort between
entrapment, vulnerability, and the violation of personal space. Why not include
these distinctions?
ILLUSTRATION 10.3
SUBCATEGORIES OF ‘SUFFERING’