Qualitative_data_analysis

266 QUALITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS
Table 15.2 ‘Passive’ and ‘active’ responses by gender
than any overt resistance to provocative action. However, the situation—open-air
dentistry—could be regarded as provocative and Mr Kaufman if not resisting this at
least actively looks after his own interests. As our criteria included assertiveness as
well as opposition, on balance we decided to assign the category ‘active’ to this
databit.
Another borderline case arises when Vincent gives Claire Memling gas before
asking her ‘to rinse’. Is this another example of passivity in the face of Vincent’s
advances? Possibly. We may hesitate to categorize it in this way, though, since this
may have been a legitimate part of Claire’s treatment, and what was unusual was
that Vincent joined her—as he says, ‘We both took a little gas’. Because the action
refers primarily to Vincent, on balance, we decided to exclude this from our
categorization.
We have summarized the relationship between patient gender and ‘active’ and
‘passive’ responses in Table 15.2. We can see that ‘passive’ responses are found
predominantly amongst female patients, while ‘active’ responses are found
predominantly amongst male patients. The vast majority of the males are ‘active’
while the vast majority of the females are ‘passive’. Unfortunately, the number of
examples is too low for this cross-tabulation to be more than suggestive.
Of the thirteen examples, three are exceptions to the gender stereotyping pattern.
It is worth considering these exceptions in more detail. Of the two women
responding actively, one is Claire Memling who is finally provoked into rejecting
Vincent’s advances and ‘runs out weeping’. Compare this with the response of Mr
Feldman, who takes advantage of a lapse to break free and ‘races out’—without
weeping. The other is Mrs Schwimmer, who sues Vincent over the ‘billowing
bridge’, but only after treatment is completed. Compare this with the example of
Mr Greenglass, who also sued but only after refusing treatment—he was ‘adamant’
that Vincent could not remove his tooth. Finally, the gender of the ‘passive’ male is
mentioned almost incidentally—‘I had to anesthetise the patient by reading him
Dreiser’—receiving so little emphasis that we might have overlooked this example
had we not been looking for it in the data. Overall, these exceptions are fairly weak
and do not create a strong ‘counter-impression’ to the main pattern.