Pay for Quality

KCE Reports 118 Pay for Quality 15
2.1.6.3 Protocol of the interviews
As a protocol to this questionnaire the stakeholders first received a letter from the
KCE to present the study and to ask if they knew some P4Q studies already developed
in Belgium. Then, they were contacted by phone to arrange an appointment.
The interviews were conducted by two academic teams, including three Flemishspeaking
researchers (KUL: JH, LB and CVdB) and two French-speaking researchers
(ULg: MV and CD).
The Flemish-speaking interviewers were assisted by a student who took notes of what
was said whilst the interview was tape-recorded. The French-speaking interviewers
were usually alone but recorded the whole interview. Interviews lasted for 50 minutes
to more than 2 hours.
2.1.6.4 Analysis of the content of the interviews
To guarantee as much as possible the objectivity and the reproducibility of the
conclusions within the chosen qualitative approach, the following steps where used to
come from interview to integrated conclusions:
• Basically the interview structure followed the conceptual framework, so that
the answers could maximally fit into and contribute to the framework
reflection.
• All interviews were audio taped or written down.
• Answers were translated from French or Dutch into English and transformed
to more condensed “long list of quotes” by each of both interviewers, and
put to mutual agreement. All quotes where marked with the name of the
interviewee and his/her adherence to the stakeholders’ typology
(government, academics, unions, primary care, hospitals, etc…) and language
group. The total list of quotes was made available to each of the two
academic team members.
• As a first analysis, the quotes were assigned as close as possible to the
theoretical framework and its different subheadings.
• The exercises of omitting unproductive quotes, eliminating overlap and
repetition, and condensing different quotes to one statement was done by
half of the academic team, under control of the other half. The decisions
about the final “reduced list of quotes” were taken during a common open
meeting of the whole team.
• A final reduced list of “interesting quotes, including their origin” was
constructed and is still available at the courtesy of the research team. An
agreement was made with the stakeholders not to publish names and
affiliation. From this “reduced list of quotes” half of the academic team made
a readable and prioritized text version of the final conclusions emerging from
these quotes, the other half controlled this exercise. Statements of
stakeholders were, if appropriate, put in contrast or in support with the
messages from the international literature study and the conceptual
framework. Only these condensed messages are reported, referring to
categories as “some / many / most of / all stakeholders”, “primary care versus
hospital care stakeholders”, “union versus government stakeholders” and
“French region versus Flemish region stakeholders”.
• Two meetings were necessary to extract main messages and to bring them
together with the general conclusions of the whole project in chapter 9.