TEXTUAL ANALYSIS MANUAL
Indeed, manual thematic analysis of large amounts of text generated from open-ended questions remains time and resource intensive therefore, the additional insights within this type of data often remain underutilized. While quantitative results of closed-ended survey questions are widely published, analysis of free-text responses to open-ended questions or free-text sections are rarely performed and published.
“is there anything else you would like to tell us about your chemotherapy treatment?” ). “Is there anything else you would like to tell us about your cancer care services?” ) or more specific comments (e.g. Questionnaires usually also include one or more open-ended questions, eliciting general comments (e.g. PREMs are usually collected through cross-sectional surveys using questionnaires with closed-ended questions producing quantitative data from a large sample of patients that can be used as indicators for the quality of health services. Examples of cancer PREMs include those collected with the UK National Cancer Patient Experience Survey (CPES) and the US Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) Cancer Care Survey. In cancer care, specific experience measures have been advocated to account for the complex treatment pathways involved. In contrast to satisfaction measures, experience measures focus on the underlying components of satisfaction by collecting information on what actually happened to patients during a hospital stay or a medical consultation. Patient-reported experience measures (PREMs) assess patients’ view on the delivery of care, such as communication with health care professionals and coordination of care. This has led to the development of patient-reported measures - reports that come directly from the patient about their health condition and experiences - which provide the basis for a more holistic interpretation and assessment of care than traditional clinical outcome measures alone. Health care research is becoming increasingly patient-centered, highlighting the importance of considering patients’ perspectives and experiences when evaluating the quality of care.
TEXTUAL ANALYSIS PROFESSIONAL
Such results can be useful to inform questionnaire development, provide feedback to professional teams, and guide patient-centered initiatives to improve the quality and safety of cancer care. ConclusionsĪ computer-assisted textual analysis of free-text in our patient survey allowed a time-efficient classification of free-text data that provided insights on the personal experience of living with cancer and additional information on patient experiences that had not been collected with the closed-ended questions, underlining the importance of offering space for comments. While closed-ended questions related mainly to factual aspects of experiences of care, free-text comments related primarily to the personal and emotional experiences and consequences of having cancer and receiving care.
Further analysis of this last class showed that patients’ comments related to the following themes: ‘initial shock’, ‘loneliness’, ‘understanding and acceptance’, ‘cancer repercussions’, and ‘information and communication’. The remaining three classes were related to ‘medical care’, ‘gratitude and praise’, and the way patients lived with cancer (‘cancer and me’). We identified five main thematic classes, two of which consisting of a detailed description of ‘cancer care pathways’.
TEXTUAL ANALYSIS SOFTWARE
We conducted computer-assisted textual analysis using the IRaMuTeQ software on the comments provided by 31% ( n = 844) of SCAPE survey respondents ( n = 2755). Patients were invited to rate their care in 65 closed-ended questions (PREMs) and to add free-text comments regarding their cancer-related experiences at the end of the survey. SCAPE is a multicenter cross-sectional survey that was conducted between October 2018 and March 2019 in French-speaking parts of Switzerland. We aimed to identify the underlying themes of patients’ experiences as shared in their own words in the Swiss Cancer Patient Experiences (SCAPE) survey and compare these themes with those assessed with PREMs to investigate how the textual analysis of free-text comments contributes to the understanding of patients’ experiences of care.
These surveys usually include closed-ended questions (patient-reported experience measures (PREMs)) and space for free-text comments, but published results are mostly based on PREMs. Patient experience surveys are increasingly conducted in cancer care as they provide important results to consider in future development of cancer care and health policymaking.
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