How does the operation of PHARMAC's 'Community Exceptional ...

equirements and considerable political drivers. I considered the examination of
discourse to be too narrow a methodology to develop insights into such a
broard range of interests.
A descriptive statistical method was undertaken by Rasiah (2009) in her study
of Community Exceptional Circumstances applications. As a PHARMAC insider,
she acknowledged the assistance that she received in the preparation of the
statistical data and the analysis which was conducted by PHARMAC staff. In my
study however, such a quantitative approach would not have been used in
isolation from qualitative data and I was not acquainted with what types of
statistical records PHARMAC kept on this type of rationing. The purpose to
such quantitative data is to help verify the decision making and I had no
confiodence that, as an outsider to PHARMAC, I could guarantee I was being
given full access to the data. Also I was not confident that PHARMAC’s
quantitative data was such that I could make an accurate connection between
the qualitative information and the quantitative data. If this lack of connection
did not exist (or the tacit possibility that the connection did not exist) I would not
be able to establish a causal relationship between the numbers of claims and
the decisions which were made.and why they were made.
Thematic analysis allows triangulation of all the collected data which could be
obtained from PHARMAC; from publicly available material and material that I
was able to bring into the public domain. I particularly liked this methodology
because it is relatively simple. It is a qualitative methodology with the ability to
handle large volumes and several different types of data and provides a clear
set of research outcomes.
Grounded theory is possibly the closest methodology to thematic analysis which
could be used handle this data. It utilises selecting, recording, coding and
categorising activities. However the purpose of grounded theory is to establish
an emergent theory out of the data which supports a hypothesis. The quest
underlying this study however sought to uncover the truth about how this
Community Eceptional Circumstances policy was operationalised.
In conclusion, this research required me to explore both social policy values and
outcomes simultaneously. Thematic analysis allowed me to achieve these two
objectives. This experience was aligned with Smith and Robbins (1982) and
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