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Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.zawas to establish a topic for a subject and to allow him or her to structure theanswer. This served the purpose of revealing the subject’s attitude toward thedoctor, the hospital staff, and the treatment and care; the intensity of thesubject’s feelings on the sub-topics, and the basis upon which the subject hadformed opinions which constituted the frame of reference within which thesubject answered the question. It also allowed the topic and sub-topics to beelaborated upon and expanded.The starting-point of the interviews was the subject’s self-reports. Regardlessof their interpretations of events and situations, these were accepted inasmuchas they were the subjects’ own perceptions and therefore subjectively real. Interms of Weber’s formal understanding of accounts of experiences whichrequires an intellectual, logical and rational sequence of thought and action, therational actions of the subjects were understood by relating the purpose of thereported behaviour to the personal experience of the actions: why the subjectdid not complain; why he or she did not take the medication, and so on.Throughout the interviewing it was endeavoured to probe the sentimentsunderlying the subjects’ accounts of their experiences. The researcher was thusalert to the meanings of the information given and consequently posedquestions to clarify these meanings. Different questions, or posing questionsdifferently, were also used to cover the same area with subjects. Generalitieswere analyzed by formulating questions which reduced the generalities to moreconcrete experiences: You say that the doctor never listens to you. What did hesay when you told him that the pills do not agree with you?.The duration of the interviews ranged from 90 to 120 minutes. All fiftyinterviews were tape-recorded. This was done with the permission of each ofthe subjects. Patton (1980: 246) points to the necessity in qualitativeinterviewing of capturing the actual words of the interviewee, there being nosubstitute for the raw data of actual quotations spoken by interviewees. Inaddition sparse notes were made during interviews of key sentences and wordson spaces provided below each sub-topic on the interview guide. This served asa kind of non-verbal feedback for the researcher. Each space was later fullywritten up, after replaying the recording and the researcher having sufficienttime to note the responses in full. After the replaying of a recording, notes werewritten on the researcher’s impressions of the subject and tentativeinterpretations of the experiences and events that were recounted. These noteswere filed together with the completed interview guide and its face-sheet forlater analysis.On studying and comparing the contents of the completed guides and notes,distinctions, concepts, ideas and patterns were recorded as these becameapparent. This provided for an emergent analysis of the situation and strategiesin a qualitative, grounded and disciplined manner. The situation could bedepicted analytically, in terms of a summing up of its salient features as214