Prospective recruitment

4.1.5 Prospective recruitment

The prospective part of the sample involved the allocation of two or more patients who presented with whiplash injury from November 2003 onwards until recruitment was completed. This stage of recruitment was even slower than I had anticipated. The regular monthly contact with each practice reassured me that the invitations were being sent out. I received my first reply in January and I became more hopeful, however, this was short lived. I had naively thought that recruitment to the study would have been completed by March 2004 as this was the winter period when a lot of car accidents occur. To try and improve the response rate, it was decided to ask the practices if they would send a follow up letter to each potential participant and ask them to indicate their response (see appendix 10). Recruitment of potential patient participants continued until August 2004. A total of fourteen invitations were sent out and resulted in five participants.

4.2 Sample

A total of thirty one potential participants were invited to take part in the study. Eight

part in the study and a further ten gave no response. One reason why the response rate was low might have been due to those people not experiencing the whiplash injury as problematic and therefore they might have felt that they had nothing to contribute.

Another reason might concern the length of the study period. The time scale of twelve months and three in depth interviews might have meant it was too big a commitment for them to take on. Only five of the eight participants completed the study (see table 2 page115). Three participants withdrew from the study after the first interview.

Interestingly, two of these, James and Bill, had been recruited retrospectively because of the anomaly that occurred with one of the practices. I think that the timescale between the accident and recruitment to the study might have played a part in their decision not to continue after the first interview. Rav was the third person to withdraw from the study. He was originally invited to take part as a prospective participant but did not respond to the first invitation. He responded to the second invitation and was interviewed six months after he sustained his injury. It is interesting that the three who dropped out were also male and it is possible that gender might have played a part in this.

Table 1 Patient participant characteristics

Age Sex Marital

Status

Employment

Martin 38 Male Married Self

employed

Margaret 40 female Married Employed

Bill 45 Male Married Self

employed

James 39 Male Married Employed

Linda 50 female Divorced Employed

Rav 18 Male Single Unemployed

Steph 40 female Married Employed

Hazel 53 female Married Employed

Table 2 Break down of patient sample and interviews carried out.

site duration recorded Site duration recorded site Duration recorded site duration recorded

Steph

H home U university office W workplace Xindicates not interviewed

4. 2 1 Participant Profiles

Martin is a 38 year old male and is married with two children. Martin is self employed in the manufacturing industry. His work involves making and fitting blinds. He was interviewed on the 15^th December 2003. Martin sustained his whiplash injury in June 2003 and does not consider himself to be recovered as he continues to experience problems from the injury.

Margaret is a 40 year old female and is married with one child. Margaret is employed as a quality assurance technologist. Margaret was interviewed on the 16^th January 2004. Margaret has been involved in three RTAs resulting in a whiplash injury on each occasion. The most recent occurrence took place October/ November 2003 time.

Margaret does not consider herself to be recovered as she is still experiencing problems from the injury.

Bill is a 45 year old male and is married with two children. Bill is a self employed garage fitter. He was interviewed on 28^th February 2004. Bill sustained his whiplash injury in December 2002 and at the time of his interview did not consider himself to be recovered as he has continued to experience problems from his whiplash injury.

Bill has also had a previous whiplash injury which resolved within a week. His partner was present during the interview.

James is a 39 year old male and is married with one child. James is employed as a lawyer. James was interviewed on 31 March 2004 and sustained his whiplash injury in November 2002. James describes himself as fully recovered although he is unable

Linda is a 50 year old female. Linda is divorced and lives alone. Linda is employed as a teaching assistant. Linda was interviewed on the 6^th June 2004 and sustained her whiplash injury in May 2004. Linda does not consider herself to be recovered as she is still experiencing problems from her injury. Linda has had a previous whiplash injury from which she recovered fully.

Rav is an 18 year old single male and lives at home with his family. At the time of his interview, Rav was unemployed. Rav was interviewed on the 11^th June 2004 and sustained his whiplash injury in January 2004. Rav was still experiencing problems from his injury and did not consider himself to be recovered.

Steph is a 40 year old female and is married with two teenage children. Steph is employed as a medical secretary. Steph was interviewed on 10^th August 2004 and sustained her whiplash injury in July 2004. Steph considered herself to be recovered from her injury, although she still has occasional pains in her neck.

Hazel is a 53 year old female and is married. Hazel is employed and works on a production line. Hazel was interviewed on the 12^th August 2004 and sustained her whiplash injury in July 2004. Hazel is still experiencing problems from the injury and does not consider her self to be recovered from the injury.

4.3 Interviewing

Interviews were used to explore participants‟ experience of whiplash injury. Three semi-structured interviews and one telephone interview were carried out with each participant over a twelve month period. This method was employed as it reflects the

focus of the study i.e. the lived experience of whiplash injury and is widely recognised as being appropriate for several reasons. First, it enables the subjective experience of whiplash injury to unfold, secondly it allows the account to be told in the individual‟s own words (Marshall and Rossman, 1999:61). Finally, it is useful when the range of responses is not known in advance (Murphy et al, 1998). The use of in-depth interviews allows a greater exploration of the participants‟ lived experience as it provides them with the opportunity to talk freely about their experiences (King, 2004). This style of interviewing also facilitates the development of trust and rapport between researcher and participant (Johnson, 2002). The in-depth interview also

„emphasises the expertise of the interviewee‟ (Hansen, 2006:100) thereby empowering participants in the exploration of their experience. When carrying out in-depth interview, it is recommended that the researcher begins the interview by putting the participants at ease by using a general introduction before introducing more specific questions (King, 2004; Smith, 2003).