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Abstract

This is an exploratory study aiming at explanation without ‘testing’ theory in its narrower sense. Nevertheless, the applied theoretical approaches will be checked against their plausibility in light of the empirical findings. The Netherlands and England serve as case studies for countries with patient involvement at provider level. They are compared to the counter-cases of Germany, with two federal states, and Sweden, with two of its county councils. Since it is about political decisions already taken and the comparison between the different case studies is a main asset, a retrospective and comparative approach is needed.

Several types of sources are available and suitable: next to all kinds of literature, legal texts, green and white papers, official reports, parliamentary minutes, and reports by key actors in the field can be regarded as the main types of sources. These written documents only provide a certain perspective and necessarily leave out some aspects such as unofficial assessment and the interplay of key actors and individuals on the way to legislation. To close this gap, at least to some extent, it was opted for expert interviews covering a broad range of different key actors at the time of the legislation process.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    It is impossible to name the sheer endless multitude of literature on qualitative methods, which beyond classic approaches (as, e.g., for an arbitrary mention, Glaser and Strauss 1967 and Jahoda, Lazarsfeld and Zeisel (1933)) has been considerably growing in interest and literature over the last decade with a number of interesting cross- or multi-method approaches (cf. Creswell & Plano Clark 2007; Denzin 1989; Denzin & Lincoln 2003; Tashakkori & Teddlie 1998). As representatives of the great number of handbooks and articles Bohnsack (2010), Coffey and Atkinson (1996), Denzin (1989), Denzin and Lincoln (2003), Flick (2009), Kelle and Kluge (1999), Lamnek and Krell (2010), Marshall and Rossman (2006), Yin (2009) shall be mentioned.

  2. 2.

    A warm thanks goes to Tone Alm Andreassen at the Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences for some discussion on the Norwegian health care system and its reforms, who at that time worked for the Norsk institutt for forskning om oppvekst, velferd og aldring (NOVA). A special thanks goes to Karsten Vrangbæk at the University of Copenhagen, who patiently answered a number of questions on Denmark’s health care system.

  3. 3.

    The only exemption are the Swedish interviews, for which the software OpenCode (ICT Services and System Development and Division of Epidemiology and Global Health and Department of Public Health and Clinical Medicine, Umeå University, Sweden 2009) was used.

    In this context I would like to take the opportunity to give credit to the developers of the free and very helpful software I have been using during my research: The reference manager JabRef (JabRef Development Team 2003–2016), the powerful text editor TE XnicCenter (Weinkauf & Wiegand 2012–2014), and the underlying MikTE X (Schenk 2009–2013) as well as various other contributors building upon this LaTeX-distribution. Concerning technical support, a special thanks goes to Ulrike Fischer, and the users cgnieder, Malipivo, and Stefan Kottwitz in different LaTeX-fora. The same holds true for the excellent (online) dictionaries I used (Cowie, Crowther, Ramsaran, Hardcastel, Howarth, Wehmeier, & Woods et al. 1992; Hemetsberger 2002–2013; ‘Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary’ 2011; Paul 2004–2009; Slot Webcommerce b.v. 2012).

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Haarmann, A. (2018). Methodology and Study Design. In: The Evolution and Everyday Practice of Collective Patient Involvement in Europe. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64595-7_4

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