A qualitative evaluation of the National Expert Team regarding the assessment and diagnosis of deafblindness in Sweden

Table 1.

Topic guide for persons with deafblindness/parents1. Please tell me where and when you obtained information about the opportunity to be assessed by the Expert Team2. Please tell me about how the assessment was initiated3. Please tell me about your experiences with the assessment, from the very beginning until the end4. Please describe the concluding meeting and your experiences with it5. Please tell me about your experiences with the written summary6. Please describe how you perceived your role in the assessment process7. Please tell me about your experiences with any uses you/your family had with the assessment performed by the Expert team8. Please tell me about your/your child’s professional contacts prior to the assessment period and how they are today9. Would you like to offer any suggestions to improve the assessment process conducted by the Expert team in the future?10. Demographic dataProbing questions were continually asked to elicit further explanations of the participant’s answers to help the researcher capture their conceptions of the assessment and diagnostic process

Table 2.

Topic guide for professionals1. Please tell me when you obtained information about the assessment performed by the Expert Team2. Please tell me about your experiences with the assessment, from the very beginning until the end3. Please tell me about the concluding meeting and your experiences with it4. Please tell me about your experiences with the written summary5. Please describe how you perceived your role in the assessment process6. Please tell me about your professional contacts with the person with deafblindness/his or her parents prior to the assessment period and how they are today7. Do you have any prior experience with the assessments conducted by the Expert team?8. Would you like to offer any suggestions to improve the assessment process conducted by the Expert team in the future?9. Demographic dataProbing questions were continually asked to elicit further explanations of the participant’s answers to help the researcher capture their conceptions of the assessment and diagnostic process

Table 3.

Methodological steps (Sjöström and Dahlgren 2002)Procedure conductedFamiliarizationAll interview transcripts were read in their entirety to help the researcher become acquainted with the textCompilation of responsesAll identified conceptions (i.e. responses) related to the aim of the study were marked in each interview transcript, starting with all the persons who were assessed by the team, followed by the parents of the children who underwent an assessment and finally, by the professionalsCondensation of the individual responsesThe most significant views in each interview were summarizedPreliminary grouping of similar responsesAll identified conceptions at the interview level were combined at the group level (i.e. including material from more than one interview) and abstracted into preliminary categories of descriptions based on similar contentPreliminary comparison of categoriesThe categorization was refined – all identified conceptions were re-read, and some revisions were madeNaming the categoriesThe preliminary labels were refined, resulting in the final names of the descriptive categoriesContrastive comparison of categoriesThe unique characteristics of the categories and the resemblances between them were described