More specifically if the response could be classified as either patient-centred or product-focused (e.g. educate patients, provide information) or if the context of it did not allow categorisation, the response was placed in the ‘ambiguous’ theme.[34]

After completing the independent analysis, the two researchers worked together to discuss their coding and come to consensus regarding any differences in the individual coding. If a consensus could not be reached, a consultation with a third researcher who was not involved in the initial analysis was used to reach consensus. The second phase of analysis involved word clouding. Word clouding is ‘a visualization of a set of related tags or words in which frequencies of use are reflected visually, often in the size of the text or tag’.[39] This method can be used to analyse any textual check details data to give the reader a chance to see the most commonly used terms in the text. Word clouds have been used mostly in social and commercial settings, however their use in education and research has started recently as the use of word clouds provide a quick way to analyse textual data. Gill and Griffin,[39] who

assessed the efficacy of the word-cloud use in analysing policy documents (Good Medical Practice documents), reported that word-cloud analysis provides a quick and practical way to analyse textual data, helps in reducing the data without bias as it analyses the words as they www.selleckchem.com/products/rgfp966.html appear and not as the researcher sees them and suggested that the use of word clouds in different fields of research can provide promising results. In word clouding, font size expresses the frequency of use of different words, i.e. larger font size expresses a higher frequency of use. In the present study, all the most frequently reported word was given the largest font size (24 point). The font sizes of the remainder of the words were calculated by multiplying the largest font size by the frequency of their reporting divided by the highest frequency of reporting. Word clouds were created

using the free software available on http://www.wordle.net. During word clouding every effort was made not to alter the terms used by the participants; however, at times it was necessary to merge terms with similar meaning (e.g. medicine, medicines, medication, medications, drug and drugs were merged into ‘medicine’). In the present study word clouding was used to assess the use of patient-care-related terms. For the third phase of analysis comparisons between responses of the participants in each group (Northern Ireland and Alberta) were conducted based on the location of the pharmacy (urban versus rural), the pharmacy type or years in practice. Data were compared using chi-square test. The Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency website (http://www.nisra.gov.uk) was used to classify the location (urban versus rural) of community pharmacies in Northern Ireland.