Developing a category system for qualitative answers
breast cancer
BREAST CANCER
To analyse the participants’ answers, a category system was developed using a three-step approach. To begin with, the applicability of the existing category system from the breast cancer survivors’ survey [
Each category should be broad enough to reflect a survivor’s perspective.At the same time categories were designed to be mutually exclusive and as specific as possible, to include meaningful information regarding the content of the data.The definitive category system contains 13 different categories for the 
Category system with (translated) sample statements* categories which have been created based on the word by word analysis and the inductive analysis.Two study authors (PLS and BS) were trained in the category system and rated all statements independently. In some cases, a participant’s answer was classified into more than one category. Finally, both investigators met with the expert methodologist (MK) to discuss divergent ratings until consensus was achieved. The whole process is visualised in Fig. 
Sequence of each step in the qualitative data analysis