ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on thalassaemia and its impact on the patients' lives. It discusses how thalassaemia is a social experience and applies the research method of qualitative, in-depth interviews in order to explore the experience of living with thalassaemia and to go into greater depth as to what patients go through and how their quality of life deteriorates. The chapter outlines the principles of asking questions, and describes how data saturation is reached and how coding is carried out. It also describes the case of Andrew Stefanides, who is a doctor and delves into the relevant literature in order to understand more about the social aspects of thalassaemia and states his research question as specifically as possible. Andrew then reads the principles of qualitative research and in-depth interviews and pays particular attention to his sampling, as he wants to produce detailed and reliable results. He makes sure that he achieves data saturation on the basis of a specific methodology.
