Beyond the checkbox: understanding what patients say in online feedback
Paul Baker
CASS, Lancaster University
This talk describes the analysis of a 29 million word corpus of online patient feedback about the NHS submitted to the website NHS Choices. I focus on ways that corpus methods can be implemented in order to answer questions that were set by the Patients and Information Directorate at NHS England. This includes examining 1) how linguistic markers differ in relation to the quantitative rating of between 1 and 5 which patients gave along with their written feedback 2) how patients evaluated different members of NHS staff and 3) How patients self-descriptors relating to age and gender impacted on the way they gave feedback. A mixture of corpus techniques including keywords, collocates and concordancing are implemented, with findings indicating a range of patient expectations and motivations for leaving feedback. I end by reflecting on the potential consequences of incorporating a 'market values' model of the NHS.