How HIV patients construct liveable identities in a shame based culture: the case of Singapore

Ho, Lai Peng; Goh, Esther C. L.

Data analysis was performed through an inductive ground-up process based on the rich data collected. All the interviews were transcribed for analysis. The basic unit of analysis is the individual participant situated within the context of his or her marriage and family (Ragin & Becker, 1992) . The analysis captured the experience of the participants in reconstructing their "spoiled" identity after the HIV diagnosis. The data were read, reread, and analysed at two levels: within-case analysis and cross-case analysis. At the first level, the analysis focused on how the participants experienced and interpreted the experience in relation to context; that is, their account of their identity construction as well as whether HIV was a chronic disease in their experience. To increase the trustworthiness of the data analysis, critical reflections and debates between the first author (the researcher), who had a close relationship with the participants, and the second author, who was not involved at all in the data collection and kept a distance from the participants, were intentionally carried out when linking data to propositions to achieve pattern matching and explanation building (Yin, 2013) . A conscious effort was made to avoid domination by the researcher's interpretation. An example of such critical reflection can be observed from how the researcher's original proposition shifted closer to that of the participants' in this interpretive process. The researcher, a veteran healthcare professional, had an ingrained opinion from the mainstream healthcare narrative that HIV is now a chronic disease. This narrative was challenged by the participants' subjective experience of a lack of normality in HIV patients. At the second level of analysis, by comparing the analysis across cases and synthesizing the 2 × 2 matrix of four participants, three main themes were revealed ( Figure 1 ): (i) an overpowering sense of shame; (ii) constructing a liveable identity; and (iii) keeping shame at bay. These themes will be discussed in detail next.