Hey Lucy, including people without chronic disease would be a good idea, but because stigma is only experienced by the person suffering from the disease (if at all; well that's what hopefully the research can answer), would the views from those not experiencing the disease really count towards much? Unless they are family members of participants perhaps. The same thing with clinicians; in order to appear 'legit' to the researchers, would they answer the question in such a way as to make them appear more 'favourable'? But it would be interesting to compare responses, and perhaps show a disparity between how the clinicians feel they are treating the patients and what the patients think (assuming the data is quantitave).
I was thinking of having a set list of diseases, but because I don't know which have the most stigma associated, I thought there could be an initial 'phase' where a number of patients were interviewed, and using data collected, determine which don't 'count' and afterwards only focus efforts on patients with specific diseases that did have significant data, but I suppose that would depend on numbers in this initial phase. I don't know if that's exactly allowed in research world, but anyway thank you Lucy!
