A survey and in-depth interviews will be applied to collect the data, and as a research design, a triangulation model with multiple levels will be employed [Cresswell & Clark 2007:62-7]. Various levels of a social system will be studied within this research design, in this case, that of the patient, physician, producer, and security expert. For answering the main question, I’m using both a quantitative method and a qualitative method. By combining these two research methods, the strengths of the methods increase. The collection of the data takes place at the same time, also called concurrent timing [81]. The surveys have a more exploratory purpose and constitute an important tool for recruiting respondents for the in-depth interviews [Silverman 2010:48]. The survey is focused on the patients and aims to provide an overall picture of how patients think about the safety and potential risks of their medical implant. However, surveys provide insufficient insight into the deeper feelings of trust. The purpose of the in-depth interviews is to gather more detailed data by examining and analyzing the language used by respondents. The in-depth interviews aim at all categories of respondents. To gain a better understanding of the dynamics that influence the ideas of patients about the safety and risks of RCMI’s, physicians, manufacturers, and security experts, are also interviewed. The transcripts of the interviews will be analyzed using the computer program Atlas.ti.

In the heading ‘dataset’ we will go deeper into the groups of respondents and the way respondents are recruited. The topics that are discussed in both the survey and the in-depth interviews will be described in the ‘topic list’ heading. Attention is paid to how these themes contribute to answering the main question and which research and analysis methods are used. Finally, there is a brief outline of the advantages and disadvantages of the research methods.