2.4. Data analysis
After all interviews had been conducted, the audio-tapes
were transcribed and files containing the individual information
provided during recruitment and the respective
transcript were assembled for each subject. These files
underwent a data analysis procedure, the details of which
have been described elsewhere (Costa et al., 2004).
The first two authors of this paper carried out the content
analysis of the transcribed interviews with the aid of
the subject files and the LadderMap software (Gengler &
Reynolds, 2001). Firstly, and in order to be able to reconstruct
the individual ladders provided during the interviews,
sets of summary codes were created. Subjects
sentences or words thought to best represent the ideas comprised
by each code were identified and retained to help
further interpretation of the results. The codes, sentences
and words were then translated into English. Secondly,
implication matrices and the respective hierarchical value
maps (HVM) were generated for the meal solutions and
specific ready meals laddered by 20 or more subjects. A
cut-off point guaranteeing a fair balance between the
amount of information retained and the clarity and simplicity
of the HVM generated was chosen through an iterative
process (Reynolds & Gutman, 2001). Finally, and to
be able to evaluate the extent to which heterogeneity in the
subjects answers could have led to unduly addition or
elimination of information, average consistency indices3
were calculated for each HVM obtained (Grunert et al