’Doing Questioning’ in the Emergency Department (ED)

Figures & data

Table 1. Participant characteristics.

	Patients	Doctors	Nursing staff
Participants n	72	114	229
Gender (female | male | unrecorded)	41 | 31 | 0	48 | 59 | 7	162 | 29 | 38
Age n (%)
18–29	10 (13.9)	10 (8.9)	55 (24.0)
30s	8 (11.1)	33 (28.9)	30 (13.1)
40s	18 (25.0)	29 (25.9)	30 (13.1)
50s	8 (11.1)	1 (0.9)	9 (3.9)
60s	10 (13.9)	0 (0.0)	1 (0.4)
70s	9 (12.5)	0 (0.0)	0 (0.0)
80+	8 (11.1)	0 (0.0)	0 (0.0)
Unknown	1 (1.4)	41 (36.0)	104 (45.4)
Language (ESB | NESB | unrecorded)	62 | 8 | 2	9 | 20 | 85	40 | 2 | 187

Table 2. Typology of questioning utterances.

Main question types	Sub-categories of questions
A. Content questions
B. Polar questions	A1: Tag questions; A2: Yes-No Interrogatives; A3: Yes-No Declaratives
C. Alternative questions
D. Non-Interrogatives
E. Response tokens	E1: Continuers; E2: Newsmarks; E3: Repair initiators; E4: Repeats
F. Sub-Clausal phrasal questions
G. Undetermined

Table 3. Number of questioning utterances according to seniority level.

Doctor seniority	No. of QU	QU per 100 words	Mean/100 words	Range/100 words	SD/100 words
Junior	2446	3.50	3.74	1.57–7.47	1.79
Mid-Level	1629	3.79	3.90	0.00–6.91	1.69
Senior	280	2.57	2.02	0.00–4.64	1.83
Total	4355	3.52	3.49	0.00–7.47	1.87

Table 4. Number and proportion of questioning utterances by category and seniority.

	SENIORITY LEVEL
QUESTION TYPES	All levels		Junior		Mid		Senior
	Freq.	Perc.	Freq.	Perc.	Freq.	Perc.	Freq.	Perc.
Content	797	18.30	442	18.07	316	19.40	39	13.93
Polar	2723	62.53	1519	62.10	990	60.77	214	76.43
Tag	436	16.01	250	16.46	146	14.75	40	18.69
Yes-No Declarative	788	28.94	403	26.53	328	33.13	57	26.64
Yes-No Interrogative	1499	55.05	866	57.01	516	52.12	117	54.67
Alternative	118	2.71	59	2.41	51	3.13	8	2.86
Non-Interrogative	63	1.45	10	0.41	26	1.60	2	0.71
Response token	242	5.56	156	6.38	79	4.85	7	2.50
Sub-Clausal	384	8.82	225	9.20	149	9.15	10	3.57
Undetermined	28	0.64	10	0.41	18	1.10	0	0.00
Total	4355		2446		1629		280

Table 5. Number and proportion of questioning utterances within the response token category, by seniority.

RESPONSE TOKEN	SENIORITY LEVEL
	All levels		Junior		Mid		Senior
	Freq.	Perc.	Freq.	Perc.	Freq.	Perc.	Freq.	Perc.
Repeat	118	48.76	70	44.87	46	58.23	2	28.57
Newsmark	50	20.66	27	17.31	20	25.32	3	42.86
Repair initiator	32	13.22	27	17.31	5	6.33	0	0.00
Continuer	42	17.36	32	14.10	8	10.12	2	28.57
Total	242		156		79		7

Figure 1. Proportion of ‘conventional’ and ‘non-conventional’ questioning utterance forms, by type.