| What is asthma? Content analysis, main descriptors | “Inflammation”, “swelling”, “oedema”, “obstruction” | “Constrict”, “narrow”, “tight” |
| Dominant metaphor | Process | Container |
| Treatment perspective | Prospective | Retrospective |
| Managing asthma | Prior professional responsibility assumed, and then transferred | Patient as experts : “I know my asthma better than anybody” |
| Locus of control | Operational (Piaget) | Figurative (Piaget) |
| Taxonomy of knowledge used in constructing the model of asthma | Universal (Toulmin) | Existential (Toulmin) |