Coding Scheme 2: Attribution of change in autonomy, competence, and relatedness to The Future Project After student interviews were coded for levels of

autonomy, competence, and relatedness; the coders reviewed the interview transcripts in their entirety to then code for whether and to what extent the student attributed any change in autonomy, competence, or relatedness to The Future Project. Attribution is an

important component of impact evaluation (Garbarino & Holland, 2009; White & Phillips, 2012). One approach to determining attribution of a program is the identify cause and effect through the General Elimination Methodology (GEM) (Scriven, 2008). “The methodology entails systematically identifying and then ruling out alternative causal explanations of observed results” (White & Phillips, 2009, p.11). The attribution codebook for this study is based on this premise.

This coding theory was applied to develop a means of determining three possible levels of attributing change to one’s autonomy, competence, and relatedness based on participation in The Future Project. A level one indicates that The Future Project had little to no effect on each autonomy, competence, and relatedness. A level 2 indicates that participating in The Future Project either enhanced or further reinforced one’s sense of autonomy, competence, and relatedness; and is assigned also if the student only implies that The Future Project played a role or it could be deduced based on a students’

anecdotal recounting of some sort of change that the coders could deduce overlapped with the timing of the student’s participation in The Future Project. Lastly, a level 3 indicates that The Future Project had a dramatic influence on the student’s sense of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. This is evidenced by the students’ explicit crediting of The Future Project for any changes in autonomy, competence, and relatedness and the extent of change.

For level 2, the student must indicate that The Future Project in some way has helped them enhance their development of autonomy, competence, or relatedness. The following quote is representative of this:

My dream…is to be an actor. I take acting classes at Drew University. I go today after school… I did improv a couple years ago when I was

younger, but I’ve been doing it for a while….she [the Dream Director] is helping…she is the one who got me into the Drew acting classes – me and a couple other students.

This quote is an example specifically of level 2 competence attribution to The Future Project because the student had already identified and begun developing the skill of acting, but the Dream Director helped him take it further by supporting him to enroll in the acting classes.

Level 3 attribution was assigned when there was evidence that the student’s trajectory of experiencing each autonomy, competence, or relatedness. The following quote represents relatedness attribution:

I can actually remember the first [Dream Team] meeting I went to. It was a real emotional meeting. Everybody were talking about, what were we talking about, I don’t know. It just impressed me to see…that this group was actually planning out things and talking about their emotions and stuff with each other. It was impressive, like you just don’t see groups like that in a school like this.

This quote is an example of level 3 attribution for relatedness because the student explicitly indicated how The Future Project dramatically changed his perception of how to connect closely with others in a context where previously he had thought it impossible (For a holistic view of the definitions and exemplars for Coding Scheme 2, see Appendix J).

Coders were trained in the same way as they were trained for Coding Scheme 1. The primary researcher and the same two additional coders convened to mine together the first three student interview transcripts to assign levels 1, 2, or 3 of autonomy, competence, and relatedness attribution to all relevant instances. Then again then assigned each student interview in its entirety a single level for each based on the cumulative nature of all coded instances. As with Coding Scheme 1, mathematical averages could not necessarily be used, so discussion and consensus were used to assign a single level to each student for each psychological need. The training session also required a single three-hour meeting. At the end, clarifying revisions were made to the coding scheme to improve its accuracy of use. The coders then separately coded the next three student interviews, assigned one level for each psychological need to each student interview, and one week later reconvened to compare results, come to consensus, and further revise the coding manual. This second meeting lasted two hours.

The coders then independently mined the remaining 13 interview transcripts with the same method, and afterwards reconvened to come to consensus on the overall levels of autonomy, competence, and relatedness for each interview. In the end, each student received three attribution scores, one for each autonomy, competence, and relatedness.

Cronbach’s alpha reliability scores were low for autonomy attribution and

relatedness attribution (this will be discussed in Validity and Reliability Section 3.6.1.3), but acceptable for competence attribution: Autonomy attribution = .531; Competence

3.5.3 RQ1b. How does participation in The Future Project continue to have