The Analysis Procedure Followed In This Study

I performed two separate analyses of the data. In the first analysis, during which I used only 20 transcripts and piloted my analysis approach, my process flowed as follows. Once all of the interviews had been transcribed, I then went through them again and removed any identifying information from the transcriptions, provided pseudonyms for the participants, and saved these cleaned and anonymous transcripts for use in analysis. The original audio files and transcripts were

with just 20 of the transcripts. I read and re-read the transcripts a number of times to ensure familiarity with the texts, and re-listened to the audio recordings to get a strong sense of the nuances, emotional tones, and rhythms of each interview. In the next phase of analysis I highlighted utterances in the transcripts that seemed to express a particular experience or understanding of the programme. These utterances were then transferred to a spreadsheet document with three columns, a theme name, description and the quote used to derive the theme. I went through the transcriptions a number of times assigning themes, and comparing themes across interviews. At the next stage I started refining themes by looking at the list in the spreadsheet and trying to find similarities and differences between the themes that had emerged. Themes that seemed to overlap in meaning were grouped into categories, and themes that demonstrated qualitatively different ways of experiencing the same event were used to distinguish the categories. The categories were then linked with the outcomes discussed by participants in order to discern more clearly their relationship to one another. Outcomes served as a useful reference, as they provide an 'objective' reference frame for understanding relationships. In order to received feedback on the initial analysis, the outcome space was presented during a workshop with the adventure programme leaders. The organisers and leaders communicated that the framework had practical value in guiding practice, and helping them understand their goals in the programme. In addition, the findings were presented at the 17^th annual Psychological Society of South Africa conference. Although I engaged in some affirming conversations after the presentation expressing interest in adventure programming, I did not get any useful critique of the methodology employed in the study. I then met with a researcher with extensive experience in phenomenographic research for more direct feedback on my analytical process. He provided some valuable feedback, and I decided to redo the analysis using his suggestions.

In the second analysis I decided to use RQDA to assist me in the process of analysing the

the transcripts once again, making every attempt to look at it with “fresh” eyes. I decided not to use the transcripts in their entirety because there were some participants who clearly described the programme in one way, but would sporadically switch to qualitatively different ways of experiencing when discussing other aspects of the programme, or relate moments that were fleetingly experienced but not fully realised that could have changed the programme for them, before switching back to their general convictions or reinforcing their original perceptions. I imported the transcripts into RQDA in their entirety, and then set out to identify utterances that encapsulated specific meanings given to experiences, or outcomes and experiences associated with the research question, and assigned them to codes within RQDA. RQDA allows the user to assign memos to the project, to codes, to specific utterances, or even annotate individual words. I used this feature extensively so that I could quickly read notes on the insights gained in previous readings and analysis, and so that I could contextualise utterances both in their original transcript and as they related to other utterances within the same code at the same time. As I read the transcripts I constantly asked myself, what does this say about how this individual is experiencing the programme. Using a multi-screen set-up I was able to simultaneously work with a window containing the original transcript, a window with all the utterances belonging to a single code, and a window with the memo for the code I was working with. Some of the codes captured specific experiences or ways of describing phenomena that appeared unique to a specific way of experiencing the programme, others contained various utterances that seemed to convey different ways of experiencing the same phenomenon. At this stage I tried not to worry too much about whether codes contained descriptions of codes unique to a way of experiencing the programme, or if they contained descriptions of aspects of the programme that were experienced in different ways.

Once I was happy with the way in which I had pooled together the data, I started to look at how the descriptions of experiences gave evidence of different categories of description. Starting with the

specific and described specific ways of experiencing aspects of the programme, I noted similarities and differences and tried to organise these into tentative categories of description. I tried to look at the data from a fresh perspective and was cautious not to purposefully replicate the categories of description previously identified in my pilot analysis. Initially I simply labelled these numerically and using the code-categories function in RQDA associated codes with their respective categories.

Seeing as some codes contained various ways of experiencing a specific aspect of the programme, they were associated with two or more categories, whereas others were associated with simply one.

Using the plotting function of RQDA I was able to visualise these relationships, and after going through the codes, memos and actual utterances making up each category assigned them specific names. I then went about breaking up codes so that as many of the codes as possible contained utterances associated with only one specific way of experiencing that aspect of the programme.

Associating these with existing categories, and comparing their content served as a process of validation, allowing me to confirm and test the congruence of categories, and refine their meaning.

Next I worked through all the memos, and tried to identify the relationships between the categories by looking at the dominant aspects in each category, and dimensions of variation that helped to surface the logical relationships between the categories. These were then assigned to codes, allowing for me to plot the structural and referential aspects in an outcome space. Although the process is presented as a sequential series of steps on paper, in practice it is more iterative, with insights and conundrums at each stage leading to revisioning of earlier stages in a continuous cyclical progress that slowly moves towards resolution.