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understanding of the process, by showing us that the first interview could be
experienced in different ways, not all of them defensive.
The search for patterns is also enhanced by the strategy of analyzing specific cases
or a group of cases. Accordingly, one of our next tasks will be to explore the process
of specific groups of participants during the program. For instance, we will focus on
the participants who show self-punitive appraisals following the first interview and
see what happens with them as the program progresses - do they continue to exhibit a
self-punitive speech or does it change throughout the program, with the occurrence of
one or two more interviews? And do other participants emerge with self-defense
appraisals in the second interview? We will also be attentive to deviant or marginal
cases (e.g., the participant with an attitude oriented to development), since these are
fundamental to understanding phenomenon and processes [9]. These analyses will be
supported with the use of
sets
,
queries
and
extracting
;
case nodes
will enable to
access participants with specific characteristics (e.g., attitudes regarding an activity).
Evolving Research Questions.
As already stated, at the beginning of the work we
adopted an exploratory approach. As the analysis progressed we refined our research
questions and identified several specific objectives. This ongoing process of clarifying
and redefining was made possible specifically because of our design. NVivo
supported it in the sense that it kept the data unchanged and enabled us to ask
questions of the data according to our different aims. For instance, when exploratory
data seemed to support and enrich our propositions, we decided to test them using a
deductive approach and refined our research objectives, where the propositions
integrated themselves. We were trying, for instance to explore the importance of
lowering the level of activation of the participants' fear system on the development of
their relational skills (where P2 integrates itself, for instance). Another objective that
was set was to explore the satisfactions and dissatisfactions of participants of two
editions of the program, since some changes were introduced in the program's design.
This made us look at the data from 30 other participants who attended the program in
the same year as participants studied in the first phase (year one of analysis) and
another 30 participants who attended the program in the following year (year two of
analysis). The use of NVivo was helpful at this time because we used the same
NVivo's project to store the new data, having access to the coding schemes already
developed and having the possibility of asking questions of the data without
considering the “previous” data in the project. Using tools such as sets enabled us to
query only those sources that permit answering our questions, without the influence of
the other data (which we could easily access if we considered it relevant).
Adopting a Cross Sectional and Longitudinal Perspective.
As already stated, our
design was longitudinal. We were interested in the participants experience throughout
the process and also in what happened at each moment of the program for itself. This
means we also had a cross sectional perspective of data. Since the beginning of the
analysis we have been looking at the themes presence in each moment and throughout
the process. This means we analyzed the themes considering the activities they
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