outdoor experiences, or that the interviewer established greater trust with the first two types of
interviewees; shewas a Cornell University student and retrospective interviewees were all Cornell
students or employees, and she was an instructor on the course for the reflective group. For the
pre-post interviewees, the interviewer had no immediate connection other than sharing the OB
experience. All names used in reporting results are pseudonyms (Table 1). Quotes were chosen
as illustrative of various themes.
Both authors had significant experience with OAE as students and instructors. The first author
had participated in two-week and one-week OB courses and a semester long NOLS course, before
becoming an OB instructor. The second author participated in a month-long NOLS course and
later instructed similar NOLS courses. The authors discussed their own differing experiences
relative to those of the study participants, and used their own experiences to gain insight during
the data interpretation stage (Corbin & Strauss, 2007; Patton, 2002).