THE SOCIAL CONTEXT AS 7
the guide were generated with regard to the work of scholars in the field of social, sport and
educational psychology in general, and SDT in particular. For example, in relation to SDT,
the initial starting point was the work of Deci and Ryan (2000). Their research highlighted a
number of key themes pertinent to motivation, such as the support of autonomy. These
themes provided not only an invitation to disclose personal experiences but also served to
locate such experiences in relation to previous SDT-based research.
Interviews were arranged with each participant at a location of their choice. At the
start of the interview (name of author), who conducted all the interviews and was the only
person to listen to them and transcribe them in order to ensure confidentiality, provided a
brief outline of the study and explained his interest in motivation and teaching. Participants
were invited to ask questions about the project prior to signing an informed consent form
which included permission to audio tape record each interview, and to use their comments in
future publications. The flexible nature of the process and the individual responses of the
participants resulted in interviews of differing lengths. On average each interview lasted
approximately one hour.
Following the interviews, (name of author) adopted the qualitative posture of
‘indwelling’ and listened to the tapes several times, making notes and jotting down initial
impressions. This reflective posture, according to Maykut and Morehouse (1994), “means to
live within ... understanding the person’s point of view from an empathetic rather than a
sympathetic position” (p.25). This posture was maintained when the interviews were
transcribed verbatim and the transcripts read through several times by him in order to further
immerse himself in the data.
Next, the transcripts were read through again and subjected to a categorical-content
analysis that, according to Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach and Zilbar (1998), is similar to a
traditional approach in qualitative content analysis in which “categories of the studied topic