Authors: Anthony Arcuri and Doris McIlwain

Reporting the project

Our final data analytic task involved formally articulating the results of our research in writing. Although it was Anthony's task to write up this project as part of his doctoral studies (Arcuri, 2008), this writing will be represented here as a joint effort, given Doris's numerous cycles of reading, feedback and re-reading Anthony's drafts. To report our project, we drew from each of the various analytic resources we had compiled: our diagrams, storyline, memos, methodological file, verbatim transcripts, and even our memories. Using our diagrams (pinned to a noticeboard) as orientation, we created a series of headings and subheadings reflecting the concepts and sub-concepts we had discovered. Under these headings we pasted the corresponding parts of our 'storyline', which we then formalised and elaborated upon by reviewing our memos and methodological file to ensure that all concepts were accounted for and represented appropriately.

In our descriptions of our concepts, we gradually introduced our hypotheses explaining their relationships and evolving processes over time. Following our description of each group of sub-concepts, we summarised their sometimes evolving relationships both with each other and with other groups of sub-concepts that we had introduced previously. We concluded our writing with an overall summary of our theory, incorporating all important concepts, relationships and processes, and providing real-world examples of how these operate. We supplemented our written account with a general diagram of our theory and two additional specific diagrams of particularly complex processes embedded within the theory.

In order to provide our readers with clear evidence for our representation of concepts and the relationships and processes in which they were involved, we wove the participants' narratives into our writing and quoted at length on occasion, giving prominence to such text via "italics within double quotation marks". Our desire to preserve smooth grammatical flow in our writing led us to edit our participants' quotations slightly. Although we made extensive efforts to ensure that we preserved our participants' original meanings, it is possible that our (or perhaps only Anthony's) quest for grammatical perfection embellished or suppressed nuances in our participants' communications. Beyond our idiosyncratic approach to representing their narratives, we were required to alter particularly self-revelatory quotations to protect the identities of our participants.

We continually refined our theory throughout our write-up. Where we discovered that our theory demonstrated poor consistency or logic, we reviewed our memos and diagrams and adjusted our theory accordingly. In a similar vein, where we noticed that our concepts were less well developed than we had thought, we revisited our memos and raw data with the aim of finding overlooked pieces of data that could fill the newly discovered gaps in our concepts. We dropped concepts that we considered extraneous to our theory or poorly developed, with the exception of concepts relating to 'actual' experiences, for which we could not reach theoretical saturation (as described in a previous section) but which we retained in our final theory with the proviso that they remain provisional and subject to further investigation. As a final test of the credibility of our theoretical scheme, we compared our theory against the raw data to ensure that it was able to explain all cases. Again, where it was not, we adjusted our theory accordingly.

In our final report, we positioned the majority of the writing described above within our third chapter, the results, which we wrote first. Next, we illustrated our methods (chapter two) by providing a general explanation of the grounded theory approach with reference to the methodological literature, followed by a detailed description of our research process in a manner similar to the report you are reading currently. After we had articulated our method and results, we wrote our opening chapter, in which we comprehensively reviewed the history of and literature associated with our topic, identified its numerous gaps, and eventually arrived at our research question. We concluded our writing with our fourth chapter - a summary and discussion of our theory in the context of the existing literature, of its limitations, and of its implications for psychotherapy practice, supervision, education, and research. This 'world-backwards' way of writing fits grounded theory well, even if it seems unfamiliar to those schooled in other approaches.

Because we had the luxury of a self-determined word-limit within which to report our research, we were allowed indulgently to explain and expand upon multiple nuances in our theorising. Later, however, in preparing to present our work at conferences and meetings, we were awakened to the reality of time and space constraints, and were required to deliver our theory in an abridged and concise form. To meet these requirements, we chose to present a very brief rationale for our study, followed by a cursory explanation of the methods employed to achieve it. We decided to dedicate the majority of our time to outlining the overall structure of our theory, and providing several engaging and audience-appropriate anecdotes from our participants' narratives that were representative of our key hypotheses. We opted to conclude our talks with a summary of the implications of our findings and an opportunity for a reflective discussion with our audience. For examples of these presentations, please see http://www.psy.mq.edu.au/staff/dmcilwain/arcuri_collab.html.

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