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The research questions are central to the selection of an appropriate methodological approach (Mason, 2005). As described earlier, the questions of this research project are:

1. What forms of meaningful experiences might occur on a wilderness river journey?

2. What components of the journey facilitate those meaningful experiences? 3. What is the role of the wilderness landscape itself in facilitating those

experiences?

4. What is the potential value of meaningful wilderness experiences subsequent upon returning to everyday life?

The following section considers the question ‘what is implied in terms of

methodological approach within the research questions?’ The research questions consider human experience and, therefore, come with certain procedural parameters. By researching meaningful human experiences, we attempt to make explicit deep- seated values, beliefs and motives for action that normally remain hidden.

3.2.1 The Study of Human Phenomena, and Alternatives to a

Positivist Paradigm

The research questions primarily consider what it is like to have different types of experience and how we have those experiences; they are concerned with human experience: “all insight into the relations between man and the environment is grounded in experience” (Lowenthal and Prince, 1975, p. 119). It is inherently a study of human phenomena, where phenomena are the way things appear for us. It is an attempt to gain a better understanding of the way in which we personally

experience the world. By investigating meaningful human experience we are firmly within the realm of human science research.

Human science research offers a wide range of possibilities in terms of

methodologies and research processes (Guba and Lincoln, 2005). Some of these possibilities fall outside the dominant traditional positivist paradigm used within the natural sciences (Crotty, 1998; Polkinghorne, 1983). Positivism privileges the production of knowledge of which we can be absolutely ‘certain’; that is, knowledge that can be directly verified through the senses or logically deduced from pre-

existing knowledge (Seamon, 1982). The positivist paradigm rests on a premise of mechanistic cause and effect, faith in the objective reality of ‘truth’, and a radical separation of researcher from the ‘object’ of the research. There is only one reality, and the truths of that reality are objectively knowable.

While positivism has proved to be an extremely effective research paradigm within the natural sciences, to gain knowledge about those objects that behave in a

mechanistic way, to extend this into the realm of human science research is not always appropriate (von Eckartsberg, 1998a). What do we do when we are

of others’ experiences? What if we are looking to explore meaningful human experiences; how do we quantify or mechanistically explain ‘meaningful

experiences’? Should we follow the positivist paradigm and attempt to reduce all variables to a scientifically controllable situation, or acknowledge that, if we are attempting to study the whole of an experience as it naturally occurs, we need to look to an alternative way of knowing that accounts for the central importance of

subjectivity? Within the study of human phenomena, the question of whether the researcher can legitimately stand separate from the research, or whether it is even the most useful standpoint, challenges the view of human experience as a mechanistic causal object that can be measured and quantified:

Traditionally, social scientists have been warned to stay distant from those they studied to maintain ‘objectivity’. But that kind of detachment can limit one’s openness to and understanding of the very nature of what one is studying, especially where meaning-making and emotion are part of the phenomenon (Patton, 2002, pp. 47-48; see also von Eckartsberg, 1998a).

Alternatives to positivism do not constitute a single school of thought, or a philosophy with a strict formula or set of propositions (Polkinghorne, 1983), but force the researcher to approach social situations ‘as they occur to us’ so that we might consider phenomena with which we are intrinsically and emotionally connected, such as ‘meaningful experiences’. While positivist research privileges pre-formed hypotheses, the reduction of variables, and quantitative measurement systems, alternative paradigms clear the way for open questions, theory building, qualitative studies and a naturalistic approach:

Qualitative designs are naturalistic to the extent that the research takes place in real world settings and the researcher does not attempt to manipulate the phenomenon of interest… The phenomenon of interest unfolds naturally in that it has no predetermined course by and for the researcher such as would occur in a laboratory or other controlled setting. Observations take place in real-world settings and people are interviewed with open ended questions in places and under circumstances that are comfortable for and familiar to them

Human science research offers possibilities, then, not only for the way we go about our search for knowledge, but also in our attitude towards knowledge itself. Given that many outdoor and experiential educational pedagogies rest on non-positivist paradigms, it is perhaps surprising that so much applied research within the field still rests firmly on a positivist paradigm (Allison and Pomeroy, 2000).

This is not to say that positivist scientific approaches are always inappropriate within the human sciences; rather, that they are not the only valid approaches with which to seek knowledge and understanding of the world in which we live (Patton, 2002). As Knopf suggests, in order to answer questions about human to nature relationships, researchers need to “abandon strict preoccupation with objective analyses of environmental attributes and begin looking at the environment from the eyes of the experiencer” (1987, pp. 808-9). By considering how experience ties us to the world, the next section will show that an alternative view of knowledge is not only

appropriate in this case but preferable.

3.2.2 Procedural Parameters

Implied within the research questions are several assumptions: that experiences provide meaning, that people are able to differentiate between the quality of their experiences, and that the researcher does not already know the answers to the

questions. These axioms suggest guidelines for undertaking the research, particularly in terms of procedural parameters.

Firstly, whatever methods are used should respect the experience as it naturally occurs. That is, the procedures used should not impinge upon people having the experience or interrupt or modify the experience in order to test a set of ideas or hypotheses. Secondly, the best source of peoples’ personal experiences is themselves. While it is possible for the researcher to access his or her own experiences, in order to gain a variety of viewpoints there is a need to access peoples’ recollections of experiences. Not only is there an implication that the research should respect the experience, but it should value the experience of others. In other words the methods should involve an empathetic viewpoint that is sensitive

to peoples’ experiences. Thirdly, the researcher should approach the research questions with an open mind. The object of the research is not to prove an existing idea or theoretical understanding; rather it is to explore and develop an understanding of experience as we live it, in an effort to facilitate future meaningful experiences.

These considerations imply accessing peoples’ experiences through some form of recollection, in an open-ended format that minimally impinges upon peoples’ experiences of a wilderness journey. The questions themselves are suggestive of a qualitative approach involving interviews, journals and/or observations. It is imperative, however (as noted above), that peoples’ experience of the wilderness journey as they live it be minimally influenced by the research.