how do adolescents define depression? - cIRcle - University of ...

Chapter 111: Methodology
information have been coded on which participants' data were analyzed in previous studies on
personal meanings of death (Yang & Chen, 2006), concepts of pleasure (Dube & Le Bel, 2003),
and in a sample of five preadolescents' and adolescents' descriptions of being ill (Forsner,
Jansson, & Soerlie, 2005). A response unit represents one bulleted response or a response
separated by a new line by each participant in his or her generated list of definitions of
adolescent depression. A COAD unit distinguishes itself by the separation of each response unit
into elements or the smallest information of adolescent depression via content analysis. Analyses
in this study are based on the COAD unit information.
Single words were the smallest units used in content analysis (Holsti, 1969) and were
more easily grouped into a category than participants' responses containing phrases. For
example, a response "angry" was transformed into an "angry" unit and would not require any
separation of raw text. However, a phrase response containing "sad, negative thinking" was
divided into two units of meaningful information, "sad" and "negative thinking." Participants'
matched responses and their units to their ID's in Access (Version 2003), allowed me to store the
text data and maintain continuity in examining the computerized records of the original
responses linked to the ID's and the created message units of descriptions of adolescent
depression.
Classification of Participants' Units of Adolescent Depression
To classify every assigned unit within its specific theme or category of adolescent
depression, each assigned unit, developed in Access (2003), was then transcribed into Microsoft
Word (2003) and clustered within the emerging categories, based on the unit information, in a
developing coding manual (Appendix J). In the preliminary phase of this study, participants'
units of descriptions of adolescent depression were also printed and cut up so that each piece of
cut-up paper contained one unit. Each message unit was then clustered into its relevant
categories pasted on long sheets of paper and suspended on the walls of a room to acquire a
visual and immediate perspective of all the assigned categories (Appendix K).
To better reflect and bridge the meaning of unit definitions of participants' COAD to
established criteria for depression, I adapted depression symptomatology criteria from several
sources to develop the construct categories to contain the units defining them. To my knowledge,
as there were no studies to draw on adolescents' conceptions or understanding of depression
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