86 The Professional Counselor | Volume 14, Issue 1 Table 1 Participant Demographics Participant Age Ethnicity Gender Branch Spouse’s Rank Years as a Spouse 1 33 Black Female Air Force Enlisted 4 2 36 Black Female Navy Enlisted 17 3 31 White Female Army Officer 7 4 34 Black Female Navy Enlisted 14 5 36 White Female Marine Corps Officer 12 6 35 White Female Marine Corps Officer 14 7 40 White Female Navy Officer 16 8 34 White Female Navy Officer 10 Data Collection Our research team first developed the interview protocol for the study based on a thorough review of the literature regarding resiliency within military culture as well as the challenges of the military lifestyle for military spouses. Our research team members interviewed each of the participants for 1–2 hours. These semi-structured interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim by an automated transcription service. The interview questions were open-ended and focused on the spouses’ definitions of resilience and their perceptions of their resilience within the military lifestyle and culture (see Appendix for interview protocol). In addition, probing questions such as “Can you explain that a bit more?” or “Can you give any examples of what you mean by that?” were used to gather more in-depth data throughout the interviews. Data Analysis We followed the steps of the transcendental phenomenological data analysis process to analyze our study’s results (Moerer-Urdahl, 2004). First, each member of our research team engaged in epoche, in which we bracketed our biases as military spouses so that our own thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and experiences did not influence our interpretation of our participants’ experiences. The next step in the process was horizontalization. During this step, each member of our research team read through the interview transcripts and noted significant statements throughout so we could better understand how the participants perceived, understood, and experienced resilience. Next, we met as a research team to discuss these significant statements and organize them into themes (Moustakas, 1994). Our research team then developed textual and structural descriptions of the themes, describing not only a list of the participants’ perceptions, but also an in-depth analysis of what their perceptions of resilience entailed and how they have experienced it throughout their tenure as military spouses (Moerer-Urdal, 2004; Moustakas, 1994). We then constructed a comprehensive description of the participants’ perceptions of resilience, encapsulating the “essence of the experience” (Moerer-Urdal, 2004, p. 31). Research Team and Strategies to Increase Trustworthiness Our research team consisted of four university faculty members, all of whom possessed extensive experience in conducting qualitative research. Three of our research team members possess PhDs in
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