Windjammer: Finding Purpose and Meaning on a Tall Ship Adventure
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript is well structured, clear, and functional in all its parts; the statistics are complete and the references are correct. The manuscript could be enriched by one or more tables summarizing the results and discussions, as the reading is aggravated by the many paragraphs that are nonetheless relevant.
In detail: I found the introduction well-structured, clear, and argued with the majority of literature; the method and materials are functional to the research objective, although I would have deepened the topic to make it more innovative, avoiding repetition of already confirmatory research; the results and discussions are coherent and linear, but being rather extensive would merit the inclusion of 1 table per section that could summarize the essential features of both the results and discussions; the conclusions are consistent with the manuscript.
In my opinion, the manuscript deserves to be published with minor revision, relative to the simplicity and schematization profile of the reading, as in topic it is certainly interesting but not innovative in terms of study design and results and therefore too slow a reading with numerous pages would make the analysis of this work unrewarding.
Minor editing of English language required, relative to grammatical constructs that could be made simpler, but even with this structure the reading is clear and enjoyable.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
This is a very interesting study about adolescents´ character challenges.
I have some questions for the authors:
1. Could the authors discuss in the paper this kind of experience compared with other ones, for example: living in the wild forest, desert, rural areas, or high mountains? ¿Why is so important to explore specifically the psychological effects of an adventure at the sea? It is just because Norway has lots of seas around? How the findings they are reporting could be applied to other surroundings?
2. Please discuss more on the economic and cultural characteristics of the utilized sample in this study.
3. I think the authors could show and discuss at least some examples of the 13 topics (ethnographic maps) they mentioned on page 8 second paragraph, and later they mentioned on page 9, last paragraph. (Or mention where any researcher will be able to review it; maybe in the supplementary documentation?).
4. Just as a speculative exercise: What about including some discussion related to the designing and implications of a future longitudinal study, by combining "normal" and these dropout teenagers in the same adventure?
5. Although this is an ethnographic study, a discussion related is needed, as to how the role of selective social and positive reinforcement applied to some participants could explain the results.
6. For the following studies on this issue, the role of specific and general resilience factors of participants should be included and measured before, during, and after adventure experiences.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
It was a good attempt to explore whether adolescents can find meaning in life when they were participated in a 4-week adventure program to prevent social drop-out. I think the research was done properly and the manuscript is relatively well written. Therefore, I evaluate that it can be published in a academic journal if only somethings are supplemented. The things I think need to be improved are:
1. (Line 11). I think it is only in Germany, but in Norway it is marked as 793.879 instead of 793,879. As an international standard, it is recommended to mark it as 793,879.
2. (Line 14-15). Including statistics in abstracts should be avoided.
3. (Line 164-169). Considering the analysis in this study, it would be better to describe the research question in the form of the research objective.
4. (Line 175-193). It is better to omit the numbering and just present it in paragraphs while explaining materials and methods. This is because even now, paragraphs are organized in the form of first, second, and third.
5. (Line 397). In Table 1, the statistical abbreviation Mean should also be set to M, and italicized or not, but please make it consistent. Cohen's d can also be presented only as d in the table and written as Cohen's d in the text.
6. Incomplete references are found.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
I have serious doubt about the publicity on the tall ship “Christian Radich" that offered the opportunity of the sailing experiences. there is no need to mention the name of the firm to illustrate the work done.
Besides: who runs the "“Windjammer” is a Norwegian social entrepreneurship program"? is is a private or state program?
The first part of the paper is too long and too generic to be a real scientific basis for the educational intervention; on the other hand, literature review on the previous intervention on sail programs is really undeveloped, being focused mainly on a literature review article.
Besides: who runs the "“Windjammer” is a Norwegian social entrepreneurship program"? is is a private or state program?
The research question is quite generic (How is meaning in life perceived among Windjammers, and how can a sensory etnographic approach contribute to our understanding of life stories and the creation of meaning during a tall ship adventure?) It seems rather than the focus of the study/intervention is on how and if something has chaged as a results of the ship experience. Furthermore, to assess if a methodology is better than another it necessary to confront the results of the two; it seem to me that the etnographic approach is rather the methodology used to analyze the results of the intervention, but this is not clearly stated in the research question.
Why is important just to understand this meaning and to understand how this can change after the sailing experiences? what this can add to the literature?
The method is not grounded: why authors choose these methodology? (for instance, comparing the group reached by the program and the general sample of the Norwegian youngsters? It is possible to argue that this is because they wanted to show similarities and differences, to understand in which way to operate and to find evidence of the results, but this is not spelled out.
How and why authors/researchers choose the items to compare between the two dataset?
No real data or findings are offered to understand whether the effects of the intervention lasted or not (see Hawtorne effect). Self report data were collected only
Author Response
please see attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 4 Report
the authors improved their paper, but there are still serious problems.
The paper has very little to offer; authors write in their reply: "Our intention for this project was not to show intervention effects, but rather to explore the process of the adventure itself. What the youth experienced, how they understood and reflected upon their experience, what main factors the adventure activated."
What is that for? Why is this needed if we do not know if the positive effects of the experience lasted or not? Whih are the lesson to be learned from this experiences? How this can be replicated with other groups or other situations? what does this add to the literature?
Authors write: "Windjammer program made them more motivated to complete their education and get a job" did the do so?
Author Response
Reply to Reviewer 4
Reviewer questions:
the authors improved their paper, but there are still serious problems.
Reply:
Thank you for recognizing our effort to improve the manuscript.
Reviewer question:
The paper has very little to offer; authors write in their reply: "Our intention for this project was not to show intervention effects, but rather to explore the process of the adventure itself. What the youth experienced, how they understood and reflected upon their experience, what main factors the adventure activated."
- What is that for?
Reply:
The angle of studying “meaning in life” in this context is a theme that is highly overlooked in psychology as for understanding core elements of adventure programs. In our paper, we do not intend to present simple answers but show complexity in the meaning making process as adolescents are a part of the tall ship crew. We do not intend to compare this program with adventure interventions in general nor evaluate the Windjammer program. This would have required other methodological approaches.
We believe that the complex design used in this study of adding quantitative data bring more information about the participant backgrounds and characteristics, which is an addition to the sensory ethnographic approach. This use of mixed methods is a new contribution in this field, as qualitative approaches often lack this quantitative information. For this reason, our paper is already quite long as we present three different methodological contributions. Extending the introduction and discussion by adding a wider scope of literature would make the perspectives and understanding of the sensory methodological approach more unclear. We believe that through our previous revision, our demarcation of the topic is now more clearly stated. However, we have added a few sentences on the sensory ethnographic approach on lines 179-180 and 257-258 in the manuscript.
- Why is this needed if we do not know if the positive effects of the experience lasted or not?
Reply:
The aim of this paper is not to establish effect but to investigate the process of creating meaning in life among youth at risk. To study the effect of the program, how long changes in self-perception lasted, or how they potentially changed the way youth live their lives, different methods and data would have been needed. As we were interested in addressing how sensory experiences contribute to the phenomena under study, this particular kind of qualitative method, sensory ethnography, was chosen as the most suited. Hence, we are not addressing effect or duration of effect in this paper.
- Which are the lesson to be learned from this experience?
Reply:
We believe there are several lessons to be learned from the Windjammer experience. First, experiences can affect how one sees oneself. By seeking and being open to new ideas, tasks, experiences, and people, one can experience mastery, discover new sides of oneself, and also expand one´s self-concept and identity, which has the potential to affect one´s self-acceptance and experience of meaning in life. Secondly, nature has the potential to invoke transformational experiences. Third, social relationships are important – and social skills particularly important for youth. Fourth, one has to be willing to challenge one´s own self-concept to experience change and growth (for instance, when the adolescents dared to climb the rig and experienced new mastery).
- How this can be replicated with other groups or other situations?
Reply:
When doing qualitative research, the aim is to find typicality, nuances, patterns, complexity etc.. We are interested in capturing the particulars of the stories, the processes, the contexts, and the concepts under study. A new study, with different individuals could result in finding less or more overarching themes, being aware the uniqueness of different adventures as well as the analytic experience of the researchers. We would also like to add that doing sensory ethnography over a longer time period would even give more depth for finding nuances. Hence, a replication with different individuals may deepen our understanding of the phenomena, not necessarily yield the same exact results. But to fully understand how youth at risk create a sense of meaning in life, we could also interview them in other situations, to attempt to more fully explore how youth create meaning or understand their own lives. More in-depth-approaches are needed in this field to be able to pin-point what are the most important experiences, and how others can support these processes.
- what does this add to the literature?
Reply:
We believe that our contribution is adding value and important perspectives to both the literature and to the special edition of “New Thinking on Psychological Health: Find Purpose and Meaning in Life”, particularly by our methodological contribution in exploring “meaning in life”. Bringing qualitative and quantitative research together, and moreover introducing a relatively new genre of qualitative research (the sensory dimension versus traditional ethnography) might be controversial in some scientific positions. Yet, we believe our analytical lenses for the research qualifies “new thinking”, and other researchers have emphasized the value of having a critical sense when doing sensory ethnography:
Sensory ethnography is a different “art of attentiveness” (Vitellone et al., 2021) and should be valued accordingly. In certain respects, sensory ethnography is a particular type of professional vision (Goodwin, 1994) that draws attention to taken-for-granted features in everyday life. Sensory ethnography attempts to develop a more expressive and experiential narrative for ethnography. Developing a sensory lens is a positively disruptive and analytically rich way of being ethnographic. It represents a creative turn for ethnography and is a vital part of the ethnographic imagination. (Calvey, 2021, in the conclusion of the online paper)
Our specific contribution of combining sensory ethnography with quantitative methods add more anchoring to the ethnographic work, with surveys enabling benchmarking and interviews providing sensory ethnographic observations. The mixed method approach used when analyzing the three informants (going back-and-forth with the quantitative – interview – quantitative – observational data) adds a rich understanding of the creation of meaning in relation to before and during the adventure. We are very much aware that we have not measured the long-term tendencies of perceiving meaning in life, which needs a longitudinal design.
In our revised manuscript we have stated more clearly the methodological contribution of using sensory ethnography (line 179 – 180 and 257-258 in manuscript). Doing this, we are confident that our paper serves as a scientific paper with important findings on the perceptions of meaning in life during tall ship experiences, being aware that there are controversies in the acknowledgement of qualitative research.
Reviewer question:
Authors write: "Windjammer program made them more motivated to complete their education and get a job" did the do so?
Reply:
Through the Windjammer experience, the adolescents being interviewed say they experience a change in self-acceptance, social skills, and mastery. In their interviews, they say they are more grounded in themselves, which has created a changed self-concept that has opened them to seeing themselves differently. For some, this led them to see new opportunities for work and studies. This data stems from their interviews, hence we do not know whether these changed perceptions led to changes in behavior upon return from the adventure. This is an important question which also depends upon what kind of situation the youth return to and what kind of support they experienced upon entering home. This was not addressed in the current study, but it is a question worth asking in a future study.
Reference:
Calvey, D. (2021). Sensory ethnography: a creative turn. Journal of Organizational Ethnography, 10, 346 – 357. https://doi.org/10.1108/JEO-10-2021-086
Goodwin, C. (1994). Professional vision. American Anthropologist, 96, 606-633.
Vitellone, N., Mair, M. & Kierans, C. (2021). Doing things with description: practices, politics, and the art of attentiveness. Qualitative Research, 21, 313 - 323.
Round 3
Reviewer 4 Report
I still do not believe this paper has the right academic and scientific weight to be considered for publication
Author Response
Thank you for reviewing our manuscript again.
We are sorry that you still does not seem to find our paper to have the right academic or scientific weight.
