Appendices: Research Instruments, Protocols, and Supporting Materials

The instruments, protocols, and supporting materials that structured this research

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The full dissertation contains seventeen appendices. This page describes the instruments and materials that structured the research process: what they were, why they were designed as they were, and what each contributed to the analytical rigour of the study. Actual participant data, completed consent forms, and submitted ethics materials are held in confidence and will remain so. What is shared here is the architecture of the research design rather than its content.

Understanding these materials matters for anyone who wishes to evaluate the rigour of the study, adapt the methodology for their own research, or understand how blended witnessing operates as a practice rather than as a concept.

Ethics Approval

This research received institutional ethics approval from two reviewing bodies: Thompson Rivers University (Protocol H25-04204) and Royal Roads University (Protocol H25-00572). Both boards reviewed the study design, consent procedures, participant protection measures, and data management protocols before data collection began. The dual-board review process strengthened the ethical design by raising questions I had considered partially and questions I had initially overlooked.

The ethics approval process required me to articulate explicitly how the study would protect participants from the very precarity that was the subject of the research. A participant whose immigration status is linked to continuous enrolment is in a structurally vulnerable position relative to a researcher who is also a faculty member at their institution. The ethics design addressed this vulnerability through a set of explicit structural protections, described below.

Recruitment Materials

Participants were recruited through a combination of posted notices, digital announcements through the university’s student communication channels, and personal outreach through student associations. The recruitment letter described the study’s purpose in plain language, specified that participation was entirely voluntary, and stated clearly that declining to participate or withdrawing at any point would carry zero consequences for the participant’s academic standing or institutional relationship.

The letter was reviewed for accessibility and translated into additional languages upon request. The recruitment approach was designed to reach students who might have reasons to be cautious about participating in university-sponsored research, given that the research itself was about the gap between institutional rhetoric and lived experience.

Informed Consent Framework

Consent in this study was treated as an evolving relationship rather than a single event. The consent framework had four components.

The initial written consent form described the study purpose, the nature of participation, the risks and benefits, the data management approach, and the participant’s right to withdraw at any time without consequence. Signing the consent form was the beginning of the consent relationship, rather than its conclusion.

Before each session, including the photography period, individual interviews, and the group debrief, participants were reminded of their right to withdraw and invited to indicate whether they wished to continue. This rolling consent check was designed to address the reality that participants could anticipate some aspects of participation at the point of initial consent, and others would only become clear through the experience itself.

Visual sovereignty was built into the consent framework as a specific provision. Participants retained full ownership of their photographs. They could withdraw any image from the study at any time, for any reason, including after data collection was complete. Images were used only for the purposes described in the consent form.

The fourth component was exit consent: at the conclusion of the study, participants were invited to confirm which materials they were comfortable having included in the dissertation and which they preferred to withdraw. This final review was designed to ensure that the study used only material participants remained comfortable with by the time they understood the full analytical context by the time they understood the full context of the analysis.

Photography Workshop Protocol

Before the photography period began, participants attended a photography workshop that covered three areas: technical skills (using a smartphone camera effectively for documentary purposes), ethical guidelines (how to approach photography of shared spaces and other people), and conceptual framing (what kinds of images might be generative for the research question). The workshop was designed to be enabling rather than prescriptive. Participants were given a conceptual prompt rather than a directive.

The photography period lasted two weeks. Participants were invited to photograph whatever they encountered in their daily lives on campus that felt relevant to the questions of belonging, exclusion, and the gap between institutional promises and lived experience. They were free to photograph spaces, objects, juxtapositions, and any aspect of campus life that struck them as analytically significant. Photographing themselves or other identifiable individuals was entirely at their discretion.

The SHOWeD Protocol

The SHOWeD protocol, adapted from Wang and Burris (1997), structured the group discussion of photographs. The acronym represents five analytical questions that participants used to discuss each image:

Letter	Question	Analytical Purpose
S	What do you See here?	Opens observational description; establishes shared vocabulary for the image
H	What is really Happening here?	Moves from observation to interpretation; invites participants to name what the image reveals about power, structure, or experience
O	How does this relate to Our lives?	Connects the specific image to shared experience; opens the discussion to pattern recognition across individuals
W	Why does this situation, concern, or strength exist?	Invites structural analysis; shifts the discussion from individual experience to systemic cause
e	What can we educate others, or enable change?	Orients the analysis toward transformation; connects documentation to advocacy

Table 1
The SHOWeD Protocol: Questions and Analytical Purpose
Note. Adapted from Wang and Burris (1997). This adaptation was refined for a postsecondary educational context in which participants were being invited to theorize their own institutional experience rather than document community health conditions.

The SHOWeD protocol was used as a framework rather than a script. Group discussions followed the analytical logic of the questions while remaining responsive to where participants wanted to take the conversation. My role during these sessions was to facilitate and to listen, offering the occasional analytical observation but never directing participants toward the interpretations I had anticipated.

Photo-Elicitation Interview Protocol

Each participant took part in an individual photo-elicitation interview in which they selected five to seven images from their photography period and discussed each one. The interview protocol was semi-structured: it provided a set of generative questions while allowing the participant to direct the conversation toward the images and interpretations that felt most significant to them.

The interview began with a check-in, following the healing-centred engagement model described by Ginwright (2018): How are you arriving today? This question was a genuine invitation rather than a formality. Analysis began after each participant had had the opportunity to be heard as a person rather than immediately positioned as a research subject.

Interviews were conducted in participants’ preferred languages where possible and were audio-recorded with participant consent. Transcripts were returned to participants for member checking before analysis.

Group Debrief Protocol

A collective group debrief session brought participants together to discuss the experience of the research process itself: what it felt like to document their lives, what the act of analysis had surfaced, and what they wanted to communicate to the people outside the room who would eventually read this work. The debrief was designed to close the research experience as a community rather than a series of individual encounters.

The debrief also served a consent function: participants were invited to indicate any images or discussion content they wished to withdraw from the analysis before the writing process began.

Analytical Materials

The analysis process used Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA; Smith et al., 2009) as the primary analytical framework. IPA attends to each participant’s account in its particularity before identifying patterns across cases. This approach was chosen because it honours the specificity of individual experience while still enabling the cross-case analysis that produces transferable conceptual insight.

The kitchen table analysis described in the FAQ section of this site was a material practice: printed photographs, coloured Post-it notes, yarn connections across a physical surface, analytic memos written in the margins. This physical materiality was deliberate. It slowed the analytical process in ways that digital coding software resists, and it created an audit trail of interpretive decisions that could be traced and documented throughout the write-up process.

Member checking occurred at two points: after transcription, when participants reviewed and corrected their own words, and after initial thematic analysis, when participants were invited to respond to the researcher’s emerging interpretations before they were incorporated into the final draft.

Overview of Appendices in the Dissertation

Appendix	Title	What It Contains
A	Ethics Approval: Thompson Rivers University	Full approval letter and conditions of approval from TRU Research Ethics Board (Protocol H25-04204)
B	Ethics Approval: Royal Roads University	Full approval letter and conditions of approval from RRU Research Ethics Board (Protocol H25-00572)
C	Recruitment Letter	Plain-language description of study purpose, participation requirements, and participant rights
D	Informed Consent Form	Full consent document including study description, rights statement, visual sovereignty provisions, and rolling consent procedure
E	Photography Workshop Outline	Session plan for the two-hour workshop that preceded the photography period, including technical instruction, ethical guidelines, and conceptual framing
F	Photography Prompt Card	The visual prompt provided to participants before the two-week photography period
G	SHOWeD Protocol	Adapted discussion guide used in the group photo analysis sessions
H	Photo-Elicitation Interview Guide	Semi-structured interview protocol with generative questions, check-in procedure, and member-checking process
I	Group Debrief Protocol	Facilitation guide for the collective closing session
J	Analytic Memo Template	The structured memo format used to document interpretive decisions throughout the analysis process
K	Member Checking Protocol	Procedure for returning transcripts and emerging analysis to participants for review and correction
L	Codebook: Initial Themes	Preliminary thematic structure generated from first-pass analysis before cross-case pattern identification
M	Reflexivity Journal: Selected Entries	Researcher field notes documenting analytical decisions, emerging interpretive tensions, and positionality reflections throughout the study
N	SPN Strand: Full Researcher Narrative	The complete scholarly personal narrative strand of the dissertation, presented as an integrated analytical document
O	Visual Index: Participant Photographs	Catalogue of photographs used in the analysis, with participant-assigned titles and brief analytical notes (held in confidence until post-defence)
P	Ghost Data Documentation	Anonymised documentation of participant withdrawal, the structural conditions that preceded each withdrawal, and the analytical treatment of absence as finding
Q	Glossary of Original Concepts	Definitions and scholarly lineages for the six original conceptual contributions of the study

Table 2
Overview of Dissertation Appendices
Note. Appendices O and P contain participant-generated and participant-linked material and are held in confidence until the doctoral defence is complete. All other appendices are available to the supervisory committee and examining board as part of the submitted dissertation.

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Published Appendix Pages

The following appendices are published in full as standalone pages. Each includes the complete instrument or document, a design rationale, and relevant scholarly references.

Appendix	Title	Status
C	Recruitment Letter	Published
D	Informed Consent Form	Published
E	Photography Workshop Outline	Published
F	Photography Prompt Card	Published
G	SHOWeD Protocol	Described in full on this page (table above)
H	Photo-Elicitation Interview Guide	Published
I	Group Debrief Protocol	Published
J	Analytic Memo Template	Published
K	Member Checking Protocol	Published
L	Codebook: Initial Themes	Held pending defence review
M	Reflexivity Journal: Selected Entries	Published (pre-defence selections)
N	SPN Strand: The Researcher’s Own Story	Published
O	Visual Index: Participant Photographs	Held until post-defence
P	Ghost Data Documentation	Held until post-defence
Q	Glossary of Original Concepts	Available in the Glossary

Note. Appendices A and B (ethics approval letters) are cited by protocol number above. Appendices O and P contain participant-linked material and are held until after the doctoral defence.

References

Ginwright, S. (2018). The future of healing: Shifting from trauma informed care to healing centred engagement. Occasional Paper. https://medium.com/@ginwright/the-future-of-healing-shifting-from-trauma-informed-care-to-healing-centered-engagement-634f557ce69c

Smith, J. A., Larkin, M., & Flowers, P. (2009). Interpretative phenomenological analysis: Theory, method and research. Sage.

Wang, C. C., & Burris, M. A. (1997). Photovoice: Concept, methodology, and use for participatory needs assessment. Health Education & Behavior, 24(3), 369–387. https://doi.org/10.1177/109019819702400309