The Role of Walkers’ Needs and Expectations in Supporting Maintenance of Attendance at Walking Groups: A Longitudinal Multi-Perspective Study of Walkers and Walk Group Leaders

Background There is good evidence that when people’s needs and expectations regarding behaviour change are met, they are satisfied with that change, and maintain those changes. Despite this, there is a dearth of research on needs and expectations of walkers when initially attending walking groups and whether and how these needs and expectations have been satisfied after a period of attendance. Equally, there is an absence of research on how people who lead these groups understand walkers’ needs and walk leaders’ actions to address them. The present study was aimed at addressing both of these gaps in the research. Methods Two preliminary thematic analyses were conducted on face-to-face interviews with (a) eight walkers when they joined walking groups, five of whom were interviewed three months later, and (b) eight walk leaders. A multi-perspective analysis building upon these preliminary analyses identified similarities and differences within the themes that emerged from the interviews with walkers and walk leaders. Results Walkers indicated that their main needs and expectations when joining walking groups were achieving long-term social and health benefits. At the follow up interviews, walkers indicated that satisfaction with meeting similar others within the groups was the main reason for continued attendance. Their main source of dissatisfaction was not feeling integrated in the existing walking groups. Walk leaders often acknowledged the same reasons for walkers joining and maintaining attendance at walking. However, they tended to attribute dissatisfaction and drop out to uncontrollable environmental factors and/or walkers’ personalities. Walk leaders reported a lack of efficacy to effectively address walkers’ needs. Conclusions Interventions to increase retention of walkers should train walk leaders with the skills to help them modify the underlying psychological factors affecting walkers’ maintenance at walking groups. This should result in greater retention of walkers in walking groups, thereby allowing walkers to receive the long-term social and health benefits of participation in these groups.

g) Themes and subthemes produced from above stages were labelled, defined and examples were indicated. Different dimensions of the same phenomenon were apparent at this phase. Themes illustrated manifest and latent features of the same phenomenon across participants of the same group, subthemes illustrated manifest and latent features that could include as well some themes from the within participant analysis (see a,b,c).

Longitudinal thematic analysis
One longitudinal thematic analysis on the baseline and follow up interviews with walkers was done. The process of this analysis is described below: a) All baseline interviews were analysed via a cross-sectional thematic analysis as this is described above. b) Before each follow up interview, the interviewer listened to and read transcripts of each participant's baseline interview. This was done so that the interviewer could follow-up with each participant issues that were mentioned at the baseline interviews and identify and explore any new experiences and views, which had not been mentioned at baseline interviews. c) After each follow up interview, the interviewer analysed each participant's baseline and follow-up interviews with the aim to identify themes within participants across time. The aim was to explore whether, how and for what reasons particular participant's experiences of and views about initial needs and expectations had changed over the period of three months. d) When all interviews were analysed separately, the researcher collated themes across longitudinal interviews. The researcher looked for similarities and differences between the themes that emerged from within analyses (see b). The aim was to identify themes across participants and across time. The themes produced described the latent meaning shared by most participants' experiences with walking groups across time. Subthemes also included themes from the within participant across time phase (see b), in order to provide contextual information to themes.
Longitudinal multi-perspective thematic analysis Supporting Information: Process of longitudinal and multi-perspective analysis Manuscript: The role of walkers' needs and expectations in supporting maintenance of attendance at walking groups: A longitudinal multi-perspective study of walkers and walk group leaders.

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One longitudinal multi-perspective analysis was conducted based on the cross sectional analyses and longitudinal analysis described above. The aim of the longitudinal multiperspective analysis was to identify themes across groups of participants and across time.
The process of this analysis is described below: a) The researcher looked for similarities and differences between the themes from the longitudinal analysis with walkers and the cross sectional analyses with walk leaders.
There was an attempt to explore similarities and differences of identified themes between groups.
b) The researcher produced a list of themes. There was an attempt to map the themes identified in the interviews with walk leader to those of the interviews with walkers.
Similar themes across groups were collated to broader themes. Different themes were also collated to broader themes and presented to explain the context of the broader similar themes (i.e. role influences: walk leader vs walkers). Themes that could not be collated to broader themes, were investigated separately, were re-defined and attempt was made to be incorporated to the broader similar or different broader themes. c) Broader themes were then explored in terms of whether they described separate phenomena at a specific time point or processes across time. This was decided on whether broader themes explained a phenomenon (e.g. needs) or the experience/changes of a phenomenon across time (e.g. process to meet these needs).