Contents of It's not All in Your Head by Asmundson and Taylor

esponding to the question ―What did you like most about the program‖ a participant
responded, ―having to work on my health anxiety, being aware of it rather than it just
happening to me, being open about it with myself and [head researcher]‖ and this was
broken down into ―work[ing] on health anxiety‖, ―aware[ness] of [health anxiety]‖, and
―being open about [health anxiety]‖. This allowed for a better comparison of response
units. A set of 61 units were identified consisting of 329 words (see Appendix D).
In the open coding phase, an unconstrained categorization matrix was developed
(see Table 9) with each question presented as a category, under which subcategories were
created using the inductive process (Elo & Kyngäs, 2007). Notes and key words were
written beside each response unit on a spreadsheet that identified the key theme of each
unit (e.g., ―challenged thinking‖ and ―felt rushed‖). There is no systematic way to
identify these themes (Elo & Kyngäs, 2007; Osborne 1994). The responses were then re-
read multiple times to make sure that appropriate themes were identified for each
response unit. The responses were then re-read and themes were compared and contrasted
until similar themes could be grouped under a subcategory in the matrix (e.g., ―exercises
took a long time‖ and ―felt rushed‖ were grouped together). Each subcategory was then
numbered. For example, the first identified theme for each question was placed under
―subcategory 1‖ and other themes were placed under the subsequent subcategories (e.g.,
―subcategory 2‖).
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