Coding Manual for “Wilder Interaction with Nature Predicts Deeper Presence: Toward a Human-Centered Sustainability Indicator Beyond Exposure”

Abstract

The coding manual in this report codes two separate dimensions of people’s accounts of an experience in nature: the depth of Presence they experienced, and the wildness of their interaction with nature. We developed it in a study of 44 adults interviewed about an experience of Presence in nature. Presence is a state of being in which conditioned thinking subsides and the mind becomes open, aware, non-reactive, and still (Kahn et al., 2026). The first part, Presence Levels Coding, describes ten ordered Levels of Presence, from thought-immersed distraction (Level 1) to states described in contemplative traditions (Levels 9 and 10), with definitions, prototypical examples, vignettes, explanatory factors, and a coder cheat-sheet. The second part, Wildness Levels Coding, specifies two measures grounded in the Interaction Pattern approach: the wildness of interaction an environment affords (Maximum IP Wildness) and the wildness of interaction a participant actually enacted (Enacted IP Wildness), together with contextual factors, decision rules, and exemplar cases. A final section explains how to construct the synthesis blocks, the narrative summaries of interview transcripts on which coding was based. Our goal is to make these methods available so that others can use, test, adapt, and build on them.