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

Citation

Batra, A., Robertson Romera, M., Schoenfeld, D., Sparks, G., & Kahn, P. H. (2026). (tech.). Coding manual for “Wilder interaction with nature predicts deeper presence: Toward a human-centered sustainability indicator beyond exposure.”

Link to file

This report includes a guide for coding two things people describe when they talk about an experience in nature:

How deeply present they were
How wild their interaction with nature was

The guide grew out of interviews with 44 adults about a time they felt deeply present in nature. “Presence” here means a state where your usual chattering thoughts settle down and the mind becomes open, aware, calm, and still.

The guide has three parts:

Presence Levels — ten levels, from being lost in thought (Level 1) to the kinds of deep, quiet states described in meditation and contemplative traditions (Levels 9 and 10). Each level includes a definition, example quotes, short stories, explanations of what shapes it, and a quick-reference sheet for coders.
Wildness Levels — two measures based on the “Interaction Pattern” approach: how wild the environment allows the experience to be, and how wild the person’s actual interaction with nature was. This part also covers context, decision rules, and example cases.
Synthesis blocks — a section explaining how to write the short narrative summaries of the interviews that all the coding is based on.

The goal is to make these methods available to everyone so that they can use, test, adapt, and build on them.

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.