Phenomenology

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Common Types of Qualitative Research Design

A research design is a logical model that guides the

investigator through the research process.

The major qualitative research designs include:

 Grounded theory: theory (what happens and why?)
 Phenomenology: event
 Ethnography: person
 Case study: describing experience

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 Phenomenology
Definition
 Phenomenology (from Greek: phainómenon "that
which appears"; and lógos "study")
 Qualitative phenomenological research is to describe a
"lived experience" of a phenomenon.
• Phenomenology: A philosophy or method of inquiry based on
the premise that reality consists of objects and events as they
are perceived or understood in human consciousness and not
of anything independent of human consciousness.

 Describe the essences of lived experience

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Cont…
 Phenomenology: the study of people‘s conscious
experience of their life-world, that is, their ―everyday
life and social action‖ (Schram, 2003, p. 71)
 Phenomenologists focus on describing what all
participants have in common as they experience a
phenomenon (e.g., grief is universally
experienced).
 Study of ―phenomena‖: appearances of things, or
things as they appear in our experience, or the ways
we experience things, thus the meanings things have
in our experience
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 Cont …
 insist on careful description of ordinary conscious
experience of everyday life (the life-world)—a description
of ‗things‘ (the essential structures of consciousness) as
one experiences them.
 In qualitative research, phenomenology ―aims to identify
and describe the subjective experience of respondents. It is
a matter of studying everyday experience from the point
of view of the subject, and it shuns critical evaluation of
forms of social life.
Barritt, et al. (1984)
 Lived experience – playing games
 Life-world – the everyday world in which games are
played

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History
 First used by Johann Heinrich Lambert
- Later used by Immanuel Kant and Johann Gottlieb
Fichte
 Made popular in 1807 in G. W. F. Hegel‘s book
titled Phänomenologie des Geistes (usually
translated as Phenomenology of Spirit)
 Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) later refined the
meaning into more of what we use today.
- Phenomena can be studied only
subjectively, not objectively—thus
phenomenology is a close cousin of
existentialism

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 Assumption
 There are essence(s) in shared experience(s) that are the core
meanings understood through a phenomenon commonly
experiences.
 A philosophy without presuppositions – suspend all judgments
about what is real.
 Intentionality of consciousness – consciousness is always
directed toward an object, reality of an object is then related to
ones‘ consciousness of it.
 Refusal of the subject-object dichotomy – without meaning by
subject, no reality of object
 Researchers must depict that essence or basic structure of
experience
- Must suspend prior knowledge &beliefs
- helps heighten consciousness
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Types of Phenomenology
1) Transcendental constitutive phenomenology
studies how objects are constituted in pure or
transcendental consciousness, setting aside questions
of any relation to the natural world around us.

(2) Naturalistic constitutive phenomenology studies

how consciousness constitutes or takes things in the
world of nature, assuming with the natural attitude
that consciousness is part of nature.

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Cont…
3) Existential phenomenology studies concrete human
existence, including our experience of free choice or
action in concrete situations.
4) Generative historicist phenomenology studies how
meaning, as found in our experience, is generated in
historical processes of collective experience over
time.
5) Genetic phenomenology studies the genesis of
meanings of things within one's own stream of
experience.

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Cont…
6) Hermeneutical phenomenology studies interpretive
structures of experience, how we understand and engage
things around us in our human world, including ourselves
and others.

7) Realistic phenomenology studies the structure of

consciousness and intentionality, assuming it occurs in
a real world that is largely external to consciousness
and not somehow brought into being by
consciousness.
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Characteristics
1. Emphasizes a focus on people's subjective
experiences and interpretations of the world

2. Sometimes considered a school of thought or

philosophical perspective

3. Wants to understand how the world appears to

others
4. Analysis of experience

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Methods/Approaches
1. Describe a type of experience just as we find it in
our own (past) experience.
2. Interpret a type of experience by relating it to
relevant features of context
3. Analyze the form of a type of experience
4. Logico-semantic model: specify the truth conditions
for a type of thinking or the satisfaction conditions
for a type of intention
- i.e., Bears hibernate in the winter
- i.e., I intend to get an A in this class

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Methods/Approaches…
5. Neurophenomenology: assumes that conscious
experience is grounded in neural activity in
embodied action in appropriate surroundings

- mixes phenomenology with biological and

physical science

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Procedures to conduct phenomenological research

 The researcher determines if the research problem is best

examined using a phenomenological approach.
 The type of problem best suited for this form of research
is one in which it is important to understand several
individuals‘ common or shared experiences of a
phenomenon.
 It would be important to understand these common
experiences in order to develop practices or policies, or to
develop a deeper understanding about the features of the
phenomenon.
 A phenomenon of interest to study, such as
anger, professionalism, what it means to be
underweight, or what it means to be a wrestler, is
identified.
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Data collection

 In-depth interviews (mainly)

 Observations
 written or oral self-report, or even their aesthetic
expressions (e.g. art, narratives, or poetry).

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 Data Analysis
 The first principle of analysis of phenomenological data is to
use an emergent strategy, to allow the method of analysis to
follow the nature of the data itself. Steps,
 Explore your own experiences & set aside your
opinions/judgments

 Bracket judgments and everyday understandings in

order to examine consciousness itself

 Phenomenological reduction: revisiting the experience

to derive the inner structure/meaning in and of itself
 Horizonalization laying out all the data and analyzing
it equally
- no one thing is more important

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Cont…
Organize into clusters or themes
textural description

imaginative variation or structural

description, viewing the data from multiple
perspectives
- seeing different things from different angles

 The end product should be ―a composite

description that presents the ―essence‖ of the
phenomenon, called the essential, invariant
structure”
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References
 http://capilanou.ca/psychology/student-
resources/research-guidelines/Phenomenological-
Research-Guidelines
 http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/
 http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology
 http://www.ped.gu.se/biorn/phgraph/civil/main/f
irstidea.html

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