3. PURPOSE OF
PHENOMENOLOGICAL
RESEARCH
• is to illuminate the
specific, to identify
phenomena through
how they are perceived
by the actors in a
situation.
4. In the human sphere this normally
translates into gathering ‘deep’ information and
perceptions through inductive, qualitative methods
such as:
interviews,
discussions,
participant observation,
representing it from the perspective
of the research participant(s)
5. • Phenomenology is • Epistemologically,
concerned with the phenomenological
study of experience approaches are based in
from the perspective of a paradigm of personal
the individual, knowledge and
‘bracketing’ taken-for- subjectivity, and
granted assumptions emphasize the
and usual ways of importance of personal
perceiving perspective and
interpretation.
6. Pure
phenomenological
research seeks
Phenomenological
methods are particularly
essentially to describe effective at bringing to the
rather than explain, fore the experiences and
and to start from a perceptions of individuals
perspective free from from their own
hypotheses or perspectives, and therefore
at challenging structural or
normative assumptions.
preconceptions
(Husserl 1970).
8. *Phenomenological and
associated approaches can be
applied to single cases or to *While single-case studies are able to
serendipitous or identify issues which illustrate
discrepancies and system failures - and to
illuminate or draw attention to ‘different’
situations -
deliberately selected
samples.
positive inferences are less easy to make
without a small sample of participants.
9. research, the strength
of inference which
In multiple to recur with more
can be made
participant than one participant.
increases rapidly
once factors start
10. In this respect it is
important to distinguish
to the
between statistical and population
qualitative validity:
phenomenological from which
research can be robust in
indicating the presence the
of factors and their
effects in individual
participants
cases, but must be or cases were
tentative in suggesting
their extent in relation drawn.
12. The ‘problem’ for many
researchers with
phenomenological research is that
it generates a large quantity of
interview notes, tape recordings,
jottings or other records all of
which have to be analyzed.
13. Analysis is also necessarily
messy, as data doesn’t tend
to fall into neat categories
and there can be many ways
of linking between different
parts of discussions or
observations.
15. Where the data is fairly disorganized -
interview transcripts, unstructured
notes or personal texts - the first stage In a small-scale project looking
is to read through and get a feel for across themes between participants
what is being said, identifying key is likely to be easy to do with
themes and issues in each text. These
points - from all the texts for a small- physical documents, but an
scale project, or a sample of different alternative useful where there are
ones where there are more than 15-20 larger numbers of participants is to
- can then be aggregated and enter the data into a database
organised with the aid of a mind-map according to the analysis headings,
or set of „post-it‟ notes. The resulting and use a mail merge facility to
list is used as a set of points to extract and compare entries. This
interrogate the texts and structure and also enables data entered under
summarise them (“what is this different headings to be juxtaposed
participant saying about:”). Points
which aren‟t brought out through this and compared, particularly useful
process need to be added. to identify relationships between
different themes and factors.
