3. • It was founded in the early years of the
20th century by Edmund Husserl,
expanded together with a circle of his
followers at the universities of Göttingen
and Munich in Germany, and spread
across to France, the United States.
4.
5. Purpose
The purpose of the phenomenological approach is
to illuminate the specific,
to identify phenomena through how they are
perceived by the actors in a situation.
In the human sphere this normally translates into
gathering ‘deep’ information and perceptions
through inductive, qualitative methods such as
interviews, discussions and participant
observation, and representing it from the
perspective of the research participant(s).
6. Phenomenology is concerned with the study of
experience from the perspective of the
individual, ‘bracketing’ taken-for-granted
assumptions and usual ways of perceiving.
7. As such they are powerful for
understanding subjective experience,
gaining insights into people’s
Motivations and actions, and cutting
through the clutter of taken-for-granted
assumptions and Conventional wisdom
8. Method
Data are usually collected through in-depth
interviewing. The researcher then attempts to
identify understand and describe aspects of each
individual’s perceptions and reactions to their
experience in some detail.
This searching for the essence of an experience
is the cornerstone—the defining characteristic---
of the phenomenological research.
