Phenomenology & Grounded Theory

Qualitative Research Methods

Phenomenology• 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)

Phenomenology• History

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

Phenomenology

• Defining

Phenomenology: the study of structures of experience, or consciousness

- 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

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/

Phenomenology

• Defining

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.

Phenomenology

• Defining

Phenomenology: the study of people’s conscious experience of their life-world, that is, their “everyday life and social action”

(Schram, 2003, p. 71)

Phenomenology

• Assumption

There are essence(s) in shared experience(s) that are the core meanings understood through a phenomon commonly experiences.

Phenomenology

• Assumption

1. Researchers must depict that essence or basic structure of experience

a. Must suspend prior knowledge & beliefs

- helps heighten consciousness

Phenomenology• Road Map!

Phenomenology• Road Map!

Phenomenology• Five Orientations

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.

Phenomenology• Orientation

(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.

Phenomenology• Five Orientations

(3) Existential phenomenology studies concrete human existence, including our experience of free choice or action in concrete situations.

Phenomenology• Five Orientations

(4) Generative historicist phenomenology studies how meaning, as found in our experience, is generated in historical processes of collective experience over time.

Phenomenology• Five Orientations

(5) Genetic phenomenology studies the genesis of meanings of things within one's own stream of experience.

Phenomenology• Orientation

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

Phenomenology• Orientation

(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.

Phenomenology

• 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

Phenomenology

• Characteristics

3. Wants to understand how the world appears to others

4. Analysis of experience

Phenomenology• 5 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

Phenomenology• 5 Methods/Approaches

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

Phenomenology• 5 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

Phenomenology• Interviewing Steps

1. Explore your own experiences & set aside your opinions/judgments

epoche: Greek word meaning to refrain from judgment/set them aside

Phenomenology• Interviewing Steps 2. Bracket judgments and everyday

understandings in order to examine consciousness itself

3. Phenomenological reduction: revisiting the experience to derive the inner structure/meaning in and of itself

Phenomenology• Interviewing Steps

4. Horizontalization: laying out all the data and analyzing it equally

- no one thing is more important

5. Organize into clusters or themes

Phenomenology• Interviewing Steps

6. Imaginative variation: viewing the data from multiple perspectives

- seeing different things from different angles

Phenomenology• Interviewing Steps

7. The end product should be

“a composite description that presents the “essence” of the phenomenon, called the essential, invariant structure”

(Cresswell, 2007, p. 62)

Phenomenology• Interviewing Steps

7. The end product should be

“a composite description that presents the “essence” of the phenomenon, called the essential, invariant structure”

(Cresswell, 2007, p. 62)