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Qualitative study design: Phenomenology

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Used to describe the lived experience of individuals.

• Now called Descriptive Phenomenology, this study design is one of the most commonly used methodologies in qualitative research within the social and health sciences.
• Used to describe how human beings experience a certain phenomenon. The researcher asks, “What is this experience like?’, ‘What does this experience mean?’ or ‘How does this ‘lived experience’ present itself to the participant?’
• Attempts to set aside biases and preconceived assumptions about human experiences, feelings, and responses to a particular situation.
• Experience may involve perception, thought, memory, imagination, and emotion or feeling.
• Usually (but not always) involves a small sample of participants (approx. 10-15).
• Analysis includes an attempt to identify themes or, if possible, make generalizations in relation to how a particular phenomenon is perceived or experienced.

Methods used include:

• participant observation
• in-depth interviews with open-ended questions
• conversations and focus workshops. 

Researchers may also examine written records of experiences such as diaries, journals, art, poetry and music.

Descriptive phenomenology is a powerful way to understand subjective experience and to gain insights around people’s actions and motivations, cutting through long-held assumptions and challenging conventional wisdom.  It may contribute to the development of new theories, changes in policies, or changes in responses.

Limitations

• Does not suit all health research questions.  For example, an evaluation of a health service may be better carried out by means of a descriptive qualitative design, where highly structured questions aim to garner participant’s views, rather than their lived experience.
• Participants may not be able to express themselves articulately enough due to language barriers, cognition, age, or other factors.
• Gathering data and data analysis may be time consuming and laborious.
• Results require interpretation without researcher bias.
• Does not produce easily generalisable data.

Example questions

• How do cancer patients cope with a terminal diagnosis?
• What is it like to survive a plane crash?
• What are the experiences of long-term carers of family members with a serious illness or disability?
• What is it like to be trapped in a natural disaster, such as a flood or earthquake? 

Example studies

• The patient-body relationship and the "lived experience" of a facial burn injury: a phenomenological inquiry of early psychosocial adjustment . Individual interviews were carried out for this study.
• The use of group descriptive phenomenology within a mixed methods study to understand the experience of music therapy for women with breast cancer . Example of a study in which focus group interviews were carried out.
• Understanding the experience of midlife women taking part in a work-life balance career coaching programme: An interpretative phenomenological analysis . Example of a study using action research.
• Holloway, I. & Galvin, K. (2017). Qualitative research in nursing and healthcare (Fourth ed.): John Wiley & Sons Inc.
• Rodriguez, A., & Smith, J. (2018). Phenomenology as a healthcare research method . Journal of Evidence Based Nursing , 21(4), 96-98. doi: 10.1136/eb-2018-102990
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What is phenomenology in qualitative research?

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7 February 2023

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Take a closer look at this type of qualitative research along with characteristics, examples, uses, and potential disadvantages.

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• What is phenomenological qualitative research?

Phenomenological research is a qualitative research approach that builds on the assumption that the universal essence of anything ultimately depends on how its audience experiences it .

Phenomenological researchers record and analyze the beliefs, feelings, and perceptions of the audience they’re looking to study in relation to the thing being studied. Only the audience’s views matter—the people who have experienced the phenomenon. The researcher’s personal assumptions and perceptions about the phenomenon should be irrelevant.

Phenomenology is a type of qualitative research as it requires an in-depth understanding of the audience’s thoughts and perceptions of the phenomenon you’re researching. It goes deep rather than broad, unlike quantitative research . Finding the lived experience of the phenomenon in question depends on your interpretation and analysis.

• What is the purpose of phenomenological research?

The primary aim of phenomenological research is to gain insight into the experiences and feelings of a specific audience in relation to the phenomenon you’re studying. These narratives are the reality in the audience’s eyes. They allow you to draw conclusions about the phenomenon that may add to or even contradict what you thought you knew about it from an internal perspective.

• How is phenomenology research design used?

Phenomenological research design is especially useful for topics in which the researcher needs to go deep into the audience’s thoughts, feelings, and experiences.

It’s a valuable tool to gain audience insights, generate awareness about the item being studied, and develop new theories about audience experience in a specific, controlled situation.

• Examples of phenomenological research

Phenomenological research is common in sociology, where researchers aim to better understand the audiences they study.

An example would be a study of the thoughts and experiences of family members waiting for a loved one who is undergoing major surgery. This could provide insights into the nature of the event from the broader family perspective.

However, phenomenological research is also common and beneficial in business situations. For example, the technique is commonly used in branding research. Here, audience perceptions of the brand matter more than the business’s perception of itself.

In branding-related market research, researchers look at how the audience experiences the brand and its products to gain insights into how they feel about them. The resulting information can be used to adjust messaging and business strategy to evoke more positive or stronger feelings about the brand in the future.

• The 4 characteristics of phenomenological research design

The exact nature of phenomenological research depends on the subject to be studied. However, every research design should include the following four main tenets to ensure insightful and actionable outcomes:

A focus on the audience’s interpretation of something . The focus is always on what an experience or event means to a strictly defined audience and how they interpret its meaning.

A lack of researcher bias or prior influence . The researcher has to set aside all prior prejudices and assumptions. They should focus only on how the audience interprets and experiences the event.

Connecting objectivity with lived experiences . Researchers need to describe their observations of how the audience experienced the event as well as how the audience interpreted their experience themselves.

• Types of phenomenological research design

Each type of phenomenological research shares the characteristics described above. Social scientists distinguish the following three types:

Existential phenomenology —focuses on understanding the audience’s experiences through their perspective. 

Hermeneutic phenomenology —focuses on creating meaning from experiences through the audience’s perspective.

Transcendental phenomenology —focuses on how the phenomenon appears in one consciousness on a broader, scientific scale.

Existential phenomenology is the most common type used in a business context. It’s most valuable to help you better understand your audience.

You can use hermeneutic phenomenology to gain a deeper understanding of how your audience perceives experiences related to your business.

Transcendental phenomenology is largely reserved for non-business scientific applications.

• Data collection methods in phenomenological research

Phenomenological research draws from many of the most common qualitative research techniques to understand the audience’s perspective.

Here are some of the most common tools to collect data in this type of research study:

Observing participants as they experience the phenomenon

Interviewing participants before, during, and after the experience

Focus groups where participants experience the phenomenon and discuss it afterward

Recording conversations between participants related to the phenomenon

Analyzing personal texts and observations from participants related to the phenomenon

You might not use these methods in isolation. Most phenomenological research includes multiple data collection methods. This ensures enough overlap to draw satisfactory conclusions from the audience and the phenomenon studied.

Get started collecting, analyzing, and understanding qualitative data with help from quickstart research templates.

• Limitations of phenomenological research

Phenomenological research can be beneficial for many reasons, but its downsides are just as important to discuss.

This type of research is not a solve-all tool to gain audience insights. You should keep the following limitations in mind before you design your research study and during the design process:

These audience studies are typically very small. This results in a small data set that can make it difficult for you to draw complete conclusions about the phenomenon.

Researcher bias is difficult to avoid, even if you try to remove your own experiences and prejudices from the equation. Bias can contaminate the entire outcome.

Phenomenology relies on audience experiences, so its accuracy depends entirely on how well the audience can express those experiences and feelings.

The results of a phenomenological study can be difficult to summarize and present due to its qualitative nature. Conclusions typically need to include qualifiers and cautions.

This type of study can be time-consuming. Interpreting the data can take days and weeks.

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Phenomenology helps us to understand the meaning of people's lived experience.  A phenomenological study explores what people experienced and focuses on their experience of a phenomenon.  As phenomenology has a strong foundation in philosophy, it is recommended that you explore the writings of key thinkers such as Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty before embarking on your research. Duquesne's Simon Silverman Phenomenology Center maintains a collection of resources connected to phenomenology as well as hosting lectures, and is a good place to start your exploration.

• Simon Silverman Phenomenology Center
• Husserl, Edmund, 1859–1938
• Heidegger, Martin, 1889–1976
• Sartre, Jean Paul, 1905–1980
• Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 1908–1961

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• Phenomenology Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry.

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Chapter 6: Phenomenology

Darshini Ayton

Learning outcomes

Upon completion of this chapter, you should be able to:

• Identify the key terms, concepts and approaches used in phenomenology.
• Explain the data collection methods and analysis for phenomenology.
• Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of phenomenological research.

What is phenomenology ?

The key concept in phenomenological studies is the individual .

Phenomenology is a method and a philosophical approach, influenced by different paradigms and disciplines. 1

Phenomenology is the everyday world from the viewpoint of the person. In this viewpoint, the emphasis is on how the individual constructs their lifeworld and seeks to understand the ‘taken for granted-ness’ of life and experiences. 2,3 Phenomenology is a practice that seeks to understand, describe and interpret human behaviour and the meaning individuals make of their experiences; it focuses on what was experienced and how it was experienced. 4 Phenomenology deals with perceptions or meanings, attitudes and beliefs, as well as feelings and emotions. The emphasis is on the lived experience and the sense an individual makes of those experiences. Since the primary source of data is the experience of the individual being studied, in-depth interviews are the most common means of data collection (see Chapter 13). Depending on the aim and research questions of the study, the method of analysis is either thematic or interpretive phenomenological analysis (Section 4).

Types of phenomenology

Descriptive phenomenology (also known as ‘transcendental phenomenology’) was founded by Edmund Husserl (1859–1938). It focuses on phenomena as perceived by the individual. 4 When reflecting on the recent phenomenon of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is clear that there is a collective experience of the pandemic and an individual experience, in which each person’s experience is influenced by their life circumstances, such as their living situation, employment, education, prior experiences with infectious diseases and health status. In addition, an individual’s life circumstances, personality, coping skills, culture, family of origin, where they live in the world and the politics of their society also influence their experience of the pandemic. Hence, the objectiveness of the pandemic is intertwined with the subjectiveness of the individual living in the pandemic.

Husserl states that descriptive phenomenological inquiry should be free of assumption and theory, to enable phenomenological reduction (or phenomenological intuiting). 1 Phenomenological reduction means putting aside all judgements or beliefs about the external world and taking nothing for granted in everyday reality. 5 This concept gave rise to a practice called ‘bracketing’ — a method of acknowledging the researcher’s preconceptions, assumptions, experiences and ‘knowing’ of a phenomenon. Bracketing is an attempt by the researcher to encounter the phenomenon in as ‘free and as unprejudiced way as possible so that it can be precisely described and understood’. 1(p132) While there is not much guidance on how to bracket, the advice provided to researchers is to record in detail the process undertaken, to provide transparency for others. Bracketing starts with reflection: a helpful practice is for the researcher to ask the following questions and write their answers as they occur, without overthinking their responses (see Box 1). This is a practice that ideally should be done multiple times during the research process: at the conception of the research idea and during design, data collection, analysis and reporting.

Box 6.1 Example s of bracketing prompts

How does my education, family background (culture), religion, politics and job relate to this topic or phenomenon?

What is my previous experience of this topic or phenomenon? Do I have negative and/or positive reactions to this topic or phenomenon? What has led to this reaction?

What have I read or understood about this topic or phenomenon?

What are my beliefs and attitudes about this topic or phenomenon? What assumptions am I making?

Interpretive or hermeneutic phenomenology was founded by Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), a junior colleague of Husserl. It focuses on the nature of being and the relationship between an individual and their lifeworld. While Heidegger’s initial work and thinking aligned with Husserl’s, he later challenged several elements of descriptive phenomenology, leading to a philosophical separation in ideas. Husserl’s descriptive phenomenology takes an epistemological (knowledge) focus while Heidegger’s interest was in ontology 4 (the nature of reality), with the key phrase ‘being-in-the-world’ referencing how humans exist, act or participate in the world. 1 In descriptive phenomenology, the practice of bracketing is endorsed and experience is stripped from context to examine and understand it.

Interpretive or hermeneutic phenomenology embraces the intertwining of an individual’s subjective experience with their social, cultural and political contexts, regardless of whether they are conscious of this influence. 4 Interpretive or hermeneutic phenomenology moves beyond description to the interpretation of the phenomenon and the study of meanings through the lifeworld of the individual. While the researcher’s knowledge, experience, assumptions and beliefs are valued, they do need to be acknowledged as part of the process of analysis. 4

For example, Singh and colleagues wanted to understand the experiences of managers involved in the implementation of quality improvement projects in an assisted living facility, and thus they conducted a hermeneutic phenomenology study. 6 The objective was to ‘understand how managers define the quality of patient care and administrative processes’, alongside an exploration of the participant’s perspectives of leadership and challenges to the implementation of quality improvement strategies. (p3) Semi-structured interviews (60–75 minutes in duration) were conducted with six managers and data was analysed using inductive thematic techniques.

New phenomenology , or American phenomenology , has initiated a transition in the focus of phenomenology from the nature and understanding of the phenomenon to the lived experience of individuals experiencing the phenomenon. This transition may seem subtle but fundamentally is related to a shift away from the philosophical approaches of Husserl and Heidegger to an applied approach to research. 1 New phenomenology does not undergo the phenomenological reductionist approach outlined by Husserl to examine and understand the essence of the phenomenon. Dowling 1 emphasises that this phenomenological reduction, which leads to an attempt to disengage the researcher from the participant, is not desired or practical in applied research such as in nursing studies. Hence, new phenomenology is aligned with interpretive phenomenology, embracing the intersubjectivity (shared subjective experiences between two or more people) of the research approach. 1

Another feature of new phenomenology is the positioning of culture in the analysis of an individual’s experience. This is not the case for the traditional phenomenological approaches 1 ;  hence, philosophical approaches by European philosophers Husserl and Heidegger can be used if the objective is to explore or understand the phenomenon itself or the object of the participant’s experience. The methods of new phenomenology, or American phenomenology, should be applied if the researcher seeks to understand a person’s experience(s) of the phenomenon. 1

See Table 6.1. for two different examples of phenomenological research.

Advantages and disadvantages of phenomenological research

Phenomenology has many advantages, including that it can present authentic accounts of complex phenomena; it is a humanistic style of research that demonstrates respect for the whole individual; and the descriptions of experiences can tell an interesting story about the phenomenon and the individuals experiencing it. 7 Criticisms of phenomenology tend to focus on the individuality of the results, which makes them non-generalisable, considered too subjective and therefore invalid. However, the reason a researcher may choose a phenomenological approach is to understand the individual, subjective experiences of an individual; thus, as with many qualitative research designs, the findings will not be generalisable to a larger population. 7,8

Table 6.1. Examples of phenomenological studies

Phenomenology focuses on understanding a phenomenon from the perspective of individual experience (descriptive and interpretive phenomenology) or from the lived experience of the phenomenon by individuals (new phenomenology). This individualised focus lends itself to in-depth interviews and small scale research projects.

• Dowling M. From Husserl to van Manen. A review of different phenomenological approaches. Int J Nurs Stud . 2007;44(1):131-42. doi:10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2005.11.026
• Creswell J, Hanson W, Clark Plano V, Morales A. Qualitative research designs: selection and implementation. Couns Psychol . 2007;35(2):236-264. doi:10.1177/0011000006287390
• Morse JM, Field PA. Qualitative Research Methods for Health Professionals. 2nd ed. SAGE; 1995.
• Neubauer BE, Witkop CT, Varpio L. How phenomenology can help us learn from the experiences of others. Perspect Med Educ . 2019;8(2):90-97. doi:10.1007/s40037-019-0509-2
• Merleau-Ponty M, Landes D, Carman T, Lefort C. Phenomenology of Perception . 1st ed. Routledge; 2011.
• Singh J, Wiese A, Sillerud B. Using phenomenological hermeneutics to understand the experiences of managers working with quality improvement strategies in an assisted living facility. Healthcare (Basel) . 2019;7(3):87. doi:10.3390/healthcare7030087
• Liamputtong P, Ezzy D. Qualitative Research Methods: A Health Focus . Oxford University Press; 1999.
• Liamputtong P. Qualitative Research Methods . 5th ed. Oxford University Press; 2020.
• Abbaspour Z, Vasel G, Khojastehmehr R. Investigating the lived experiences of abused mothers: a phenomenological study. Journal of Qualitative Research in Health Sciences . 2021;10(2)2:108-114. doi:10.22062/JQR.2021.193653.0
• Engberink AO, Mailly M, Marco V, et al. A phenomenological study of nurses experience about their palliative approach and their use of mobile palliative care teams in medical and surgical care units in France. BMC Palliat Care . 2020;19:34. doi:10.1186/s12904-020-0536-0

Qualitative Research – a practical guide for health and social care researchers and practitioners Copyright © 2023 by Darshini Ayton is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Integrating qualitative research methodologies and phenomenology—using dancers’ and athletes’ experiences for phenomenological analysis

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• Published: 03 May 2021
• Volume 22 , pages 107–127, ( 2023 )

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This paper sets out from the hypothesis that the embodied competences and expertise which characterise dance and sports activities have the potential to constructively challenge and inform phenomenological thinking. While pathological cases present experiences connected to tangible bodily deviations, the specialised movement practices of dancers and athletes present experiences which put our everyday experiences of being a moving body into perspective in a slightly different sense. These specialised experiences present factual variations of how moving, sensing and interacting can be like for us as body-subjects. To use of these sources inevitably demands that qualitative research methodologies – especially short-term ethnographical fieldwork – form part of the research strategy and qualify the way the researcher involves a second-person perspective when interviewing dancers and athletes about their experiences. In the subsequent phases analysing the data generated, I argue that researchers first strive to achieve internal consistency of empirical themes identified in the case of movement practices in question thus keeping to a contextualised and lived perspective, also denoted as an emic perspective. In subsequent phases phenomenological insights are then actively engaged in the exploration and discussion of the possible transcendental structures making the described subjective experiences possible. The specialised and context-defined experiences of ‘what a moving body can be like’ are accordingly involved as factual variations to constructively add to and potentially challenge phenomenological descriptions. Lastly, I exemplify how actual research strategies have been enacted in a variety of projects involving professional dancers’, golfers’ and sports dancers’ practices and experiences, respectively.

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1 Introduction

For decades, phenomenological thinkers have employed data from pathological cases to put normal, lived experiences into perspective. This is for example the case, when Merleau-Ponty ( 1962 ) analyses the bodily and perceptual capacities of the patient Schneider, when Shaun Gallagher ( 2005 ) makes a similar investigation of Ian Waterman, who suffers from a rare neurological condition, to discern various systems of bodily consciousness, Footnote 1 or when Joel Krueger ( 2012 ) examines the Moebius syndrome to understand the importance of facial expressivity as foundational for empathy (Ravn & Høffding, 2016 ). In methodological discussions, Zahavi ( 2005 , 2013 ), Gallagher ( 2012 ), and Froese and Gallagher ( 2010 ) have emphasised that these kinds of pathological cases present real-life deviations that phenomenology can profit from. Empirical measurements from these cases offer rich sources of lived experiences valuable for phenomenological analysis. In Zahavi’s description:

[empirical scientists] “do in fact pay quite a lot of attention to concrete phenomena and might consequently be less apt to underestimate the richness, complexity, and variety of the phenomena than the standard arm-chair philosopher” (Zahavi, 2013 : 35).

This paper sets out from the hypothesis that the embodied competences and expertise characterising dance and sports activities also have the potential to constructively challenge and inform phenomenological thinking. As highly trained movement practitioners, dancers and athletes present real life variations or – to use the expression presented by Tom Froese and Gallagher ( 2010 ) – factual variations of how moving, sensing and interacting can be like for us as body-subjects. While pathological cases present experiences connected to tangible bodily deviations, the specialised movement practices of dancers and athletes present experiences which put our everyday experiences of being a moving body into perspective in a slightly different sense. As variations of ‘what a moving body can be like’, their practices and experiences highlight possibilities and aspects not immediately present to the movement, sensing and interactions which characterise everyday life (Legrand & Ravn, 2009 ). However, while pathological cases can, to a certain degree, be defined by specific physical alterations to the body which can then be measured and tested by medical science, the identification and description of dancers and athletes as cases have a different starting point. The specialised incorporated skills and the ‘richness, complexity and variety’ of experiences so tethered to the practices of those skills, are in a fundamental sense part of social and cultural occurrences. Accordingly, the incorporated techniques of athletes and dancers, their ways of interacting, of using sense awareness and so on synchronously intertwine with social and cultural characteristics of their movement activities and the contexts of these specialised practices will have a profound bearing on experiences and the way such experiences can be described (e.g. Potter, 2008 ). In this article, I contend that exploring these specialised movement practices as empirical cases to be used for phenomenological analysis requires research methodologies that are sensitive to the contextual premises of experiences connected to these practices and, as I will explicate, this is exactly the distinct characteristics of qualitative research. In the argumentation and descriptions of how these explorations can take shape I will focus more explicitly on qualitative research strategies involving combinations of observations and interviewing. A combination which I, in the following, will also refer to as short-term ethnographical fieldwork.

The aim of this article is to indicate how we can use specialised forms of movement practice as factual variations in a phenomenological analysis by integrating Footnote 2 qualitative research methodologies and phenomenology. Pursuing this aim, I shall firstly present a few phenomenological considerations on why and how experiences closely linked to specialised kinds of movement practices present intriguing factual variations for phenomenological analysis. This is followed by sections focusing on qualitative research: describing what it is, some overall considerations on the validity and reliability of short-term ethnographical methods and analysis, and the way rich descriptions are generated so that these have relevance for phenomenological analysis. In these sections, in the name of clarification, I also specify how the combination of short term ethnographical methodologies and phenomenology is different to the interview methods and analytical strategies of micro-phenomenology as well as to some of the applied phenomenological approaches dominating certain strands of qualitative research. Finally, I touch upon the analytical process that leads to the use of rich descriptions of dancers’ and athletes’ experiences in phenomenological analysis and present some examples on research projects based on data derived from artistic dancing, couple-based sports dance and golfing.

The article is based on a number of projects in which we (various colleagues and I) have integrated qualitative research and phenomenology in the analysis of various kinds of specialized movement practices. The methodological considerations and suggestions presented are grounded in a protracted analysis and condensation of the analyses performed in these projects. It is important for me to emphasise that the intention has not been to come up with a set of methodological doxas and specified ‘steps’ to take but to present central characteristics of qualitative research methodologies– and on this basis to indicate important aspects that should be considered when integrating short-term ethnographical fieldwork with phenomenological analysis in the case of specialised movement practices.

2 Moving bodies are lived – and contextually embedded

Merleau-Ponty, the phenomenologist of the body par excellence , emphasises motility as our basic intentionality (Merleau-Ponty, 1962 , 1964 ). Movement and perception form a system that varies as a whole and that together comprise our very being in the world (Merleau-Ponty, 1962 : 152). He further emphasises that what we move is never our objective body – for example, by bringing sense impressions and the different parts of the body together one by one – but our phenomenal body (ibid.: 106). This is a body in which “the various parts of the body are known to us through their functional value only” (ibid.: 149) and the translations and unifications of different senses are the body itself (ibid.: 106, 148–149, 153). Merleau-Ponty also enables us to understand that the body is to be compared to the “general instrument of our ‘comprehension’” of being a body-subject in the world (ibid.: 235). He emphasises that the phenomenal body, in its livedness, is processual and that the lived body as this ‘instrument of my comprehension’ is interactively shaped.

Following Merleau-Ponty’s descriptions, we know our lived bodies in relatively different ways. In concrete terms, ballet dancers know their body in quite different ways from rugby players or pianists. The ways the various part of the body in a practical sense are known will be reflected in the practitioners’ ways of relating to and conceptualising their moving body, in the skills incorporated and the ways these skills present potentials for action, and, not least, in the various ways ingrained bodily postures, tensions and gestures form an ever present (back)ground for their acting, sensing and interacting. As Iris Young ( 2005 ) has critically pointed to in her analysis of a girl throwing, actual practices as they unfold in situated conditions also entail a bodily comportment that is secondary to those that are socially and culturally ingrained. Her analysis reminds us that lived bodies also entails aspects and dimensions not immediately visible to us. Thus, when we turn to dancers’ and athletes’ practices and experiences as cases which might show us what a moving body can be like, we should carefully consider that these practices and experiences do not only reflect a here and now of the actions unfolding. These cases of specialised movement practices also involve diachronic aspects of bodily comportments that silently condition the skills and actions in focus for the analysis.

That the experiences of our moving body are connected to a certain heritage informing our postures, tensions and gestures in complex ways has also quite recently been addressed by Evan Thompson. In his introduction to the second edition of  The Embodied Mind ( 2016 ), he (self)critically points out that Buddhist meditation is to be viewed as an exercise of skilful practice and know-how and that it offers a skillful way of enacting certain kinds of embodied states and behaviours in the world (Thompson, 2016 : xxiv). Comparable to dance and sports practices, meditation is a contextually embedded practice and, in Thompson words, it is accordingly a mediated experience. Footnote 3 Thompson specifies the mediated aspect of experiences by drawing on anthropologist and social scientist Gregory Bateson’s ( 1972 ) work on interaction and context and his explications of how communication unfolds on several levels simultaneously. Between others, Bateson exemplifies, ways in which metacommunicative aspects are central to being able to know if, for example, fighting is for play or for real (Bateson, 1972 : 177–193). Adding to Thompson’s point on the mediated aspect of the practice under investigation, Bateson’s work facilitates clarifications of how diachronic perspectives are ingrained into the interactions of the here-and-now and offers a practice-connected approach to become specific in relation to what the interactive shaping of practices and experiences entails. To know how to participate, when to do (and say) what, and how to notice the ‘right’ things in a situation characterise central aspects of the incorporated logics that are weaved into and constitute metacommunicative layers of actions and interactions. Bateson’s work emphasises that practices and experiences are inextricably bound up with context. It thereby anchors Thompson’s point concerning the mediated nature of practices and experiences to contextual matters. Contexts are profound to how practices are enacted, and it would simply be a mistake to aim at dissociating context from experience as if context constitutes a “satellite dimension” (Petitmengin et al., 2019 ) to the experiences in focus.

Taking Young’s, Thompson’s and Bateson’s works into consideration, the methodological strategy presented in this article is firstly to generate rich descriptions by accepting that experiences as lived are simultaneously contextually embedded and based on ingrained bodily comportments. This means that when researching these experiences, the generation of rich descriptions should not only focus on the subject’s inner feelings and thoughts but would also need to include descriptions of the interactions and actual situated perspectives embedding the experiences. By definition, these rich descriptions present subjective accounts of experiential content contingent to the actual practices. From thereon, in a second part of the research process, the strategy is to actively engage phenomenological insights when aiming at accounting for and (critically) discussing the possible structures that support and enable such experiences. In other words, we use a strategy in which we employ descriptions of the ‘what’ of experiences as data for analysing the possible ‘how’ of such subjective experiences. Footnote 4

Generally, the methodological strategy for generating rich descriptions of these specialised practices thereby reflects the strategy as described by Høffding and Martiny ( 2016 ) in their article focusing on how to use interviews for phenomenological analysis. Following their descriptions, we should think of the first and the second part of the research process as two tiers. In the first tier, researchers are to generate rich descriptions in accordance with the rigor of qualitative research and then in the second tier they focus on the phenomenological analysis of these descriptions. As articulately described by Høffding and Martiny, the two tiers are each linked to their research paradigm – qualitative research and phenomenology, respectively – but also dialectically connected in the iterative process of generating and analysing descriptions of experiences. Important to the integrative strategy presented in this article, Høffding and Martiny ( 2016 ) highlight that the two tier strategy is quite different to the methodological approach presented in the Explication Interview (EI) (Bitbol & Petitmengin,  2013 ; Petitmengin, 2006 ) and the Micro-Phenomenological Interview (MPI) (Petitmengin et al. 2019 ) which are based on a fairly elaborate framework for interviewing. The strategy of these closely connected approaches is to use the interview to employ a guided form of bracketing of the interviewee’s experiences throughout the interview sessions. Accordingly, in the interview EI and MPI are already focused on generating descriptions that address the possible ‘how’s of the singular experience in focus and on revealing the structure of that experience. As recently emphasized by Petitmingen et al. ( 2019 ), the methodological aim of MPI has been to develop an interview protocol that enables the interviewee to reenact and live the experience under investigation in the here-and-now of the interview, allowing her/him to describe part of her/his experiences which s/he would also experience under the ‘normal’ conditions for such experience. However, as Petitmingen et al. ( 2019 ) emphasise, under normal conditions this part of experience is unrecognized by the subject interviewed ( 2019 : 694).

By contrast and in accordance with the stance in this article, Høffding and Martiny argue that experience is not something we can retroactively return to. Rather, “it [experience] has no fixed diachronic stability, hidden inside the head Footnote 5 to be dug up by memory, no Archimedian point of reference. It is embodied and enacted in the world together with other experiencing subjects” ( 2016 : 544). The interview is not outside the flow of lived experiences. Experiences as described in the interview situation are part of a retrospectively oriented process, recalling experiences under the condition of the interview situation. Reflecting and describing experiences present an opening up of these experiences on new terms (Zahavi, 2011 ). Footnote 6 Accordingly, the data generated form part of a co-generative process also involving, as a minimum, the interviewer and his or her ability to facilitate still richer descriptions of experiences (Ravn,  2009 , Ravn & Hansen, 2013 ). Before moving on to explicate how qualitative research presents appropriate approaches to handle such co-generative processes and, not least, the contextual embeddedness of the lived experiences in focus, let me also, however briefly, place the methodological strategy in this article in relation to current debates on qualitative research and phenomenology.

3 Qualitative research and phenomenological analysis – a highly debated combination

In a recent paper, philosopher Anthony Fernandez ( 2017 ) points out that phenomenology seems to claim an identity based on a specific methodology in use. He argues that the subject matter of phenomenological investigations should and could be better identified and proposes a differentiation between different layers of the subject matter under analysis. Taken together these layers are, each in their own way, central to the description of the overarching theme of phenomenology: “the structure of meaning or the structure of world-disclosure” ( 2017 :3559). Fernandez does not deny that phenomenology is characterized by the methodologies in use, but from a philosophical standpoint highlights the fact that several aspects will influence the way a phenomenological analysis unfolds. In a phenomenological investigation, the subject matter in focus will necessarily influence the methods applied for the given study – the order and ways they are put to use (Schmicking, 2010 ).

Qualitative inquiries per se address a diversity of ways in which data can be generated. As evidenced by the structure of central handbooks and by the presentation of methodological discussions, the methods chosen and the explicit ways these are combined are highly dependent on their subject matter, on the access the researcher has to relevant persons, groups and fields, and on the research questions and research interests at stake (e.g. Smith & Sparkes, 2016b ; Denzin & Lincoln, 2011 ). Framed within this methodological background it seems paradoxical that many qualitative research studies have preferentially focused on applying a particular phenomenological methodology and insisted that in this process the employment of the epoché and phenomenological reduction is to take center stage (e.g. Allen-Collinson, 2011 ; Allen-Collinson & Evans, 2019 ; Dale, 1996 ; Finlay, 2012 ; Giorgi, 1975 , 1997 , 2008 ; Kerry & Amour, 2000 ). Following Fernandez’ point that phenomenology tends to be presented as a specific methodology, it seems fair to note that this tendency has had contagious effects on how phenomenology has been applied in the academic fields of qualitative research.

Recent critique, especially from Zahavi, has pointed up serious misunderstandings in several of these applied versions of phenomenology (e.g. Zahavi, 2019a , 2019b ; Zahavi & Martiny, 2019 ). Footnote 7 As echoed in Dahlberg and Dahlberg’s ( 2020 ) sketch of Zahavi’s critique, phenomenological ideas and concepts seem to be transposed and used as though they were “building blocks ready to use.” The point here is not to recall elements of the harsh critique raised but to emphasize that Zahavi’s ( 2019b ) call for “ignoring the epoché,” and encouragement to qualitative researchers to focus instead on using the phenomenological insights for the elucidation, analysis and discussion of the phenomenon in focus of their investigation, invites constructive discussions regarding how to engage phenomenology in qualitative research.

At this point, permit me to reiterate that this article is not aimed at discussing how phenomenology can be put to use in qualitative research but, conversely, focuses on discussing how qualitative research can be put to use, so that phenomenology can profit from cases of specialized movement practices. It is important to note however that it is fundamental to the methodological strategy presented here that these two strands of methodological interests are to be regarded as connected. That is, if we draw on the two-tier argumentative logic presented by Høffding and Martiny, we are interested in how description of practices and experiences can form the ground for analyses which unfold in accordance with the rigour characterizing sound philosophical phenomenological analysis. However, it is also central to the considerations presented here that using the same methodological strategy we can target academic fields of qualitative research. When doing so, phenomenological insights are then in use to better understand the experiential structures that potentially underlies and supports the contextualised and lived experiences in focus (Ravn, 2016 ). In more concrete terms this means that researchers would, for example, aim at analysing certain implicit aspects of subjective experiences by using phenomenological insights in ways that has value for the field of qualitative research. This has for example been the case in several studies where we (various colleagues and I) have analysed the actual ways the physicality of the body is present to different athletes and dancers. (e.g. Ravn,  2010 ; Ravn & Christensen, 2014 ; Hjortborg & Ravn, 2019 ; Bluhm & Ravn, 2021 ). The results of these analyses are intended to have importance to coaches, athletes and dancers but might also potentially in a further analysis, present factual variations phenomenology can profit from. I will return to exemplify this connection by drawing on a specific investigation of the golfer’s specialised use of bodily self-consciousness in the last section of this article.

4 Qualitative research – basic methodological concerns

Qualitative research presents an important methodological basis for a number of academic disciplines and each presents separate and partly distinct academic traditions for the way methods are used and mixed. As Denzin and Lincoln ( 2011 ) emphasize, qualitative research operates in a complex historical field and means relatively different things in each of the areas that constitute the historical fields of academia. Bearing this complexity in mind, they offer the following generic definition:

“Qualitative research is a situated activity which locates the observer in the world. Qualitative research consists of a set of interpretive, material practices that make the world visible. These practices transform the world. They turn the world into a series of representations , including fieldnotes, interviews, conversations, photographs, recordings and memos to the self. At this level, qualitative research involves an interpretive naturalistic approach to the world. This means that qualitative researchers study things in their natural settings, attempting to make sense of or interpret phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them .” (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011 : 3, my italics)

As indicated throughout the definition, qualitative researchers deal with life as lived in context and engages in handling interpretative challenges throughout the processes of both generating and analysing descriptions of life as lived. Compared to the more specified methodological discussions which unfold in relation to specified analytical strategies, Footnote 8 the methodological concerns I highlight here are no doubt more basic – and for researchers familiar with qualitative research tradition partially trivial. Nevertheless, these basic methodological descriptions are fundamental to understand what qualitative research can entail and which studies can count as qualitative research. Such descriptions have explicit relevance in relation to how one perceives and handles the validity criteria for analysing interviews.

Two closely linked features characterize fundamental methodological differences between qualitative inquiries and the quantitative based analyses which are used in, for example, the natural sciences. Firstly, as the qualitative researcher works on contextualized conditions, he/she cannot meet the criteria for repeatability that characterize quantitative oriented methods. To be more exact, in quantitative methodologies, instruments and methods are expected to be used in a standardized manner and in accordance with predetermined procedures so that measures are repeatable and consistent over time (Golafshani, 2003 ). In this setting, human emotions and experiential perspectives from subjects – and researchers – present undesirable biases, which disturbs repeatability. However, these kinds of ‘bias’ are exactly what is considered “essential and inevitable” to the qualitative researcher (Leung, 2015 ). For qualitative inquiry, emotions and experiential perspectives present the measures that are, to cite the generic definition, ‘turned into a series of representations’. Accordingly, when qualitative researchers deal with different kinds of real-life practices and practitioners’ subjective experiences of these, they are not expected to be able to present a one-to-one correspondence between what ‘actually’ happened in the situation and the data generated. Rather, they are expected to have faced the challenges of turning contextualized and situated activities and experiences into descriptions – or data – of relevance to the inquiry.

Secondly, like subjects interviewed and/or observed, the qualitative researcher is her/him-self in the world – and, as already indicated, part of the situation in which data are co-generated. Notes, descriptions and transcriptions are generated by the researcher ‘being there’, while forming part of and relating to these practices and experiences. The qualitative researcher has to realize that her/his own history, biography, gender, social class, ethnicity and so on cannot be neutralized but will influence the interaction and thereby the outcome in relation to the situated activity in focus for the study (Berger, 2015 ; Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007 ; Thorpe & Olive, 2016 ). Footnote 9 The point to be emphasized here is not that the one position is superior than others for generating data; for example that one needs to be a dancer to thoroughly understand dancers’ experiences. Rather the point is to highlight that from the very outset different researchers will adopt relatively different positions in relation to the practices under investigations and that these positions must be reflected in the analysis. Footnote 10

Kvale ( 2002 ) emphasised decades ago, in metaphorical terms, that qualitative researchers are not ‘mine diggers’ carving out data but are best described as ‘explorers’. Footnote 11 The route they choose to take and the way they interact and attentively direct their awareness while taking this route (by, for example, combining observation and interview) will have a bearing both on the choice of practices and experiences explored and on the methods used (e.g. Strauss, 2000 ; Thorpe, 2012 ). While the route taken throughout the research can be relatively objectively described, the researchers’ involvement in the situation demands (critical) self-reflexivity throughout the research process and, not least, transparency in relation to how self-reflexivity is put into use throughout. Footnote 12

5 Validity and reliability of qualitative research

As emphasised in the former section, qualitative researchers link to a complex historical field of academic traditions and related epistemologies and consequently questions about validity form part of ongoing discussions spanning the diversity of interests and research paradigms identified within qualitative research (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011 : 11). Let me therefore note that, in the following, I focus specifically on the way validity and reliability is considered in relation to ethnographical oriented studies and the majority of case Footnote 13 studies (e.g. Cho & Trent, 2006 ; Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007 ).

Generally speaking, the validity of qualitative research will be expected to reflect the appropriateness of methods in use to answer the research question in focus (Lincoln et al. ( 2011 ). It concerns the trustworthiness of the investigation including the consistency with which the different kinds of choices are made throughout the research process – from the epistemology underpinning the understanding of phenomena, the research questions raised, to the ways data are generated and analysed (Tracy, 2010 ). Specified in the discussion of Cho and Trent ( 2006 ) concerning trustworthiness, major validity will be focused on the transactional aspects of methods in use. That is, the researcher is expected to ensure that the

“interactive process between the researcher, the researched, and the collected data is aimed at achieving a relatively higher level of accuracy and consensus by means of revisiting facts, feelings, experiences and values or beliefs interpreted“ (Cho & Trent, 2006 : 321).

When focusing on the cases of dancers’ and athletes’ experiences, transactional aspects of validity will depend on the ways in which the researcher creates good possibilities for being able to follow the descriptions of experiences on the premises of the dancers’ and athletes’ actual practices in the process of generating and analysing descriptions. That is, the ways in which the researcher adopts an open-ended, non-objectifying and self-reflective perspective – also addressed as a second person perspective (Varela & Shear, 1999 ) – in relation to the dance and sports practices in focus. Practices which are contextually embedded through and through. Accordingly, the researcher must actively consider a research strategy which creates opportunities to follow descriptions from a second-person perspective on the premises of the actual practices – as contextualised practices. Observations present an obvious choice to include in the strategy – or design – of such studies. In different ways, depending on how observations are performed, they will create opportunities to come to learn about the implicit logic used to, for example, structure the training, and the ways concepts and particular kinds of wordings are used to address specific aspects of the movement practices and so on.

The transactional aspects of validity will entail that the researcher self-reflexively considers how her subjectivity has been involved in the generation of rich descriptions of the athlete’s and dancer’s world (Ravn,  2017a ). It includes an awareness of how one becomes attuned to the moving body in new ways. This is not an easy task but involves ongoing considerations that lie beyond relatively obvious statements about one’s prior experiences and immediate prejudices related to the practices in focus. Compared with the researcher's attunement to ways of moving, interacting and living by participating in the everyday lives of others over longer periods spanning several months or years in anthropological oriented ethnographical fieldwork (Throop, 2018 ), Footnote 14 the short-term ethnographical fieldwork demands that the researcher considers more active ways of attuning herself to the practice in focus. On short-term premises, these transactional aspects of validity can between others be facilitated by constructively using different versions of researcher triangulation, Footnote 15 for example, by involving peers to critically read the ongoing analysis to point out if implicit meanings and relatively esoteric concepts and descriptions could be further described in follow up interviews and/or if certain aspects of experience tend to be ignored in the analysis (e.g. Ravn,  2009 ; Ravn & Hansen, 2013 ). Furthermore, the strategies for how observations and interviews are carried out and combined throughout the study, might in case specific ways also constructively add to heighten transactional validity. An example of how this can be carried out is presented in the later example of how the diversity of professional dancers was used actively in the way investigation was organised as a multi-sited ethnographical field-study.

Reliability is best evaluated in relation to the transparency of how the investigation is performed. That is, the various phases and the steps taken should be transparent to intersubjective corroboration. It should be possible to follow all the choices taken and the methods used during the process. Reliability and validity are closely interlinked. So, for example, following Burke’s ( 2016 ) discussions, the reliability of qualitative research can, like validity, be addressed as a matter of its trustworthiness. Notably, when trustworthiness concerns reliability, it addresses the way methods and analysis are handled. To further the close link, Golafshani ( 2003 ) emphasises that if validity is replaced by the idea of trustworthiness then reliability is the consequence of validity handled in the study.

Let’s return, however briefly, to the way validity is addressed in EI (Bitbol & Petitmengin, 2013 ; Petitmengin, 2006 ) and MPI (Petitmengin et al., 2019 ). In these works, the validity of statements about experience should be measured in relation to a performative and not a “correspondentist” view (Petitmengin et al., 2019 : 697). These specialized interview methods thereby at first impression seem to reflect the way validity is discussed and dealt with in the domain of qualitative research. However, unlike discussions of rigour in qualitative research, the researchers behind EI and the MPI continue to emphasize that reliability is to be measured in relation to the performative consistency of how the interview is performed against the elaborated framework and relatively detailed instructions of the methods. Reliability, for example, is to be judged by assessing whether questions are posed in accordance with the EI or MPI framework. Petitmengin et al. ( 2019 ) also emphasise that the focus of MPI and analysis on the structural elements of the experience under study allows reproducibility of analysis results (ibid.: 701). Furthermore, they emphasize that “the focalization of most qualitative methods on the contents of experience rather than on structures makes this reproducibility more difficult or even impossible” (Petitmengin et al.,  2019 : 701). Statements like this seem to insist that reliability is to reflect the criteria concerning reproducibility characterising quantitative based measurements. Petitmengin et al. thereby ignore the discussion in qualitative research on approaching reliability and validity on different terms than quantitative measures. To put it bluntly, they make comparison with qualitative research using false criteria. In general terms qualitative researchers will be expected to take great care not to circumvent but to address the condition of lived experiences while insisting on transparency in showing how contextual aspects and interpretation have been taken into account in the process of generating and analysing data.

6 From the within-case consistency of practitioners’ experiences to phenomenological themes

In the ongoing analysis, I suggest the researcher will continue scrutinizing the data on the contextual condition of the actual practices. Accordingly, s/he is to focus on identifying significant characteristics of experiences and ideas which are central to the dancers or athletes while still adhering to the validity criteria of qualitative research. This includes that descriptions and notes are organized into themes that concern different aspects of the practitioners’ experiences. The identification of these themes – and possible categorization of them – generally unfold as part of an iterative process in which the researcher reflexively re-questions themes and categories and if different themes belong in the same group. Let me emphasise that phenomenological themes are not directly expressed in the themes and categories identified at this point of the analysis. Rather, it is in the following phases of analysis that the dancer’s or athlete’s experiences are used as factual variations for a phenomenological analysis. In that sense, while the first phase of analysis is focused at achieving internal consistency for the within-case descriptions of the practitioner’s embedded experiences the later phase is focused on engaging phenomenology to point to invariants that are structural to the experiences described.

In the first phases of analysing data the researcher should stay with describing themes so that these, as closely as possible, accord with the contextual and lived conditions of the subject’s practices. In pragmatic accordance with ethnographical and cultural analytical considerations, descriptions should thereby be handled in accordance with significant indigenous themes. This can also be addressed as using an ‘emic’ approach. In Kenneth Pike’s introduction of the term for linguistic analysis, emic accounts are (sub)culturally bound while its counter term ‘etic’ adheres to descriptions of phenomena that apply across cultures and which accordingly also reflects theoretical ideas of the analysists (Morris et al.,  1999 ; Peterson & Pike, 2002 ). Footnote 16 As emphasised earlier in this article, there is no neutral stance from which to generate data, and a solely emic perspective is impossible as every researcher always brings an inescapable subjectivity and lived experience to the study (Morris et al.,  1999 ; Olive, 2014 ). Furthermore, as has been pointed to in discussions of the two terms, proportions of either substantive theory and/or methodological theory about how to go about conducting a process of reflecting contrasts between emic and etic perspectives will also influence the research process (Peterson & Pike, 2002 : 15). So, to focus on using an emic approach does not present a methodological solution to how to achieve robust transactional validity. Rather, I suggest the term is understood as a methodological oriented tool which can help keep focus on the indigenous perspective of experiences.

7 The research strategy in use – two examples

The following two examples – spanning three different research projects – exemplify how the methodological considerations presented in this article are put into play in research projects. Especially how each project called for specific methodological considerations and choices. The three projects briefly presented, have been carried out with various colleagues - philosophers and/or qualitative researchers. Reflecting the discussions in the article I specifically focus descriptions on a) the design of the investigations, b) the handling of the second-person perspective in the research process to create optimal transactional validity between practices and experiences in focus and the data generated, and c) the phenomenological topic in focus for the analyses.

7.1 On dancers’ bodily self-consciousness

In this project we aimed to investigate bodily self-consciousness in the case of skilled movement practitioners – more specifically: how the physicality of the body can be present to practitioners’ awareness Footnote 17 (Ravn,  2009 ; Legrand & Ravn, 2009 ). The practices of professional dancers were considered especially interesting cases, as these specialised movement practitioner’s both explore and train the physical body (the possibilities it opens and limits) as well as engage their bodily experiences quite actively in relation to these physical explorations (e.g. Potter, 2008 ; Rouhiainen, 2003 ).

Two circumstances played a central role for how the overall design of the research project and the handling of the second-person perspective took shape. Firstly, recognising the diversity of dance practices characterising professional dance in a European context, it was important from the beginning to aim at including relatively different genres and styles of dance practices in the artistic field. Thus, a total of 13 dancers from different cities in Europe were involved in the research project which, accordingly, was organised as a multiple-sited fieldwork (Amit, 2000 ). This meant that the different field sites involved can be viewed as an intersection of professional dancers and their practices within the shifting terrain they form part of (Strauss, 2000 ) and that the fieldwork was organised around the places and settings where the dancers worked. Geographically, it accordingly took place in Copenhagen, London, Amsterdam, Malmo, Brussels and Vienna. The dancers were in different ways and with different preferences trained in ballet, improvisation and/or various contemporary dance styles. Data was generated through series of short-term fieldwork, typically of one week. It included a formal interview which was prepared on the basis of the fieldwork. This was generally repeated twice with each of the dancers (Ravn, 2009 : 118–120).

Secondly, as the researcher had a background in professional dance herself, her embodied dance experiences was used in an activist fashion to form a resource in observation by actively forming part of the training. Thus, the researcher’s observations and participation were used to prepare formal interviews. This meant that the dancers were asked to describe their practices and experiences of these practices in accordance with the structures and contexts of the actual practices. Often concrete situations from the practices were included in the questions to both invite further descriptions in relation to experiences (see also Ravn and Hansen, 2013 ). In this way, the interview approach depended on an attentive listening position from the researcher’s side (Thorpe, 2012 ) and involved an openness for interviews to develop into active dialogues. (e.g. Holstein & Gubrium,  1995 ; Taylor & Bogdan, 1998 : 105). In these active dialogues the researcher at times used her own first-person experiences of the practices to elicit further descriptions from the dancer.

However, the researcher’s familiarity with the practices being studied also involved careful consideration of how to set up a design in which some of the dancers’ practices could allow the researcher to cast constructive doubt and to find ways to defamiliarize herself with her own experiences of dancing. The idea was to enable her to take up an open-ended and self-reflexive stance adhering to a second person perspective without ending up resonating her own first-person perspective of the same kind of dancing to such a degree that it overshadowed the specificity of the interviewee’s descriptions. Furthermore, on several occasions data and analysis were discussed with another researcher who was not herself a dancer. These discussions were especially used in between interviews and to prepare for follow up interviews (Ravn & Hansen, 2013 ).

In the subsequent phases of the analysis the multiple field study was handled as a multiple case study in the sense that, when identifying central themes for coding, the data on each dancer’s experience was analysed on its own terms. Thereby coding categories were developed based on induction for each dance practice and on the contextual embeddedness characterising each of the practices. In this phase of the analysis, interview transcriptions were also processed into condensed versions to help follow each of the professional dancers’ descriptions of the contextualised conditions of the specific dance field they formed part of. These took form as abbreviated versions of the transcript in which irrelevant descriptions were taken out and certain characteristics of spoken language, such as repetition and unfinished sentences, were also removed or transformed into more readable text, while taking care to formulate sentences as faithfully as possible to the words and descriptions presented by the dancer. Checking the validity of the descriptions generated included each dancer being invited to accept, comment, and/or adjust the edited interview so that it accorded with the dancer’s report of the central part of his/her experiences in movement (Ravn, 2009 : 141 ff.). These edited transcriptions, alongside the original full transcription and observational notes, were included in the case-specific analyses describing central themes important to the dancer’s experiences. What especially stood out was that the dancers in each their way described how they had to feel their body in a certain way to dance well. The specific ways of feeling the body was then contingent to the techniques and styles in which the dancer trained and performed. For the ballet dancers this feeling of their bodies was centered round feeling aligned and placed, for one of the improvisers it was absolutely necessary to “feel weighted” to be able to improvise and for the dancer specifically drawing on Body-Weather training (a Butoh related dance practice) it was necessary to feel grounded to being able to be in contact with the energy transformation central to her expressive dance activities (Ravn, 2009 , 2017b ).

In the following phase of phenomenological analysis, we focused on these different kinds of feelings of their bodies to see if certain experiential structures were recognizable across the variety of the dance practices and specifically involved Legrand’s ( 2007a , 2007b ) phenomenological analysis of bodily self-consciousness. As a result of this part of the analyses we proposed that “a form of experience of the body’s subjectivity which is perceptual but not reifying” presents a special kind of pre-reflective performative bodily self-awareness (Legrand & Ravn, 2009 : 405). Further and not least that this kind of pre-reflective performative self-awareness is to be considered a central part of the dancers’ expertise.

7.2 The reciprocity of interaction in elite sports dance and bodily self-consciousness in golfing

In this second example I draw upon two different projects which involved similar setups. In the first study we aimed at continuing the investigation of bodily self-consciousness to see if the kind of pre-reflective performative dimension described in the study with dancers could also be present in athletes’ experiences – or more precisely for an elite golfer’s awareness of her body when training. At the same time, however, if confirmed, we wanted to also discuss what could be the potential value of such phenomenological insights for future analysis of golf training. The other study focused explicitly on exploring the reciprocity of shared experience in the face to face encounter of dancing together (He & Ravn, 2018 ). Primarily building on Zahavi’s ( 2015 ), Zahavi and Rochat’s ( 2015 ) and León and Zahavi’s ( 2016 ) work on this phenomenological topic, we were interested in investigating if or how such reciprocity of shared experiences could be trained and possibly strategically used by athletes involved in couple based sports – in concrete two couples of sports dancers competing in the absolute world elite.

In both cases the phenomenological topic of interest was clearly sketched out from the beginning and the overall design framing the research strategies were alike. More specifically, both cases of practices could be considered “crucial cases” (Hodge & Sharp, 2016 ), which in overall terms refers to that the case holds the potential to constructively challenge the insights and theories forming a central background of the study. As emphasised in sociologist Bent Flyvberg’s often quoted work on the value of case studies, crucial cases can help us to “understand the limits of existing theories and to develop new concepts, variables, and theories that are able to account for deviant cases” ( 2011 : 307). Like the case of the girl throwing (Young, 2005 ) cases can be carefully chosen with the specific aim of further exploring phenomenological descriptions of specific topics. Metaphorically speaking, the cases potentially present examples of there being ‘black swans’ and thereby prove that not all swans are white (Flyvbjerg, 2011 ).

In these two investigations I (performing the fieldwork) did not have an embodied familiarity with the practices in focus, as was the case in the investigation of the 13 professional dancers’ technical expertise. Observations were thus performed by sitting at the side and more passively observing the golfer and the sports-dancers’ practices of training. Other aspects were also alike: Both the golfer and the sports-dancers had a very tight schedule involving much travel, participation in tournaments and so on, so a short term ethnographical field work was performed by following the everyday training on five to seven occasions spread out over a period of a couple of months. In the formal interviews, a variety of examples based on the observed practices was used as an opener to invite the golfers and sports dancers, respectively, to describe practices and experiences in detail. Again, great care was taken that formal interviews were developed from the contextualized condition of the practitioners’ experiences. This included that words and concepts were strived to be used on emic terms throughout the interview and the first phases of analysis. In similar fashion to the way of heightening validity in the case of dancers described in the former example, the golfer and sport dancers were invited to read and comment on their interview transcripts in between interviews.

The single case study of the golfer was from the outset aimed at contributing to fields of qualitative research. Thus, we used phenomenological insight on the different dimensions of bodily self-consciousness as explicated in the phenomenological analysis of the professional dancers to critically elucidate on the golfer’s ways of being aware of her body while training to optimise her skills. The study pointed out that current golf literature is based on a theoretical understanding of bodily self-consciousness which is too narrow or simple compared to the understanding we could offer by involving recent phenomenological insight on the structure of bodily self-consciousness. Thus, based on our analysis we suggested that golf coaches revise the theoretical background they use when analysing and assisting golfers in improving their skills. Although not explicitly addressed in the result of the analysis it’s here relevant to add that the investigation of the golfer’s ways of being aware of her body from a phenomenological point of view adds to both confirm and further exemplify how a special kind of pre-reflective performative bodily self-awareness is important to movement practitioners.

In accordance with Zahavi’s descriptions of the bi-directed nature of shared experience, the analysis of the elite sports-dancers exemplified how this kind of reciprocity can unfold in highly specialised practices and presented detailed descriptions of how this bi-directedness can unfold in an ongoing dynamics of two separate flows of movement (He & Ravn, 2018 ). However, beyond confirming the very outset for the analysis, the practices of the two couples also uncovered that reciprocity can be deliberately shaped through the mutual coordination and affective bound dynamics of the dancers’ movement. In other words, the analysis of these movement specialists indicates the possibility that reciprocity can be actively modified through movement by the subjects involved in the shared experience.

8 In conclusion

The specialised movement practices of dancers and athletes are contextualised through and through. To use these practices and related experiences as factual variations of ‘what our moving body can be like’ for us in a phenomenological analysis, we have insisted that the contextual embeddedness can and should not be avoided in the process of generating data. Rather, the researcher should turn to qualitative research methodologies and take great care to be transparent in how translational validity is handled in the process of generating data of practitioners’ experiences on the lived conditions these practices are a part of.

The research strategy we have presented has focused on integrating qualitative research methodologies and phenomenology. It accordingly embraces the two-tier research strategy presented in the ‘phenomenological interview’ by Høffding and Martiny ( 2016 ). Yet, discussing the research strategy in use by involving thorough elucidation of the generic ground and rigor of qualitative research, the article has moved beyond describing only the interview situation and targeted essential challenges which are to be handled when integrating short-term ethnographical fieldwork and phenomenology. Discussions have especially contributed to highlight how the second-person perspective can be handled so that high transactional validity is achieved between dancers’ or athletes’ actual experiences and the data generated. In close connection to these discussions the article accentuated the need for carefully considering the design of research projects. Especially, how the design frames the possibilities for how the second person-perspective can be brought in to use. The examples presented, each in their case-specific way, demonstrate how factual variations of ‘what a moving body can be like’ can add to and constructively challenge phenomenological descriptions. At the same time the examples also demonstrate that the contextual premises of the practices in focus demand the researcher to situate the research strategy in good accordance with the lived experiences under investigation.

Ian Watermann’s way of dealing with his neurological condition was first described in the book Pride and the Daily Marathon written by Johathan Cole ( 1991 ).

I here use the descriptions ‘integrating’ as synonymous to ‘interdisciplinary combination’.

To be precise, Thompson specifically points to that if we accepted the claim that Buddhist philosophy derives from meditation, we would end up ignoring the complex historical and interpretative issues that arise in trying to relate mindfulness meditation practices to Buddhist philosophies.

I here implicitly draw on Gallagher and Zahavi’s ( 2008 ) introduction to phenomenology and the endeavour of the philosophical phenomenological tradition.

See Krueger,  2014 and Krueger and Overgaard, 2012 .

As Høffding and Martiny writes: “Zahavi specifically discuss how reflecting and describing should not be seen as falsifications of originary or pre-reflective experience (Zahavi,  1999 , 2011 , 2015 ) and criticise the idea that pre-reflective experiences as if internal, something you can ‘come into contact with’ or get ‘closer’ to.”.

The part of Zahavi’s critique concerning the ‘phenomenology light’ versions of application has also been critically discussed on several occasions in the fields of qualitative research. In the light versions, researchers seem to present phenomenology as if this is the best method to thoroughly describe subjective experiences. That is, several qualitative researchers have critically argued that, if we are to denote an investigation ‘a phenomenological qualitative inquiry’ it must as a minimum involve philosophical phenomenological descriptions and/or clarifications (Allen-Collinson,  2009 ; Finlay,  2009 ).

I here think of specific analytical strategies and discussions found in connection to, between others, Grounded Theory, thematic analysis and the different narrative analytical approaches (e.g. Smith & Sparkes,  2016a ).

With reference to Young’s ( 2005 ) analysis of the throwing girl, the background of the researcher will also influence the ways in which s/he is aware of special characteristics of bodily comportment.

As I have discussed in other papers, the considerations on researcher positions presented here are in disagreement with Maxine Sheets-Johnstone’s ( 2012 ) insistence that the researcher will need a dance background to understand dance and to follow an analysis of dancing. This methodological disagreement is discussed further in Ravn, 2009 , ch. 2 and Ravn and Høffding ( under review ).

We are aware that the Danish word used by Kvale: ‘opdagelsesrejsende’ is often translated to ‘traveler’. However, we find that the English term ‘explorer’ much better covers the original meaning addressed in Kvale’s original discussions on interview methods.

Such self-reflexive considerations, and the ways these are inherently ingrained in the academic traditions which the researcher forms part of, interestingly link to ontological and epistemological questions discussed recently in philosophical anthropology (Pedersen,  2020 ; Throop,  2018 ). The relatively restricted space of this article does not allow for a discussion on these philosophical anthropological arguments and their relevance for the methods discussed in this article.

Short-term ethnographical fieldwork is generally understood as a specific kind of strategy or design for case studies (Flyvbjerg,  2011 ; Hodge & Sharp,  2016 ).

In philosophical anthropological discussions Throop 2018 describes the anthropologist’s attunement to new horizons of understanding in ethnographical fieldwork by emphasising that this attunment must be grounded in an interest into understanding the other through an engagement of “lateral displacement that enables one to critically reconsider one’s views from another vantage point” (Jackson,  2013 : 262). In the philosophical anthropological discussions these descriptions of how a second person perspective is to be brought are closely aligned with phenomenology and addressed as an ethnographical epoché.

Triangulation is here used in a relatively loose sense to address that a multiple method and/or multiple analytical strategy is involved to critically think with the descriptions generated.

The terms emic and etic are originally developed in linguistics by Kenneth L. Pike for cross-linguistic/cultural analysis but are today adapted into other fields of research – including ethnography. One finds relatively different versions and tense discussions of the terms across the fields in which it has been brought to use (e.g. Harris,  1976 ; Peterson & Pike,  2002 ). I here use the terms in accordance with both Peterson and Pike’s ( 2002 ) discussion and the way it is used in ethnography (e.g. Olive,  2014 ).

The whole project began as an explorative investigation of the dancers’ techniques – and how the materiality of the body is dealt with. The phenomenological theme concerning bodily self-consciousness was specified in close collaboration with contemporary phenomenological discussions – especially Legrand’s work ( 2007a , b ).

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Ravn, S. Integrating qualitative research methodologies and phenomenology—using dancers’ and athletes’ experiences for phenomenological analysis. Phenom Cogn Sci 22 , 107–127 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-021-09735-0

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Phenomenological Research: Methods And Examples

Ravi was a novice, finding it difficult to select the right research design for his study. He joined a program…

Ravi was a novice, finding it difficult to select the right research design for his study. He joined a program to improve his understanding of research. As a part of his assignment, he was asked to work with a phenomenological research design. To execute good practices in his work, Ravi studied examples of phenomenological research. This let him understand what approaches he needed and areas he could apply the phenomenological method.

What Is Phenomenological Research?

Phenomenological research method, examples of phenomenological research.

A qualitative research approach that helps in describing the lived experiences of an individual is known as phenomenological research. The phenomenological method focuses on studying the phenomena that have impacted an individual. This approach highlights the specifics and identifies a phenomenon as perceived by an individual in a situation. It can also be used to study the commonality in the behaviors of a group of people.  

Phenomenological research has its roots in psychology, education and philosophy. Its aim is to extract the purest data that hasn’t been attained before. Sometimes researchers record personal notes about what they learn from the subjects. This adds to the credibility of data, allowing researchers to remove these influences to produce unbiased narratives. Through this method, researchers attempt to answer two major questions:

• What are the subject’s experiences related to the phenomenon?
• What factors have influenced the experience of the phenomenon?

A researcher may also use observations, art and documents to construct a universal meaning of experiences as they establish an understanding of the phenomenon. The richness of the data obtained in phenomenological research opens up opportunities for further inquiry.

Now that we know what is phenomenological research , let’s look at some methods and examples.

Phenomenological research can be based on single case studies or a pool of samples. Single case studies identify system failures and discrepancies. Data from multiple samples highlights many possible situations. In either case, these are the methods a researcher can use:

• The researcher can observe the subject or access written records, such as texts, journals, poetry, music or diaries
• They can conduct conversations and interviews with open-ended questions, which allow researchers to make subjects comfortable enough to open up
• Action research and focus workshops are great ways to put at ease candidates who have psychological barriers

To mine deep information, a researcher must show empathy and establish a friendly rapport with participants. These kinds of phenomenological research methods require researchers to focus on the subject and avoid getting influenced.

Phenomenological research is a way to understand individual situations in detail. The theories are developed transparently, with the evidence available for a reader to access. We can use this methodology in situations such as:

• The experiences of every war survivor or war veteran are unique. Research can illuminate their mental states and survival strategies in a new world.
• Losing family members to Covid-19 hasn’t been easy. A detailed study of survivors and people who’ve lost loved ones can help understand coping mechanisms and long-term traumas.
• What’s it like to be diagnosed with a terminal disease when a person becomes a parent? The conflict of birth and death can’t be generalized, but research can record emotions and experiences.

Phenomenological research is a powerful way to understand personal experiences. It provides insights into individual actions and motivations by examining long-held assumptions. New theories, policies and responses can be developed on this basis. But, the phenomenological research design will be ineffective if subjects are unable to communicate due to language, age, cognition or other barriers. Managers must be alert to such limitations and sharp to interpret results without bias.

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Phenomenological research is a qualitative research approach that focuses on exploring the subjective experiences and perspectives of individuals. Phenomenology aims to understand how people make meaning of their experiences and how they interpret the world around them.

Phenomenological research typically involves in-depth interviews or focus group discussions with individuals who have experienced a particular phenomenon or event. The data collected through these interviews or discussions are analyzed using thematic analysis. 

Today, we will learn how a scholar can successfully conduct a phenomenological study and draw inferences based on individual's experiences. This information would be especially useful for those who conduct qualitative research . Well then, let’s dive into this together!

What Is Phenomenological Research: Definition

Let’s define phenomenological research notion. It is an approach that analyzes common experiences within a selected group. With it, scholars use live evidence provided by actual witnesses. It is a widespread and old approach to collecting data on certain phenomenon. People with first-hand experience provide researchers with necessary data. This way the most up-to-date and, therefore, least distorted information can be received.  On the other hand, witnesses can be biased in their opinions. This, together with their lack of understanding about subject, can influence your study. This is why it is important to validate your results. If you aren’t sure how to validate the outcomes, feel free to contact our dissertation writers . They have proven experience in conducting different research studies, including phenomenology.

Phenomenological Research Methodology

You should use phenomenological research methods carefully, when writing an academic paper. Aside from chance of running into bias, you risk misplacing your results if you don't know what you're doing. Luckily, we're here to provide thesis help and explain what steps you should take if you want your work to be flawless!

• Form a target group. It is typically 10 to 20 people who have witnessed a certain event or process. They may have an inside knowledge of it.
• Systematically observe participants of this group. Take necessary notes.
• Conduct interviews, conversation or workshops with them. Ask them questions about the subject like ‘what was your experience with it?’, ‘what did it mean?’, ‘what did you feel about it?’, etc.
• Analyze the results to achieve understanding of the subject’s impact on the group. This should include measures to counter biases and preconceived assumptions about the subject.

Phenomenological Research: Pros and Cons

Phenomenological research has plenty of advantages. After all, when writing a paper, you can benefit from collecting information from live participants. So, here are some of the cons:

• This method brings unique insights and perspectives on a subject. It may help seeing it from an unexpected side.
• It also helps to form deeper understanding about a subject or event in question. Many details can be uncovered, which would not be obvious otherwise.
• It provides undistorted data first-hand.

But, of course, you can't omit some disadvantages of phenomenological research. Bias is obviously one of them, but they don't stop with it. Observe:

• Sometimes participants may find it hard to convey their experience correctly. This happens due to various factors, like language barriers.
• Organizing data and conducting analysis can be very time consuming.
• You can generalize the resulting data easily.
• Preparing a proper presentation of the results may be challenging.

Phenomenological Research: Questions With Examples

It is important to know what phenomenological research questions can be used for certain papers. Remember, that you should use a qualitative approach here. Use open-ended questions each time you talk with a participant. This way the participant could give you much more information than just ‘yes’ or ‘know’.  Here are a few real examples of phenomenological research questions that have been used in academic works by term paper writers .

Phenomenological Research Questions: Examples

When you're stuck with your work, you might need some examples of phenomenological research questions. They focus on retrieving as much data as possible about a certain phenomenon. Participants are encouraged to share their experiences, feelings and emotions. This way scholars could get a deeper and more detailed view of a subject.

• What was it like, when the X event occurred?
• What were you thinking about when you first saw X?
• Can you tell me an example of encountering X?
• What could you associate X with?
• What was the X’s impact on your life/your family/your health etc.?

Phenomenological Research Examples

Do you need some real examples of phenomenological research? We'll be glad to provide them here, so you could better understand the information given above. Please note that good research topics should highlight the problem. It must also indicate the way you will collect and process data during analysis.

• Understanding the role of a teacher's personality and ability to lead by example play in the overall progress of their class. A study conducted in 6 private and public high schools of Newtown.
• Perspectives of aromatherapy in treating personality disorders among middle-aged residents of the city. A mixed methods study conducted among 3 independent focus groups in Germany, France and the UK.
• View and understanding of athletic activities' roles by college students. Their impact on overall academic success. Several focus groups have been selected for this study. They underwent both online conduct surveys and offline workshops to voice their opinions on the subject.

Phenomenological Research: Final Thoughts

Phenomenological qualitative research is crucial if you must collect data from live participants. In this article, we have examined the concept of this approach. Moreover, we explained how you can collect your data. Hopefully, this will provide you with a broader perspective about phenomenological research!

Or do tight deadlines give you a headache? Check out our paper writing services ! We’ve got a team of skilled authors with expertise in various academic fields. Our papers are well written, proofread and always delivered on time!

Frequently Asked Questions About Phenomenological Qualitative Research

1. what are the 4 various types of experiences in phenomenology.

Phenomenology studies the structure of various types of experience. It attempts to view a subject from many different angles. A good phenomenological research requires focusing on different ways the information can be retrieved from respondents. These can be: perception, thought, memory, imagination, emotion, desire, and volition. With them explained, a scholar can retrieve objective information, impressions, associations and assumptions about the subject.

3. What is the purpose of phenomenological research design?

Main goal of the phenomenological approach is highlighting the specific traits of a subject. This helps to identify phenomena through the perceptions of live participants. Phenomenological research design helps to formulate research statements. Questions must be asked so that the most informative replies could be received.

4. What is phenomenological research study?

A phenomenological research study explores what respondents have actually witnessed. It focuses on their unique experience of a subject in order to retrieve the most valuable and least distorted information about it. The study must include open-ended questions, target focus groups who will provide answers, and the tools to analyze the results.

2. What is hermeneutic phenomenology research?

Hermeneutic phenomenology research is a method often used in qualitative research in Education and other Human Sciences. It inspects deeper layers of respondents’ experiences by analyzing their interpretations and their level of comprehension of actual events, processes or objects. By viewing a person’s reply from different perspectives, researchers try to understand what is hidden beneath that.

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6 The Constructivist Paradigm and Phenomenological Qualitative Research Design

From the book research paradigm considerations for emerging scholars.

• Justyna Pilarska
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Phenomenological Qualitative Methods Applied to the Analysis of Cross-Cultural Experience in Novel Educational Social Contexts

Ahmed ali alhazmi.

1 Education Department, Jazan University, Jazan, Saudi Arabia

Angelica Kaufmann

2 Cognition in Action Unit, PhiLab, University of Milan, Milan, Italy

The qualitative method of phenomenology provides a theoretical tool for educational research as it allows researchers to engage in flexible activities that can describe and help to understand complex phenomena, such as various aspects of human social experience. This article explains how to apply the framework of phenomenological qualitative analysis to educational research. The discussion within this article is relevant to those researchers interested in doing cross-cultural qualitative research and in adapting phenomenological investigations to understand students’ cross-cultural lived experiences in different social educational contexts.

Introduction: The Qualitative Method in Educational Research

Many scholars in phenomenology hold the view that human beings extract meaning from the world through personal experience ( Husserl, 1931 ; Hycner, 1985 ; Koopmans, 2015 ; Hourigan and Edgar, 2020 ; Gasparyan, 2021 ). Investigating the experience of individuals is a highly complex phenomenon ( Jarvis, 1987 ): annotating and clarifying human experience can be a challenging task not only because of the complexity of human nature, but also because an individual’s experience is a multidimensional phenomenon, that is, psychologically oriented, culturally driven, and socially structured. Hence, much uncertainty and ambiguity are surrounding the description and exploration of an individual’s experience. Such uncertainty is due to the multidimensional aspects that constitute and form an individual’s experiences, including ongoing and “mediated” behaviour ( Karpov and Haywood, 1998 ), feelings, and cognition. In all these respects, the complexity of experience becomes especially evident in certain investigative contexts such as the one we decided to explore, that is the study of the cross-cultural interactions of individuals who experience a transition from their own cultural and educational social context to a different one. In this article, it is argued that a hybrid phenomenological qualitative approach that, as shall be illustrated, brings together aspects of descriptive phenomenology, and aspects of interpretative phenomenology ( Moustakas, 1994 ; Lopez and Willis, 2004 ), could assist researchers in navigating through the complexity of cross-cultural experiences encountered by individuals in novel social educational contexts. Descriptive phenomenology was derived mainly from the philosophical work of Husserl and particularly from the idea of transcendental phenomenology ( Moustakas, 1994 ; Lopez and Willis, 2004 ; Giorgi, 2010 ). In contrast, an interpretive phenomenological methodology was derived from the works of scholars like Merleau-Ponty (1962) , Gadamer (2000) , and Gadamer and Linge (2008) . These two approaches overlap in the research methods and activities and are deployed to assist the research by promoting engagement with responsive and improvised activities rather than with mechanical procedures. The general qualitative methodology of social science research has shaped phenomenology as a methodological approach just as reliable as quantitative and experimental methods, as recently discussed by Høffding et al. (2022) , who stressed the advantages of phenomenology in qualitative research (see also Zahavi, 2019a , b ). Since we are interested in cross-cultural experiences, in the past, for example, we used such phenomenological qualitative type of investigation to find out what it is like for Saudi international students to transition from a gender-segregated society to a mixed-gender environment while studying and living as international students ( Alhazmi and Nyland, 2013 , 2015 ). We were interested in further understanding the phenomenon of transitioning itself rather than collecting students’ opinions and perspectives about the experience of transitioning. The investigation was conducted to capture and describe essential aspects of the participants’ experience, to understand the experience encountered by students in their novel social educational context. Besides this specific study case, the same hybrid methodology, as shall be suggested, may be applied to the study of similar types of social environments and groups. We refer to our past work on cross-cultural transitioning experience to help the reader translate how the phenomenological qualitative methodology can be applied in relatable scenarios in educational research.

As Giorgi (1985) , Van Manen (1990) , Moustakas (1994) , and other phenomenologists have stated, interviewing individuals who experience specific phenomena is the foundation source that phenomenological investigation relies on to understand the phenomenon. Accordingly, aspects that are core to the interviews are the following: (1) general attributes of the conducted interviews, (2) criteria of selection for potential participants, (3) ethical considerations of dealing with human participants, and (4) the interviewing procedures and some examples (these will be presented in section “Practising Phenomenology: Methods and Activities”).

To design a phenomenologically based qualitative investigation, we suggest considering three aspects: (1) the aim of the investigation; (2) the philosophical assumptions about the sought knowledge; and (3) the investigative strategies. These three aspects of the investigation shall be approached while keeping in mind the two following rationals: (1) looking for essence and (2) flexible methods and activities.

• The researcher’s aim is that of identifying the essential and invariant structure (i.e., the essence ) of the lived experience as this is described by the participants ( Moustakas, 1994 ; Crotty, 1998 ; Cresswell, 2008 ). This allows the researcher to ‘return to the concrete aspect of the experience’ ( Moustakas, 1994 , p. 26) by offering a systematic attempt to present the experience as it appears in consciousness ( Polkinghorne, 1989 ) and to focus on the importance of the individuals and their respective views about the lived experience ( Lodico et al., 2006 ). It is essential to keep this aim (i.e., identifying the essence of lived experience ) in mind when conducting a phenomenological qualitative investigation as this is the core aim of phenomenology. According to Finlay (2006 , 2008 ), exploring and understanding the essential structure and themes of the lived experience encountered by individuals is critical. Researchers adopting these perspectives ‘borrow’ the participants’ experience and their reflections on their experience to get a deeper understanding and to grasp the deeper meaning of the investigated experience ( Van Manen, 1990 , p. 62). This is what Finlay (2006 , 2008 ) calls ‘dancing’ between two approaches, and it is also the approach that we endorse. As pointed out by Høffding and Martiny (2016) , in this explorative process the interviewer needs to understand the relation between the interviewee’s experience and their description of it, since the interview constitutes a second person perspective in which one directly encounters another subjectivity and shall not elicit closed answers such as “yes” or “no” (see section “Attributes of the Conducted Interviews”). This feature is useful when exploring an experience that has not been sufficiently explored and discussed.
• The suggested phenomenological qualitative approach offers a strategy that ‘sharpen the level on ongoing practices in phenomenologically inspired qualitative research’ ( Giorgi, 2006a , p. 306). Methods and activities for data collection are flexible, and the analysis is designed to be aligned with the theoretical and philosophical assumptions underlying qualitative research. The present strategy allows a researcher to dialogue with both the participants and the data to produce a multi-layered description of the experience. This feature is academically important in terms of conducting a rigorous qualitative study that provides trustworthy knowledge ( Crotty, 1998 ; Denzin and Lincoln, 2003 ; Creswell, 2007 , 2009 ; Bryman, 2008 ).

The three core aspects of the investigation (1) the aim of the investigation; (2) the philosophical assumptions about the sought knowledge; and (3) the investigative strategies, informed by these two rationals , are essential to developing a phenomenologically oriented qualitative method to examine the lived experience and for identifying its essence.

Aim and Method

Thinking about the actual object of our investigation, that is, the lived experience of individuals is an essential aspect of phenomenological qualitative research. The researchers need to identify their aim very carefully by focusing on the lived experience of the subject being interviewed and on the structure of such experience rather than on the opinion of the participants about the experience.

In our previous studies, we were interested in describing the cross-cultural experience lived by Saudi students transitioning from their home country to another. Call the experience of transitioning ‘experience X’ and call Saudi students ‘group Y’. The research sought to examine the major question and the supplementary questions around which the study revolved, which was the following: “ What does the experience X look like for the individuals belonging to group Y? ”

As the question is broad in scope and quite complex, we decided to address it from a particular angle to grasp the essence of the students’ experience rather than providing a superficial description or a personal reflection of the experience. The efforts were directed to identify the most prominent overt display of the students’ experience; the focus was on investigating the most invariant and essential aspect of their experience. From this viewpoint, the research was directed to the quest of ‘what’ individuals encounter and ‘how’ they encounter it. This aim is characterised by the research design as exploratory (e.g., Blumer, 1986 ; Stebbins, 2001 ; Ritchie and Lewis, 2003 ). Exploratory research design allows researchers to “taste” and experience social phenomena and provides a journey of discovery that consists of adventure ( Willig, 2008 ) and surprise. The researcher, guided by the research inquiry, may arrive to discover an unanticipated phenomenon.

In particular, the study of cross-cultural experience involves two aspects: first is what we can call a “transitioning experience” between two cultures. The second is the potential impact that “transitioning experience” has upon the identity of those individuals who lived the experience. The conceptualisation of the phenomenon (i.e., cross-cultural experience) must be addressed, and the theoretical perspective informing its conceptualisation should be considered while developing such a phenomenological approach.

Two theoretical perspectives can allow understanding the phenomenon of cross-cultural transition: the first one is the sociocultural theory, which has been developed from Vygotsky’s works (e.g., Vygotsky, 1978 ; Doelling and Goldschmidt, 1981 ; Cole, 1995 ; Wertsch et al., 1995 ); and the second one is symbolic interactionism theory, which draws on the works of Mead, Blumer, and others (e.g., Kuhn, 1964 ; Mead, 1967 ; Blumer, 1986 ; Denzin, 1992 ; Clammer et al., 2004 ; Urrieta, 2007 ). These two perspectives informed the conceptualisation of the research phenomenon and how the phenomenon has been approached methodologically. For what concerns Vygotsky and neo-Vygotskian authors (and their sociocultural perspectives), they facilitate our understanding of the phenomenon of cross-cultural transition and its investigation. For example, Vygotsky and neo-Vygotskian authors conceptualise the individual ability to adjust to the new culture. The assumption that underlies the investigation is that individuals can acquire new cognitive developmental patterns of thought employing what these authors call “mediational assistance of tools, signs, and other cultures” ( Kozulin, 2018 ).

For what concerns instead, the symbolic interactionism approach, this latter allows researchers to understand cross-cultural experienced phenomena by taking into consideration the role of symbolic meanings in forming individuals’ experience. The core assumption developed from this perspective is that symbolic meanings are developed, while individuals acquire their understanding of both their internal and external world.

To analyse cultural identity and this transitioning experience, another relevant aspect to consider is that symbolic interactionists assume that the definition of individual self and identity are both constructed in and played out through interaction with the environment and the other selves surrounding us. As stated by Hollander et al. (2011) , the most basic requisite for symbolic interaction is the existence of social selves who come together to share information, emotions, and goods—the full range of human activities. The conceptions that people have of themselves, and others shape how they present themselves. In turn, how they present themselves allows others to infer what actors privately think of themselves and others (p. 123). Another aspect to be noted is that in the context of cross-cultural transitioning, cultural identity reflects how individuals think and feel about belonging to their culture and to the larger society from which they come from; it is in the essence of their experiences, the sense of belonging to, or attachment with, either or both cultural groupings. To fully appreciate this, we need to “borrow” from different authors’ arguments, ideas, and theoretical perspectives and adopt the hybrid perspective that we mentioned.

With this in mind, we present an overview of our research aims and the attributes that they involve: exploration and philosophical assumptions about sought knowledge.

Exploration

The study process is not a recipe to follow but rather a journey to take, and as Willig (2008 , p. 2) pointed out, the concept of research ‘has moved from a mechanical (how-to-apply-appropriate-techniques-to-the-subject-matter) to a creative (how-can-I-find-out?) mode’.

A study should be designed to maintain the subjective approach of the researcher towards the exploration of the phenomenon being investigated, as well as to appreciate the inter-subjective nature of the approach involved in the investigation of the phenomenon itself. A phenomenological qualitative method allows to track empathy and recognition of both the researcher’s and the participant’s subjectivity in relation to the phenomenon being explored.

The design is aimed to provide the researcher and the audience, with an opportunity to test and experience the phenomenon through descriptions of the essence of the experience. By concentrating on exploration as an essential aim, we evoke flexibility—the type of flexibility that allows researchers to shift between lines of inquiry and move from one activity to another to uncover the structure of the experience. The direction and proposal concerning the activities should be open enough to accommodate the complexity and ambiguity that surrounds any examined phenomenon. Flexibility consists of merging the exploratory research with phenomenological and qualitative practices.

Philosophical Assumptions About Sought Knowledge

We consider ontological assumptions, that is, specific beliefs about some aspect of reality, and epistemological assumptions, that is, specific beliefs about some aspect of knowledge, that constitutes the phenomenon being the object of the investigation. Ontological and epistemological assumptions are considered an essential part of the research design. Therefore, researchers should identify these assumptions while engaging with the research process, as they will play a significant role in framing the research questions and justifying the research methodology, on the one hand, and the methods and activities, on the other hand ( Guba, 1990 ; Guba and Lincoln, 1994 ; Crotty, 1998 ; Denzin and Lincoln, 2003 ; Creswell, 2009 ; Høffding and Martiny, 2016 ; Martiny et al., 2021 ; Høffding et al., 2022 ).

Ontological Assumptions of the Phenomenological Investigation

Ontological assumptions are, here, propositions about the nature of social reality—that is, what exists in a social context ( Crotty, 1998 ; Blaikie, 2000 ). They relate to questions about reality: for example, what reality does exist? Does it have an external existence or is it internally constructed? However, not all phenomenologists consider ontological issues a real concern for designing and practising qualitative inquiry. That is because the ideas of phenomenology appeared as a reaction to the scientific positivist philosophical view of knowledge that dominated the philosophy of science. The phenomenological arguments, when they first appeared, were not concerned with ontological questions but rather they focussed on providing an alternative epistemological approach about how we can access knowledge that tends to be subjective and internally mediated. In other words, phenomenology, in its original form, is an attempt to explore the relationship between the knower and the known, which is an epistemological issue in philosophy rather than an ontological position. The main issue that concerns phenomenology, from these perspectives, is whether we assume or not that reality exists outside of human consciousness, i.e., before or independently of whether we think and reason about it. The epistemological question needs to be answered from both positions. The epistemological question is the real dilemma, and this concerns who is invested in the study of human consciousness. From this perspective, what is provided by human consciousness is our social reality, regardless of its internal existence, before we think about it. Knowledge is what research usually attempts to provide, therefore, it is what should concern a researcher. According to Spinelli (2005 , p. 15), “We have no idea whether ‘things in themselves’ truly exist. All we can say is that, as human beings, we are biased towards interpretations that are centred upon an object-based or ‘thing-based’ world”. In addition, ontological assumptions should be identified clearly before one practice phenomenological research. This perspective has relied on Heidegger’s thesis, which moved the discussions concerning phenomenology to the ontological level when he discussed the philosophy of existence and being from a phenomenological perspective ( Laverty, 2003 ; Tarozzi and Mortari, 2010 ).

The basic philosophical assumption underlying a phenomenological investigation is that truth can be found and can exist within the individual lived experience ( Spiegelberg and Schuhmann, 1982 ). Our study is based on arguments about the existence of a social world as internally mediated, which means that as humans, we must interact with this existence and construct meanings based on our culture and beliefs, historical development, and linguistic symbols.

In our work, we considered an internal reality that was ‘built up from the perception of social actors’ ( Bryman, 2008 , p. 18) and that was consistent with the subjective experiences of the external world ( Blanche and Durrheim, 1999 ). This assumption was supported by Dilthey (1979 , p. 161) who said that ‘undistorted reality only exists for us in the facts of consciousness given by inner experience (, and) the analysis of these facts is the core of the human studies’.

The meanings emerged from the research methods and activities, and from this systematic interaction with the participants in this research and from sharing their experience, for example, about our work on students transitioning from their home country to the novel educational social context. These meanings should be considered a central part of the social reality that a study should report upon. This assumption underlies and merges implicitly with the second level of assumptions, the epistemological assumptions of phenomenology.

Epistemological Assumptions of the Phenomenological Investigation

In qualitative research, the researcher can be considered the subject who acts to know the phenomenon that is considered as the object. Accordingly, the phenomenon of cross-cultural transition between two cultures can be seen as an (object) for the deed of the investigator who is seen as (subject). Identifying the relationship between subject and object is essential to developing a coherent and sound research design. The following epistemological considerations are relevant to the current investigation.

Intentional Knowledge

The first element is intentionality. This concept is at the heart of the phenomenological approach ( Moustakas, 1994 ; Crotty, 1998 ; Husserl and Hardy, 1999 ; Barnacle, 2001 ; Creswell et al., 2006 ; Tarozzi and Mortari, 2010 ). The original idea of phenomenology was built on this concept, introduced by Brentano (1874) . Intentionality is the direction of the content of a mental state. This is a pervasive feature of many different mental states: beliefs, hopes, judgements, intentions, love, and hatred. According to Brentano, intentionality is the mark of the mental: all and only mental states exhibit intentionality. To say that a mental state has intentionality is to say that it is a mental representation and that it has content. Husserl, who was Brentano’s student, assumed that this essential property of intentionality, the directedness of mental states onto something, is not contingent upon whether some real physical target exists independently of the intentional act itself. This is regardless of whether the appearance of the thing is an appearance of the thing itself or an appearance of a mediated thing. Such consciousness and knowledge of the thing amount to perspectival understanding. Therefore, a person’s understanding is an understanding of a thing or an aspect of a thing (object). The key epistemological assumption, derived from Husserl’s concept of intentionality, is that the phenomenon is not present to itself; it is present to a conscious subject ( Barnacle, 2001 ). Therefore, the knowledge that an individual hold about the phenomenon is mediated and one cannot have ‘pure or unmediated access’ which is other than a subjective mediated knowledge ( Barnacle, 2001 , p. 7). We have access only to the world that is presented to us. We have an intention to act, to know what is out there, and we only can have access to an intentional knowledge that the knower can consciously act towards ( Hughes and Sharrock, 1997 ). Therefore, the assumption held here is that knowledge is the outcome of a conscious act towards the thing to be known ( Hughes and Sharrock, 1997 ).

Subjectively Mediated Knowledge

The second epistemological assumption is related to the previous one, that of intentionality. It is that we either assume that the social world and a phenomenon do exist outside of our consciousness (see, for example, Vygotsky, 1962 ; Burge, 1979 , 1986 ), or that they do not, but we are able only, as individuals, to interact with it and produce meaning for it through a conscious act. Consciousness is the ‘medium of access to whatever is given to awareness’ ( Giorgi, 1997 , p. 236); therefore, epistemologically, only subjective knowledge can be known about the experienced world. This assumption leads to the next epistemological assumption held in this investigation, which claims that knowing other people’s experiences is the outcome of constructed and dialogical knowledge.

Constructed Dialogical Knowledge

By stating that the knowledge obtained from a phenomenological study is constructed dialogically, we differentiated between philosophical knowledge on life experiences, and the knowledge provided by certain research practices that explore and understand other people’s descriptions of their lived experience ( Giorgi, 2006a , b ; Finlay, 2008 ).

From a phenomenological perspective, we assume that knowledge provided through the research activities is a result of the researcher’s and participants’ interactions with the phenomenon that is subject to the investigation. The essence of the argument here is that the ‘experience’ is best known and represented only through dialogical interaction: an interpretative methodology that analyses (spoken or written) utterances or actions for their embedded communicative significance ( Linell, 2009 ). For what concerns us, interaction occurred between two inseparable domains: between the conscience of the researcher and the participants, and between these consciousnesses and the phenomenon explored. The qualitative methodology provided a direction for this study by way of navigating through the first domain, which was the interaction between researcher and participants. The first domain had two levels of interaction, with the first being the relationship between researcher, participants, and raw data as a dialogical relationship—a dialogical relationship in the sense that the researcher is actively engaged, through dialogue (in the form of spoken or written communicative utterances or actions), in constructing reasonable and sound meanings from the data collected from the participants ( Rossman and Rallis, 2003 ; Steentoft, 2005 ). The importance of such a dialogical relationship, in phenomenological research, is supported by Rossman and Rallis (2003) .

Phenomenological Qualitative Methods and Strategies

Two forms of phenomenological methodologies can be noticed in the literature of qualitative research: descriptive phenomenology and interpretive phenomenology ( Moustakas, 1994 ; Lopez and Willis, 2004 ). Descriptive phenomenology was derived mainly from the philosophical work of Husserl and particularly from the idea of transcendental phenomenology ( Moustakas, 1994 ; Lopez and Willis, 2004 ; Giorgi, 2010 ). In contrast, an interpretive phenomenological methodology was derived from the works of scholars like Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty (1962) , Gadamer (2000) , and Gadamer and Linge (2008) .

These approaches overlap in the research methods and activities and are used to assist the research by promoting engagement with responsive and improvised activities rather than with mechanical procedures. In fact, key principles of both descriptive and interpretative phenomenology are peoples’ subjective experiences and the meanings they ascribe to their lived world and how they relate to it ( Langdridge, 2007 ). No definite line distinguishes or separates these two approaches or attitudes. Deploying both binaries is what differentiates our phenomenological qualitative approach from other qualitative approaches in the field (see, for example, Finlay, 2008 ; Langdridge, 2008 ).

Descriptive Attitude

The descriptive attitude in ‘the sense of description versus explanation’ ( Langdridge, 2008 , p. 1132; Ihde, 2012 ) occurs where the emphasis is on describing what the researcher hears, reads, and perceives when entering the participants’ description of their experience. According to Ihde (2012 , p. 19) it is that attitude that consists in ‘describe phenomena phenomenologically, rather than explain them’. The whole phenomenological qualitative approach process is not description vs. interpretation, since interpretation is inevitably involved in describing and understanding the description of other people’s lived experiences ( Langdridge, 2008 ). As presented in Figure 1 , the descriptive attitude is served by the bracketing mode and by the reduction process in order to generate a textural description of the described lived experience ( Moustakas, 1994 ; Creswell, 2007 ).

The hybrid phenomenological qualitative method.

Bracketing refers to the efforts that should be made to be open to listening to and observing the described phenomenon with fresh eyes. It is an attempt to put aside any prejudgements regarding the phenomenon being investigated ( Salsberry, 1989 ; Moustakas, 1994 ; LeVasseur, 2003 ; also see a critical discussion in Zahavi, 2019a , 2020 , 2021 , and in Zahavi and Martiny, 2019 ). This mode also allows one to engage phenomenologically with the reduction process concerning the participants’ descriptions of their lived experiences. What the bracketing mode offers to a phenomenological qualitative study is: (1) temporary suspension of any prejudgements or assumptions related to the examined phenomenon that might have limited and restricted how the phenomenon appeared for the participants, while being aware that it is impossible to be completely free from any presuppositions; and (2) assistance in maintaining the involvement of previous experiences and perceptions about the phenomenon to recognise and realise what constitutes other aspects of the explored experience. According to Moustakas (1994 , p. 85) adopting a bracketing status allows that ‘whatever or whoever appears in our consciousness is approached with an openness’. The bracketing mode influences most stages of the research activities about the following aspects:

• – Forming descriptive research questions free from presuppositions to guide and direct the research enquiry, leading to the achievement of a study’s aims.
• – Responding to and engaging with previous works that were concerned with the same experience.
• – Conducting descriptive interviews that allow participants to share and describe their lived experiences.
• – Re-describing the described experience with careful treatment of the data included, maintaining the involvement of the researcher, and avoiding being selective or discriminating in the re-description of the experience.

Phenomenological Reduction

Phenomenological reduction is the process of re-describing and explicating meaning from the described experience ( Giorgi, 1985 , 2006a , b ; Moustakas, 1994 ; Crotty, 1998 ; Todres, 2005 ; Creswell, 2007 ; Finlay, 2008 ). Such strategies are used to underlie the data analysis process. For Moustakas (1994) and others (e.g., Todres, 2005 , 2007 ), the phenomenological reduction of human experience deals with two dimensions of the experience: texture and structure.

The texture is the ‘thickness’ of an experience ( Todres, 2007 , p. 47); it is a description of what the experience is like. Accordingly, the texture is an extensive description of what happened and how it appears to the researcher. The texture is the qualitative feature of the experience ( Moustakas, 1994 ; Creswell, 2007 ). The structure of the experience deals with emergent themes, and these describe the essential aspect of the experience. Such themes ‘can be grasped only through reflection’ on the textural descriptions of the participant’s experience ( Keen, 1975 , as cited in Moustakas, 1994 , p. 79).

Interpretive Attitude

The interpretive attitude is the second strategy to be used to approach the data. It is part of the phenomenological approach towards discovering the essential structure and meanings of the experience as described by the participants. The interpretive attitude is part of the methodological strategies used to search for the essence of the experience. This approach is used mainly in the final stages of the research activities when the data analysis is being conducted.

As Finlay (2008 , 2009 ) argued, ‘interpretation (in phenomenological practice) is not an additional procedure: It constitutes an inevitable and basic structure of our “being-in-the-world.” We experience a thing as something that has already been interpreted’ (p. 10). Therefore, to achieve a meaningful description and understanding of the essential aspect of an experience, we should move from the bracketing mode to an imaginative variation mode to reflect on the first step of the phenomenological reduction, which is a textural description.

Imaginative Variation Mode

In the phenomenological literature, imaginative variation is akin to the induction process in that it aims to extract themes and essential meanings that constitute the described experiences ( Klein and Westcott, 1994 ; Moustakas, 1994 ; Giorgi, 2006a , b , 2009 ; Creswell, 2009 ). It should be mentioned, however, that in the phenomenological practise, shifting from a descriptive to an interpretive attitude is ‘interpretive so far’ ( Klein and Westcott, 1994 , p. 141). It shall be noted that usually applying phenomenology within qualitative methods is seen as working with a version of ‘factual variation’ that, in comparison to ‘imaginative variation’, works with qualitative data (as described in Høffding and Martiny, 2016 ). However, since our approach is not purely fitting within the epistemological assumptions of positivism and neo-positivism, but rather it reflects the epistemological assumptions of the hermeneutical approach, we prefer to adopt ‘imaginative variation’, and remain consistent with our hybrid view that attempts to balance descriptive and interpretative methods of investigation. The imaginative variation mode enables a thematic and structural description of the ‘experience’ to be derived within the process of phenomenological reduction. This mode assists in focusing on the second aspect of the research, which requires an examination of how the experience might affect the cultural identity of the participants, that is, that part of their self-conception that is typically influenced by the cultural background of their country of origin, and that is responsible for shaping their social values and beliefs. This strategic mode can guide the researcher to shift from the descriptive to the interpretive attitude. According to Von Eckartsberg (1972 , p. 166) such a mode ‘constitutes the reflective work, looking back and thinking about this experience, discovering meaningful patterns and structures, universal features that are lived out concretely in a unique fashion’. This will be considered describing “past experience” as “mediated experience” in the final analysis. And mediation is an essential process that individuals engage with in relation to their experience. Reflecting on people’s personal experiences requires mutual and reciprocal respect between researcher and participants ( Klein and Westcott, 1994 ). This aspect allows the researcher to engage with the texture of the participant’s personal experience, to reflect on it, and to decide on possible meanings in relation to the whole context. It also allows the participants to evaluate the researcher’s reflection. This methodological mode can play a significant role in the process and activity of data analysis.

Practising Phenomenology: Methods and Activities

We provided an overview of the methodology that we endorse as hybrid since it embeds both descriptive and interpretive phenomenological attitudes. To implement and explicate this approach in the practice of the research, we can take suggestion of Moustakas (1994) about organising the phenomenological methods around three categories: (1) methods of preparation, (2) methods of collecting data and gaining descriptions about the phenomenon, and (3) methods of analysing and searching for the meaning. These categories are useful when it comes to conducting a phenomenological qualitative study because they allow for the reporting of the most significant methods and ensure that activities are conducted in a logical order.

Methods of Preparation, Activities, and Data Collection

If the nature of the study is emergent, like in most qualitative research (e.g., Creswell, 2009 ; Hays and Singh, 2011 ), the research purpose and questions are emergent too; they grew initially from personal experience and then emerge through the process of conceptualising a research topic around experience being investigated, for example, the experience of cross-cultural transition lived by individuals who move from their own cultural and educational context to a different one. In our past work, this was the transition of Saudi students, both males and females, from Saudi Arabia to Australia. These students experienced the transition from a gender-segregated, deeply religious cultural and educational social context to a different one, where gender-mixed interactions are not limited to members of one’s own family, such as in Saudi Arabia. In Australia, these students experienced life in a gender-mixed educational social context that is not built on religious pillars. The experience that we investigated consisted of: the cross-cultural transition to a different educational social context. As Giorgi (1985) , Van Manen (1990) , Moustakas (1994) , and other phenomenologists have stated, aspects that are core to the interviews are the following: (1) general attributes of the conducted interviews, (2) criteria of selection for potential participants, (3) ethical considerations of dealing with human participants, and (4) the interviewing procedures and some examples.

Attributes of the Conducted Interviews

The main attributes of the interviews may be summarised as follows:

As an interview is influenced by the mode of bracketing, prior to each of the interviews it is necessary to elicit the participant’s experience separately from any comparison with one’s own. The interviews are about what the participants want to say rather than what the main researcher wants them to say or what the main researcher expect them to say. It is important to point out that the interviews are designed in such a way to encourage discursive answers rather than affirmative or negative answers (as discussed in Høffding and Martiny, 2016 ). Engaging with the interviews has the scope of seeking new views and perspectives about the phenomenon that is being investigated, and not simply to confirm or disconfirm what is already known about that phenomenon.

Here is an example of spontaneous answers to open questions taken from our previous work: Z. talks freely about the first week of experience in the novel educational social context in Australia: “Explicitly, the first class was horrible; was very bad. It is probably because I have not been in such position [mixing with males]. So, I was silent most of the time; I did not talk with any one most of the time; and I isolated myself in corner…. Mixing [with unknown males] is difficult for me because I have to deal with foreign men and I do not know them … I do not have a problem to speak with men. But the problem for me [is that] sometimes I think what if this man cross the limits between how I can deal with such behaviour. So I preferred to stay away from the men. In the first time it was hard, I could not do anything by myself. Many times, I just cried. The life [here] was mysterious in the beginning.”

And again towards the end of the stay in Australia, Z. spontaneously shares how her worldviews about herself have been changed by being in a gender-mixed educational environment. For example, Z. stated clearly that she is now confident ‘to deal with male’—after all the ‘scariness’ and ‘horribleness’ that was felt in the beginning. She learned from her experience in a gender-mixed environment how to make her own rules that males cannot cross. Z. said: “… Being here has changed my personality completely…. The most important advantages from (being here) refined my personality in a good way, and I became more independent…. I refined my personality. Not only me, who realised that, but my family also said that: Z. has changed…. Finally, I learned how to deal with man with confidence and how to make my own rule. So When I come back to Saudi Arabia, I will be more confident.”

During the interviewing activity, is also important to share experiences with the interviewees in order to practice empathy ( Corbin and Morse, 2003 ; Dickson-Swift et al., 2006 ; August and Tuten, 2008 ; Mitchell and Irvine, 2008 ; Mallozzi, 2009 ) and be respectful for what they feel about their experiences ( Klein and Westcott, 1994 ). These techniques are outlined to show interviewees that the researcher is interested in hearing detailed accounts ( Hays and Singh, 2011 ) about their experiences. As Hays and Singh (2011) have suggested, such involvement during an interview activity may encourage participants to share their experiences more freely, if they feel they are in a friendly situation. The advantages of this technique can be reflected in the descriptions of the answers provided and in the participants’ helpfulness in reviewing the transcribed interviews and adding or correcting data.

Selection of the Participants

A purposive sampling method can be used to select the participants. This is a type of nonprobability sample. The main objective of a purposive sample is to produce a sample that can be logically assumed to be representative of the population. This is often accomplished by applying expert knowledge of the population to select in a nonrandom manner a sample of elements that represents a cross-section of the population. For example, in our past work, such expertise was given by the author being a Saudi citizen who went to study in Australia. Such methods are considered fitting for most investigations if one wants ‘to discover, understand, and gain insight … from which the most can be learned’. Another reason to use a purposive sampling method is that in qualitative, particularly in phenomenological inquiry, the aim is not to generalise findings to a population but to develop insights and in-depth exploration of an under-researched phenomenon ( Onwuegbuzie and Leech, 2007 ). The concern is not about the number of participants. Rather, the focus should be on the intensity of participation and the diversity of the participants. Moustakas (1994) suggested that the number of participants in a phenomenological study can be from 1 to 20, depending on the time frame (see, Halldórsdóttir, 2000 ; Morse, 2000 ; Starks and Trinidad, 2007 ; Jones and Lavallee, 2009 ).

This section describes how the data and reports on the activity conducted can be treated to generate findings from the interviews. The following series of processes is indicative of the path followed to arrive at the findings for this research, which relied heavily on the works of Hycner (1985) , Moustakas (1994) , Giorgi (1997) , and Wertz (2005) when a plan for data treatment is developed. Warning of Hycner (1985) against using the term data analysis when engaging in a phenomenological approach has been considered. The concept of analysis involves breaking things into parts, while phenomenology is about potting parts of any experience (phenomenon) together to get a sense of the whole, to get into phenomenological “reduction.” We are looking for “the essence.” This requires getting a sense of the whole rather than of the part. Therefore, we prefer to use “explication.” Explication usually points to the process of being explicit about the constituents of the whole phenomenon. Using a popular term like analysis may be inconsistent with how the data are treated because the term analysis usually implies a process of breaking things into parts. Therefore, to avoid misleading uses of terminology, the suggestion is to use the term data explication, which Groenewald (2004) suggested. Explication usually points to the process of being explicit about the constituents of the whole phenomenon ( Hycner, 1985 ; Groenewald, 2004 ).

The Interviewing Procedure

In order to capture and explicate the essence and the structures constituting the experience encountered by the participants nine steps can be followed: (a) transcribing participants’ interviews, (b) developing a sense of the whole, (c) developing meaning units for each participant’s experience (horizontalisation), (d) clustering relevant units of meanings, (e) translating the meaning units, (f) developing textural (i.e., narrative) descriptions for each individual, (g) searching for essential structures that could express the entire textural description, (h) evaluating the textural description, and (i) synthesising the structure from all participants’ accounts. Each step is addressed in further detail in the remainder of the paper.

Transcription

After the interviews are conducted with all the participants, the interview recordings are transcribed. After having confirmed the privacy and confidentiality statements that are provided by the third-party transcribers are confirmed, verbally and by email, interviews are sent to the transcribers, and records should be deleted after the completion of the transcription process.

Developing a Sense of the Whole

Following the transcription process, the second step consists in developing a general sense for each participant’s description. This involves listening to all the recordings several times as well as reading the transcripts several times. Repeating the procedure is useful to make sure the content of the interviews is carefully approached: In fact, this process helps the investigator to become familiar with the context of the units of meaning and themes that they sought to extract in the next step. At this stage, the goal is to get a general sense of what participants had told the investigator about their experience. This sense provides a foundation for the following process of data explication. Engaging in this activity helps the investigator to switch on and keep the focus on the phenomenon itself, which appear within the descriptions of the participants.

It is essential to the phenomenological attitude to pay full attention to both the spoken and written forms of the data. Developing a sense of the wholeness and of the entirety of what everyone had expressed regarding their experience is necessary because the goal of the investigation is to find the essential meanings of the experience as encountered by the participants ( Hycner, 1985 ; Moustakas, 1994 ). Each transcript and record should be read and listened to separately and at different times. This step allows getting an overall sense of the data.

Developing Meaning Units for Each Participant’s Experience (Horizontalisation)

After transcribing the interviews, and once a general sense of the whole description of the phenomenon has been gained, it is possible to formally engage with the data treatment in order to extract the invariant meaning units and themes that constitute the experience encountered by the participants. Every statement, phrase, sentence, and paragraph in each transcript is examined to elicit statements relevant to the experience. At this stage, the attitude is to go through the transcripts with an open-minded attitude, as much as possible ( Hycner, 1985 ). This means to stay in the bracketing mode and be as descriptive as possible. Moustakas (1994) called this stage of data treatment ‘horizontalisation’, as this is where the descriptions of each individual turn to a horizon. The horizon, in the discussion of the phenomenological data treatment, refers to the context from which an experienced phenomenon could appear; it is the source that comprises the core themes and meanings of the experienced phenomenon. The notion of phenomenological ‘horizon’ has been conceptualised differently according to which philosophical perspective is adopted. For example, the term can appear in Nietzsche, Husserl, and Heidegger, wherein it has been used to refer to very different concepts ( Scott, 1988 ; Von Eckartsberg, 1989 ; Husserl and Hardy, 1999 ; Heidegger and Dahlstrom, 2005 ; Christofi and Thompson, 2007 ). Therefore, to avoid confusion around the term ‘horizon’, the term is presently substituted by the expression ‘meaning units’, as this term refers directly to what is being achieved at this stage of data explication. Invariant meaning units are the non-repetitive or overlapping statements that explicitly or implicitly capture a moment, or several moments, of what has been experienced (i.e., the texture of the experience). To develop the meaning units from the participants’ accounts, the following sub-steps come next: listing all statements relevant to the experience , and going through the list of statements by checking each statement against two criteria suggested by Moustakas (1994 , p. 121): (1) Is the statement essential for understanding the phenomenon being studied? (2) Can it be abstracted and labelled? Any statement that conforms to these criteria was included as an invariant meaning unit. The statements that did not meet these criteria—those that are repetitive, overlapping, or unclear—are eliminated.

This process is difficult as well as the most critical one ( Wertz, 1985 ) because the entire investigation depends on these units of meaning. It takes time to be confident in eliminating some statements that do not meet the relevancy requirement.

Clustering Relevant Units of Meaning Into Groups

After developing the list of relevant meaning units, it is necessary to go through them several times in the mode of imaginative variation to identify a significant theme that could be clustered as a possible unit of meaning. Turning the attention to imaginative variation is useful in examining identified meaning units reflectively, adding the dimension that allows subjective judgements. To avoid inappropriate subjective judgements, it is important to keep bracketing one’s own presuppositions to see what might possibly emerge ( Von Eckartsberg, 1972 ; Moustakas, 1994 ). However, it should be acknowledged that the researcher’s prior experience cannot be completely isolated, as the researcher must use their constituted mind ( Al-Jabri, 2011b ) to understand and to identify the emerging themes. To minimise this necessary risk, it is recommended to ask external reviewers to be independent judges and check for consistency under the themes that are selected. At this stage, each case is still being treated individually to identify the unique experience of each participant. This approach is also useful for obtaining an in-depth understanding of the data, rather than rushing into the whole. These clusters are the core themes to use in organising the invariant meaning units (here referred to as “the core themes of the experience” of the phenomenon; Moustakas, 1994 , p. 121), before revisiting them to develop the textural description of the participant’s experience. This step helps organise the textural description of the experience ( Moustakas, 1994 ).

Translating the Meaning Units

In previous stages, the data explication can be kept, as much as possible, to what is expressed by the participants. This should all be done in the primary language spoken by the participants (i.e., native language or most used language, since native language is not always the best know language—especially in individuals who grew up or were educated in a language other than the language of the family of origin) to allow participants to express their experience by using their ‘tools’ ( Vygotsky, 1962 ). This is important for getting a deeper description of the experience because language interacts with thinking and consciousness dialectically. The underlying assumption is that language, as a mediating tool, shapes participants’ experience, and it is also a result of experience, and a significant constituent of the epistemological system of a given cultural group. Furthermore, like Burkitt (2011 , p. 269), we maintain that sociocultural theory and symbolic interactionism theory promote an assumption ‘that language does not express thoughts that already exist but provides the tools to bring thoughts into existence’.

In our previous work, the preferred language during the interviews was Arabic, spoken both by the researcher and the participants. Subsequently, the interviews were translated into English to be accessible to the scientific community internationally.

Developing a Textural Description for Each Individual

The sixth step consists in constructing a description of the texture of the experience from the clustered meaning units. This step provides rich, thick descriptions of each individual’s experience. The textural description, which is by now translated in the language in which the study is conducted (if different from the language in which the participants expressed themselves during the interviews), presents what is experienced by each participant to provide this thick description, it is important to ask the following question for every invariant meaning unit: what can possibly appear as the texture of the participant’s experience?

It should be indicated that as part of the process at this stage, some of the texture can appear in different meaning units, which means there is still some repetition and/or overlapping of the meaning units that are not eliminated in the fourth step.

Searching for Essential Structures That Could Express the Entire Textural Description

After constructing textural descriptions for each participant, it is time to deploy the imaginative variation mode again to search for essential structures that could encompass the entire textural description of the participant: a possible theme that could be the essential structure of the experience of this participant—essential in the sense that the experience could not be described without this theme, or themes. At this stage, the interpretive attitude comes into play to help the investigator to identify the structure of the textual description. The interpretive attitude is important during this process because it involves deep contemplation and reflection on the textural description to capture the structural meaning.

Evaluating the Textural Description and Structural Theme of Each Participant’s Experience

Once the textural and structural descriptions are ready, we have reached the evaluation step. In this step, we suggest adopting the following criteria from phenomenological guidelines of Hycner (1985) : Do the participants agree with the identified textures and structures to represent what they had described in the interview? Did the investigator miss any other essential aspect of the participants’ experiences that the participants would like to add?

Synthesising the Structures From All the Participants’ Accounts

The final step consists in synthesising the structures of the material gathered from all participants’ accounts to ‘communicate the most general meaning of the phenomenon ( Giorgi, 1985 , p. 20). Because this activity is the final activity in terms of the data treatment, the main research question of the study must be addressed directly.

The discussion over the structures that emerge from all participants’ interviews should take the form of writing a composite summary to describe how the experienced phenomenon is seen by the participants ( Giorgi, 1985 ; Hycner, 1985 ; Van Manen, 1990 ; Moustakas, 1994 ). In this summary, it is important to concentrate on the common aspects of the experience as an essence of the phenomenon. At the same time, it is crucial not to ignore the unique and different views of the participants.

In this article, we have presented a hybrid phenomenological method embedded in qualitative analysis that we suggest should be deployed in educational research. Our analysis is relevant to those researchers interested in doing qualitative research and in those interested in adapting phenomenological investigation to understand experiences in different educational groups and social contexts, such as cross-cultural transitions, as we have shown. A phenomenological qualitative method provides a theoretical tool for educational research as it allows researchers to engage in flexible activities that can describe and help to understand complex phenomena, such as various aspects of human social experience.

Author Contributions

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the work and approved it for publication.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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