Phenomenology is an umbrella term encompassing both a philosophical movement and a range of research approaches. The phenomenological movement was initiated by Husserl (1936/1970) as a radically new way of doing philosophy. Later theorists, such as Heidegger (1927/1962), have recast the phenomenological project, moving away from a philosophical discipline which focuses on consciousness and essences of phenomena towards elaborating existential and hermeneutic (interpretive) dimensions.

Applied to research, phenomenology is the study of phenomena: their nature and meanings. The focus is on the way things appear to us through experience or in our consciousness. The phenomenological researcher aims to provide a rich textured description of lived experience. Phenomenology asks, “What is this kind of experience like?” “How does the lived world present itself to me?” The challenge for phenomenological researchers is twofold: how to help participants express their world as directly as possible; and how to explicate these dimensions such that the lived world – the life world - is revealed.

Phenomenological researchers generally agree that our central concern is to return to embodied, experiential meanings aiming for fresh, complex, rich description of a phenomenon as it is concretely lived. Yet debates abound when it comes to deciding how best to carry out this phenomenological research in practice. Confusions about what constitutes appropriate phenomenological research makes our field difficult for novices to access. Six particular questions are contested: i. How tightly or loosely should we define what counts as ‘phenomenology’? ii. Should we always aim to produce a general (normative) description of the phenomenon or is idiographic analysis a legitimate aim? iii. To what extent should interpretation be involved in our descriptions? iv. Should we set aside or foreground researcher subjectivity? v. Should phenomenology be more ‘science’ than ‘art’? vi. Is phenomenology a modernist or post-modernist project or neither?

Further details about phenomenological research (key concepts, variants, data gathering/analysis) are given below in the paper 'Introducing phenomenological research'. A more indepth analysis of the methodological and epistemological issues at stake are offered in the paper titled 'Debating phenomenological research methods'.

Introducing phenomenological research (Word document format)

The problem and hope of phenomenology (Word document format)

Debating phenomenological research methods (Word document format)

relational dimensions in phenomenological research (Word document format)

The phenomenological attitude - performing the reduction (Word document format)

Download Article on The reduction and reflexivity JPP (Word document format)