Difficulties Encountered in the Application of the Phenomenological Method in the Social Sciences

2008

287 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract While it is heartening to see that more researchers in the field of the social sciences are using some version of the phenomenological method, it is also disappointing to see that very often some of the steps employed do not follow phenomenological logic. In this paper, several dissertations are reviewed in order to point out some of the difficulties that are encountered in attempting to use some version of the phenomenological method. Difficulties encountered centred on the phenomenological reduction, the use of imaginative variation and the feedback to subjects.

Subfields: Education

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6ed42f91bbdb4e0d04cd80ae1e1b0e678b21bd82

Citations in the corpus

• Phenomenology and the Practice of Science (2010, background): “I (Giorgi, 2006a; 2006b) have argued this point many times so I will be brief here.”
• Hermeneutic Phenomenology in Education: Method and Practice (2012, methodology): “As he puts it: “At least three participants are included because a sufficient number of variations are needed in order to come up with a typical essence” (Giorgi, 2008a, p. 37).”
• Phenomenological Psychological Research as Science (2012, background): “An adequately precise and limited focus is a precondition of research, because, as Giorgi (2006) has noted, “the data will always be richer than the perspective brought to it but it is the latter that makes the analysis feasible” (p. 354).”