Phenomenology, with analytic philosophy, is an overarching concept characterizing philosophical field of the 20th century. As the birth of phenomenology is ascribed to the sense of crisis to modem sciences, a turn to phenomenological study in nursing science is based on the thorough reflection about the fallacies and limitations of positivistic research method. As a result, phenomenological study has become one of the most widely used and preferred by researchers in these days among qualitative research methods.
Phenomenology in nursing science enables us to clarify the meaning of human action which has been ignored and even excluded by intention. In addition, it provides us with comprehensive understanding of meta-paradigm in nursing and allows us to affirm the intersubjective relation between nurse and the nursing object.
The origin of phenomenology dates back to transcendental philosophy of Edmund Husserl, a German philosopher. It has made progress by the efforts of M Merleau-Ponty, M Heidegger and Jean P. Sate. A set of core concepts of phenomenological study includes phenomenon, intentionality, essential intuition, and epoche (or bracketing) and intersubjectivity.
The procedure of phenomenological study, by and large, can be divided into three phases. Researcher´s preparation phase involves intension to research phenomenon, formation of research questions, and researcher´s assumption and pre-understanding. In data collection phase, research participants are selected, literature investigation is carried out, and data are gathered through interview with participants. In this phase, researcher should take his/her own research into ethical consideration. Data analysis is carried out simultaneously with data collection. Analysis phase is rather differently accounted for by scholars.
It should be noted that since qualitative study is very different from the quantitative one in its philosophical background, methodological foundation and research objective, researcher should draw a sharp line between the qualitative evaluation criteria on research and quantitative ones. Evaluation criteria on qualitative study somewhat vary with each scholar´s own perspective
|