Founding Fathers
This German philosopher is considered the founder of phenomenology and coined the term "intentionality."
Edmund Husserl
This methodological approach involves setting aside assumptions and judgments about the natural world to focus purely on conscious experience.
Epoché or Phenomenological Reduction
This data collection method involves gathering detailed first-person accounts of lived experiences from participants.
Phenomenological Interviews
This field commonly uses phenomenological methods to understand patient experiences of illness, healing, and healthcare interactions
Nursing research or Healthcare research
This common critique argues that phenomenological researchers cannot completely bracket their presuppositions and biases.
Impossibility of complete reduction or the problem of researcher subjectivity
This French philosopher developed existential phenomenology and wrote "Being and Nothingness."
Jean-Paul Sartre
This term describes the directedness of consciousness, meaning consciousness is always consciousness "of" something.
Intentionality
This analytical approach focuses on understanding the meaning structures of lived experiences rather than explaining causal relationships.
Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) or Hermeneutic Phenomenology
This area of study employs phenomenology to explore learning experiences, student perceptions, and educational meaning-making
Educational research or Pedagogy research
This challenge involves determining how many participants are needed to adequately capture the essence of a phenomenon.
Sample size determination or Achieving saturation
Known for "Being and Time," this philosopher focused on Dasein and the experience of being-in-the-world.
Martin Heidegger
This concept refers to the lived, pre-reflective world of everyday experience before scientific analysis.
Lifeworld (Lebenswelt)
This sample size principle suggests that data collection continues until no new themes or insights emerge from additional participants
Theoretical Saturation
Phenomenological approaches in this field examine lived experiences of mental health, therapy relationships, and psychological phenomena.
Psychology or Psychotherapy research
This validity concerns questions whether phenomenological findings can be transferred or applied beyond the specific study context.
Transferability or Generalizability
This French phenomenologist emphasized embodied experience and wrote "Phenomenology of Perception."
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
This process involves returning to the "things themselves" by examining phenomena as they appear to consciousness without theoretical presuppositions
Phenomenological Description
This validation technique involves returning findings to participants to verify that interpretations accurately capture their lived experiences.
Member Checking or Participant Validation
This interdisciplinary field uses phenomenological methods to understand user experiences, technology adoption, and human-computer interaction.
Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) or User Experience research
This methodological tension involves balancing faithful description of participant experiences with interpretive analysis and theoretical insights.
The description versus interpretation dilemma
Author of "The Structure of Behavior" and pioneer in applying phenomenology to psychology, known for work on lived experience.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Alternative: Amedeo Giorgi)
This refers to the invariant structures of experience that remain constant across different instances of a phenomenon.
Essential Structures or Essences (Eidos)
This systematic approach involves identifying meaning units, clustering themes, and developing structural and textural descriptions of the phenomenon.
Moustakas Method or Colaizzi's Method
This emerging area applies phenomenological inquiry to understand organizational culture, workplace experiences, and professional identity formation
Organizational Phenomenology or Workplace Studies
This ethical consideration involves protecting participant privacy while providing rich, detailed descriptions necessary for phenomenological authenticity.
Confidentiality versus thick description tension