Q2.

Summarizing on the “Phenomenology” and “Ethnographic research”

1. Phenomenological Approach
Phenomenology is focused on the common results of findings based on the
participants’ experiences of a concept or a phenomenon. Phenomenology is a
qualitative research approach that focuses on describing the universal essence of
a phenomenon as experienced by a group of individuals who have all experienced
the phenomenon. The interviewer collects data from persons who have
experienced the phenomenon. The goal is to develop an aggregated description
of the essence of the experience for all of the individuals. Consisting of “what is
their experience” and “how they experienced it”. According to the German
mathematician Edmund Husserl, phenomenology has a strong philosophical
component and it is the study of the lived experience of persons and the view on
these experiences which are conscious ones or not. It is the approach without
presuppositions until researchers found a certain basis. The reality of an object is
only perceived within the meaning of the experience of an individual. A
phenomenologist would be missing not to discuss any presuppositions of
phenomenology along with the methods in this form of inquiry. It emphasizes a
phenomenon to be explored with a single concept or idea, for example, the
educational idea of “professional growth,” the psychological concept of “grief,” or
the health idea of a “caring relationship.”
A philosophical discussion of the study revealed the lived experiences of
individuals and how they have both subjective experiences of the phenomenon
and objective experiences of something in common with other people, so,
phenomenology lies between qualitative and quantitative research. There are two
types of phenomenology: hermeneutical phenomenology (Van Manen)- the
researcher writes a description of the phenomenon by connecting with the topic
of inquiry and adjusting with the whole writing. Phenomenology is not only a
description, but it is also an interpretive process in which the researcher
interprets the facts of the lived experiences. Transcendental or psychological
phenomenology (Moustakas)- less focused on the interpretation of the
researcher and more describe the experience of participants and set aside their
experience as much as possible. The investigators take a fresh perspective of the
phenomenon under only examination bracketing the investigators' experiences
(Husserl’s epoche).
When the research uses the phenomenological approach, it is important to
understand well about the several individuals’ common or shared experience of a
phenomenon to develop practices, solutions, policies or fundamental causes of it.
Data will be collected from the individuals who have experienced the
phenomenon with in-depth and multiple interviews with participants. The
researchers should interview from 5 to 25 individuals who have all experienced
the phenomenon (Polkinghorne,1989). Other forms of data can be collected from
other sources like observations, journals or etc.
This research can be conducted when the researcher desires to investigate the
common experience of the event in order to develop necessary solutions, policies
or practices by understanding deeply about the real features of that event.The
researchers need to ask two broad questions to the participants: What have you
experienced in terms of the phenomenon? What contexts or situations have
typically influenced or affected your experiences of the phenomenon? and other
open-ended questions also. But these two, especially, focus attention on
gathering data that will lead to a textual (what participants experienced) and
structural (how they experienced it in terms of the conditions, situations, or
context) description of the experiences, and they will ultimately provide an
understanding of the common experiences of the participants.
The participants need to be selected carefully to be sure they have experience of
the phenomenon in question so that the researcher could build a common
understanding. The phenomenon also needs to be understood by interviewing
several experienced participants because these common experiences may be
important for some groups such as therapists, health personnel and policy
makers. There are some difficulties in taking out from my own experience the
reason why the researchers need to interpret the data with some assumptions for
their study.
 2. Ethnographic research
Ethnographic research is qualitative research that involves studying the social
behaviors of an identifiable group of people. The researcher looks for patterns of
the group’s mental and material activities, such as their ideas and beliefs
expressed through language, or how they behave within the group as expressed
through their actions observed by the researcher(Fetterman,2010). The goal is to
understand the culture and social organization of the group being studied. The
researchers study the interaction, action of the individuals in their society. The
ethnography involves extended observations of the group, most often through
participant observation, in which the researcher is immersed in the day-to-day
lives of the people and observes and interviews the group participants, meaning
that researchers do their observation not only doing interviews but also
investigate the participants’ daily lives.
Wolcott said that ethnography is not the study of a culture, but a study of the
social behaviors of an identifiable group of people. The ethnographers start based
on the theory and explain what is going to be found with some understanding of
beliefs or ideas or by using some theories to observe how individuals in the
culture-sharing group behave. The researcher finds participants’ view as an
insider emic perspective and then analyzes the data they found through the etic
scientific perspective to develop an overall cultural interpretation.
There are many forms of ethnography, among them, realist ethnography is the
type of objective research which is written from the third-person point of view
and reports the information objectively from the participants. The participants’
views are described within the quotations and the researcher interprets about the
culture of the studied groups. The next approach is the critical ethnography
which is used while the individuals of the groups are marginalized according to
the classes, racial or gender discriminations in order to advocate the equality for
the marginalized people in society. Therefore, the critical researchers do their
work for political issues concerned with inequality and domination. For example,
critical ethnographers study schools which provide privileges to certain types of
students or counseling practices that neglect the needs of underrepresented
groups. By doing research with this approach, the researcher would have the
answer of what people in this setting have to know and do to make this system
work.

In the ethnographic research, both realist and critical approaches are included
because when the researcher chose a cultural-sharing group where they may
have the same behaviors, attitudes, beliefs and there would also have some
marginalized people by the society by investigating their behaviors.
Therefore, if the researcher is going to find beliefs, behaviors , facing issues such
as power, resistance and dominance, this approach can be used but the
researcher needs to have enough understanding of cultural anthropology, social-
cultural system, and the concepts typically explored by those studying cultures.
This type of research needs to be given enough time to collect data in the field
since it needs to examine the group nature and behavior in their society. The
researcher should have the ability to investigate deeply the needs of individuals
and must assess and document any effects of the study in the research fields.