Session 2 –

Designing a Transcendental
Phenomenological Study
Arceli H. Rosario, PhD & Chona Ramos, PhD Candidate
Adventist International Institute of Advanced Studies (AIIAS)
Asian Qualitative Research Association (AQRA)
Silang, Cavite, Philippines
 Origins of Phenomenology
• Rooted in philosophy and psychology
• Edmund Husserl – mathematician and astronomer who embraced
philosophy to understand human beings.
• Also Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty

• Moustakas – transcendental phenomenology

• Van Manen – hermeneutic phenomenology
 Definitions –
Transcendental Phenomenology
• It “is a scientific study of the appearance of things, of phenomena
just as we see them and as they appear to us in consciousness”
(Moustakas, 1994, p. 49).
• It “studies conscious experience as experienced from the
subjective or first-person point of view” (Standford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, n.d., para. 4).
• It aims to provide descriptions of an experience, as it is
experienced freshly and purely (Brinkmann, 2018; Moustakas, 1994).
 Conscious or Lived Experience

•Conscious experiences have a unique

feature: we experience them, we live
through them or perform them (Standford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, n.d., para. 14)
 Distinctive Features
1. An emphasis on the phenomenon to be explored.
2. Exploration of this phenomenon with a group of individuals who have
all experienced the phenomenon (3-4 to 10-15).
3. A philosophical discussion.
4. Bracketing (the researcher discusses his or her experiences with the
phenomenon and partly sets them aside so that he or she can focus on
the experiences of the participants.)
5. Data collection – phenomenological interview, literature (stories,
poems) observation, documents, arts-based data
6. Data analysis – horizonalization, clustering, textural description,
structural description, and essence
 Bracketing
The challenge of the Epoche is to be transparent
to ourselves, to allow whatever is before us in
consciousness to disclose itself so that we may
see with new eyes in a naïve and completely
open manner. . . . All prior positions are put aside
(Husserl, as cited in Moustakas, 1994, p. 86).
 Central Research Questions
1. What have the participants experienced in terms of the
phenomenon. (what of the experience)
2. What contexts or situations have typically influenced the
experiences of the participants in terms of the phenomenon. (how
of the experience)
For example:
1. What are the lived experiences of teen mothers? OR What is it like
be a teen mother?
2. What are the contexts of the lived experiences of teen mothers?
 Sample RQs
Title: The Lived Experiences of Filipino Women with Breast Cancer
1. What was life like for Filipino women before the onset of breast
cancer?
2. What is the lifeworld of Filipino women who were diagnosed with
breast cancer?
3. How do Filipino women diagnosed with breast cancer view life in the
future?
 Data Sources
1. Phenomenological interview (Seidman, 1998, pp. 11-15)
First phase – Focus on past experience with the phenomenon
of interest. Participants to reconstruct their early experiences.
Second phase – Focus on the details of the experience. The
purpose is to concentrate on the concrete details of the
participants’ experience with the phenomenon.
Third phase – Description of the future
 Data Sources

2. Literature – stories, poems, etc.

3. Observation
4. Documents – participants’ diaries, posts in
social media
5. Arts-based data – drawing, aesthetic
portrayal
 Sample Interview Guide - THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF TEACHING
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
1. What deciding factors
influenced the faculty of a
selected university to
commit to the lifework of
teaching?
2. What is the lifeworld of
the faculty of a selected
university?
3. How do the faculty of a
selected 19/04/2022
university view
themselves in the future?
INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
First interview: When was the first time you realized you would like to be a teacher? How
did your realization come about? What other experiences followed that affirmed teaching is
your calling?
Second interview: (a) What dimensions (aspects or areas) intimately connected with your
being a university faculty stand out for you? (b) What incidents intimately connected with
your being a university faculty stand out for you? (c) Who are the people intimately
connected with your being a university faculty stand out for you? (d) How does being a
university faculty affect you? What changes do you associate with your being a university
faculty? (e) How does your being a university faculty affect significant others in your life? (f)
What feelings are generated by your being a university faculty? How are those feelings
generated? (g) Being a university faculty, what thoughts stand out for you? (h) Being a
university faculty, what bodily changes or states are you aware of? (i) Have you shared all
that is significant with reference to your being a university faculty? (j) If you can capture in
one or two metaphors what it is like to be a teacher, what metaphor/s will you use?
Third interview: Given what you have said about your life before you became a teacher and
given what you have said about your work now, how do you see yourself in the future?
11
 Sample Interview (Moustakas, 1994, p. 116)
1. What dimensions, incidents, and people intimately connected with the
experience stand out for you?
2. How did the experience affect you? What changes do you associate
with the experience?
3. How did the experience affect significant others in your life?
4. How feelings were generated by the experience?
5. What thoughts stood out for you?
6. What bodily changes or states were you aware of at the time?
7. Have you shared all that is significant with reference to the experience?
 Sample Interview Questions
1. What dimensions intimately connected with your retirement stand out for
you?
2. What incidents intimately connected with your retirement stand out for you?
3. Who were the people intimately connected with your retirement stand out
for you?
4. How does your retirement affect you? What changes do you associate with
your retirement?
5. How does your retirement affect significant others in your life?
6. What feelings are generated by your retirement? How are those feelings
generated?
7. What thoughts about your retirement stand out for you?
8. What bodily changes or states are you aware of now that you are retired?
9. Have you shared all that is significant with reference to your retirement?
 Sampling Strategies

1.Purposive or purposeful sampling

2.Snowball sampling
 Data Analysis
(Moustakas, 1994)

1.Horizonalization – Extracting significant

statements, putting them parallel to each
other, removing overlaps and repetitions
2.Clustering the horizons into themes
 Data Analysis
3. Writing the textural description – This is the
“what” of the experience; the textural qualities—
rough and smooth, small and large, quiet and
loud, colorful and bland, etc.; descriptions that
present varying intensities, ranges of shapes,
sizes, and spatial qualities, time references, and
colors all within an experiential context (p. 91).
 Data Analysis
4. Writing the structural description – The
context or setting that influenced how the
participants experienced the phenomenon. How
the experience of the phenomenon come to be?
What are the conditions that must exist for
something to appear? Imagine possible
structures of time, space, materiality, causality,
and relationships to self and to others. (p. 99)
 Data Analysis

5. Finding the essence – A descriptive

passage (a paragraph or two) focusing on
the common experiences of the
participants, a blend of the textural and
the structural descriptions.
Universal Structures
Universal Structures
 Sample – Textural Description
“Emerging from Depression”
(Keen, as cited in Moustakas, 1994)

• Depression is experienced as the stoppage of time, the emptiness of space, and the
reification of others. Time stops; development of myself, of situations, and of
relationships all grind to a halt. Everything appears static, dead, with no change except a
progressive deterioration like rusting or rotting. Most of all, the future seems to promise
only a dreary repetition of the past. Space is empty. There are things, but they have lost
their importance. My house, once a haven and a home, is a mere building, drained of its
echoes of vitality and love. . . . My books are dead, my tennis racquet a mere thing. And
other people—their development in time, like my own, gave the future its hope and cast
meaning into spaces and places—now are mere things, walking and talking like manikins,
mechanically echoing scripts written long ago.
 Sample – Structural Description
“Emerging from Depression” (Keen, as cited in Moustakas, 1994)
• Emerging from depression involves not the disappearance of a symptom
but the reappearance, reinvention, and rediscovery of a self with a past
and a future. My present life, which leads from the past into the future,
matters when it is part of a historical unfolding within which I can place
myself in an integral part. Having a job, being a parent, engaging in crafts,
for example, can supply such a story. In depression, these ordinary aspects
of life have been neutralized—rendered meaningless—by the death
themes of depression: the stoppage of time, the emptiness of space, and
the reification of people. The reestablishment of a future, the refurnishing
of space with significance and vitality, and the repersonification of others
are implicated in reinventing myself and emerging from depression.
 Sample – Essence
“Emerging from Depression”
(Keen, as cited in Moustakas, 1994)

• The final truth seems to be that emerging from depression is never

really complete. The work of remembering, and feeling the sadness,
must be renewed a little every day. . . .
• The sadness of memories is far preferable to the happiness of subclinical
depression, for it throws into relief the really good things in life, and
makes them shine forth. In this way, ecstasy and tragedy are two sides
of the same coin. Depression can be devastating, by having emerged, I
find that depression is enriching and enlivening as I live the reinvented
self, born in the struggle of emergence.
 Recommended Readings
Moustakas, C. (1994). Phenomenological research methods. Thousand
Oaks, CA: SAGE.
Vagle, M. D. (2014). Crafting phenomenological research. London, UK:
Routledge.
Wa-Mbaleka, S., & Rosario, A. (2022). The SAGE handbook of
qualitative research. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.