Hermeneutic phenomenology is an approach traditionally used in nursing and health but which is now seeing more pick up in other human-centred disciplines including pyschology, education and sociology. It explores individuals' lived experience and considers how this can be used to understand motivation and engagement. Many of the books in this space are extremely dense and focus on the philosophy and theory rather than applied practice. They also tend to be self-referential and inward facing; they do not try to make the field accessible to new researchers and students. This book is designed to be used by MA and PhD students as well as by early career academics who need an easy introduction to best practice. The authors set out the advantages and disadvantages of the methodology using real world (published) case studies. The book carefully combines philosophy, methodology and method. The key philosophers of phenomenology are presented and explored, and the translation of philosophy into research theory is explained by experienced hermeneutic phenomenological researchers. They then demonstrate explicit ways in which the methodology underpins researchers' choices and how this is translated when designing hermeneutic studies. The book is structured around the research process with chapters mapping each step from design all the way through to dissemination. It will take students step-by-step through their research projects as well as helping them to critique their own work and research output from other scholars. There has been a resurgence in publishing hermeneutic phenomenological titles with three new competitor titles publishing in recent years. One of these titles ties theory to practice but it is still very philosophical and is not a teaching text - the author includes high level discussions of complex research and assumes significant prior knowledge. We don't have much in this space, there is an Inc title Cohen et al. Hermeneutic Phenomenological Research (2000), and several books with chapters covering this topic. The proposed book is much more focused than Smith's Interpretative Phenomenological bestseller but it fills a gap in our coverage.

Being Ethical

  • Philosophical Underpinnings 68
  • Being an Ethical Researcher 68
  • Ethical Considerations Throughout a Hermeneutic Study 71
    • The ethics of research competency 71
    • The ethics of who we are as-researcher 72
    • Insider versus outsider research 73
    • Recruiting participants 75
    • Gatekeeping 77
    • Respecting participants’ space 80
    • Anonymity and confidentiality 82
    • Being vulnerable 85
    • Being an ethical hermeneutic researcher 87
  • Further Resources 89
  • Part II Summary 90

Chapter Overview

This chapter unpacks the ethical considerations of undertaking hermeneutic phenomenological research. In hermeneutic phenomenology, the aim is to gain insight into and reveal meaning of a given phenomenon, as understood through the account of the experiencing person. To gain this insight, it is necessary to have human participants or a text representing human experience in the world. Once we consider engaging with human participants and participants engage with our studies, there ...

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