A phenomenological hermeneutical method for researching lived experience

Abstract

A phenomenological hermeneutical method for researching lived experienceThis study describes a phenomenological hermeneutical method for interpreting interview texts inspired by the theory of interpretation presented by Paul Ricoeur. Narrative interviews are transcribed. A naïve understanding of the text is formulated from an initial reading. The text is then divided into meaning units that are condensed and abstracted to form sub-themes, themes and possibly main themes, which are compared with the naïve understanding for validation. Lastly the text is again read as a whole, the naïve understanding and the themes are reflected on in relation to the literature about the meaning of lived experience and a comprehensive understanding is formulated. The comprehensive understanding discloses new possibilities for being in the world. This world can be described as the prefigured life world of the interviewees as configured in the interview and refigured first in the researcher's interpretation and second in the interpretation of the readers of the research report. This may help the readers refigure their own life.Keywords: phenomenological hermeneutics, interview, lived experience, method, text. Submitted 14 July 2003, Accepted 8 January 2004 Researching lived ethicsFrom time to time nurses and physicians experience ethically difficult situations in the care work. They are able to talk about them, but they are not usually able to explain their ethical thinking. This is connected with the fact that human beings live and act out of their morals, i.e. internalized norms, values and attitudes, without necessarily knowing about them. For this reason you cannot just ask people what morals they have. Often they will not be able to answer. So if you want to investigate the morals of physicians and nurses, the object of investigation is not just openly there, ready to be observed. To gain access to this 'object', you may ask the nurses and physicians to tell stories about situations involving regrettable conduct, something they have done themselves, actions they have participated in or witnessed. This question will lead to exciting stories (1, 2). The situation related often happened years previously, but the interviewee may have talked very little about it. Sometimes, the telling is accompanied by tears. Thus it is possible to collect an interesting material that reveals the morals and the ethical thinking of physicians and nurses, but of course, these morals are not explicitly spelled out. So the challenge for the researcher is to analyse the material and make the morals and the ethical thinking visible. Searching for a suitable methodIn 1989 we decided to investigate how nurses and physicians reason in ethically difficult care situations. We wanted to do research within the field of ethics. Ethics in this context means moral theory, i.e. a perspective on morals, or a moral teaching. Morals then signify the internalized norms, values, principles and attitudes we live by in relation to other people, but do not necessarily refl...

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