Table 2.
Comparison of transcendental and hermeneutic phenomenology
| Transcendental (descriptive) phenomenology | Hermeneutic (interpretive) phenomenology |
|
|---|---|---|
| Philosophical origins | Husserl | Heidegger Gadamer |
| Ontological assumptions | Reality is internal to the knower; what appears in their consciousness | Lived experience is an interpretive process situated in an individual’s lifeworld |
| Epistemological assumptions | Observer must separate him/herself from the world including his/her own physical being to reach the state of the transcendental I; bias-free; understands phenomena by descriptive means | Observer is part of the world and not bias free; understands phenomenon by interpretive means |
| Researcher role in data collection | Bracket researcher subjectivity during data collection and analysis | Reflects on essential themes of participant experience with the phenomenon while simultaneously reflection on own experience |
| Researcher role in data analysis/writing | Consider phenomena from different perspectives, identify units of meaning and cluster into themes to form textural description (the what of the phenomenon). Use imaginative variation to create structural (the how) description. Combine these descriptions to form the essence of the phenomenon | Iterative cycles of capturing and writing reflections towards a robust and nuanced analysis; consider how the data (or parts) contributed to evolving understanding of the phenomena (whole) |
| Methodological texts | Polkinghorne [28] Moustakas [18] Giorgi [27] |
Van Manen [12] |
| Examples | Takavol [32] | Bynum [2] |