Pros And Cons Of Phenomeology

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The current article specifically uses a subtype of qualitative research called phenomenology. This methodology is designed to capture the meaning behind a phenomena, which in this case involves encapsulating younger siblings’ perspectives on older siblings sport participation (Allen-Collinson, 2009; Dale, 1996; Englander, 2012). More specifically, these researchers employed existential phenomenology methodology. Based originally on the philosophical works of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, the amalgamation of existentialism and phenomenology brings to light a detailed and holistic description of the human experience from the perspective of the participants being interviewed (Blazo, et al., 2014; Fahlberg, Fahlberg, & Gates, 1992). When …show more content…

The unstructured interview approach, is an excellent way of creating multiple realities by giving the control of the interview over to the participants being interviewed and inviting them to tell their stories peaked by only an open-ended question. This method requires an environment in which the participants readily open up (Hill, 2001). To the credit of the current study, the interviewees did provide detailed accounts when interviewed. Additionally, as the stories are elicited by the participants own volition, they can cover a broad range of topics allows for unplanned comments and topics to come up that may have otherwise been left untouched in a more structured methodology (Kvale, 1983). However, because the responses are so gloriously open ended they are difficult to compare across different cases, and large amounts of irrelevant data must be sifted through in a time consuming manner. The benefit of qualitative phenomenological research is that while most scientific methods focus on what can be physically observed and quantitatively measured, this leaves a gapping hole in our ability to evaluate the human condition as most of what we do is determined by unseen forces in our psyches (Kvale, 1983). Therefore, open-ended phenomenology allows researchers to break the restrictive mold and attempt to discover insights into lived experience that would normally remain invisible to more traditional scientific study (Dale,

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