Doing Heideggerian Hermeneutic Research a Discussion Paper Text

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[email protected] much has been published related to the epistemology of heideggerian hermeneutic research. The authors of this paper shared their experiences with the primary author towards articulating the process of 'doing' such research. The authors all have long experience with heideggerian hermeneutic research and meet regularly at the institute for interpretive phenomenology. They supervise student's research and are mindful of the process of coming to understand how to work in a phenomenological/hermeneutic manner. First the section on philosophical underpinnings was written by the primary author and then shared with all authors. There was published data related to the experience of three of the participants already available. This provided a spring board to further conversations when the primary author visited america, able to engage in daily conversations with three of the co authors.

In the spirit of phenomenology this paper represents a process of reading, talking, writing, talking, reading, re writing, re talking and so forth. The process of doing hermeneutic phenomenology is represented as a journey of 'thinking' in which researchers are caught up in a cycle of reading writing dialogue which spirals onwards. The researcher is always open to questions, and to following a felt sense of what needs to happen next. However, it is not a process of 'do whatever you like' but rather a very attentive attunement to 'thinking' and listening to how the texts speak. This paper argues that alongside a disciplined understanding of the methodology, both researcher and reader need to share a commitment to 'thinking' which is willing to question, and open to trusting the resonance of understanding that 'comes' without expecting answers that are declared 'truth' for all time. This article x02019 s main objective is to demonstrate that data analysis, including quantitative data analysis, is a process of interpretation involving basic hermeneutic principles that philosophers have identified in the interpretive process as applied to other, mainly literary, creations. Such principles include a version of the hermeneutic circle, an insistence on interpretive presuppositions, and a resistance to reducing the discovery of truth to the application of inductive methods.

The importance of interpretation becomes especially evident when qualitative and quantitative methods are combined in a single clinical research project and when the data being analyzed are longitudinal. Study objectives will be accomplished by showing that three major hermeneutic principles make practical methodological contributions to an insightful, illustrative mixed methods analysis of a qualitative study of changes in functional disability over time embedded in the precipitating events project x02014 a major longitudinal, quantitative study of functional disability among older persons. Mixed methods, especially as shaped by hermeneutic insights such as the importance of empathetic understanding, are potentially valuable resources for scientific investigations of the experience of aging: a practical aim of this article is to articulate and demonstrate this contention. keywords: mixed methods, hermeneutics, longitudinal data analysis, aging mixed methods are increasingly being used in a wide variety of research areas, including clinical biomedical research.

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With this variety of applications comes a pluralism of philosophical orientations that inform and justify particular mixed methods projects. For instance, the widely used x0201c grounded theory x0201d approach to qualitative data analysis of glaser and strauss strauss x026 corbin, 1998 shows the influence of american pragmatist philosophers and their writings about logical inquiry dewey, 1938/2008 peirce, 1877 x02013 1878/1998 . Continental phenomenology husserl, 1931/1991 , with its descriptive attention x0201c to the things themselves, x0201d has especially influenced psychologists doing mixed methods research moustakas, 1994 .

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Philosophical hermeneutics, the philosophical tradition most influential for this study, has also been recognized as a relevant resource miles x026 huberman, 1994 . What makes philosophical hermeneutics distinctive as a type of philosophy, and valuable for qualitative research, is its focus on the insightful strategies people use to understand written texts these strategies are described, generalized, and used to understand other types of human cultural activities. What all these philosophical approaches have in common is a rejection of the positivist program for social scientific research such as was advocated by john stuart mill in the final book of his, system of logic mill, 1872/1987 . According to mill, researchers studying human beings should follow the same methods as have proved successful in physics and other natural sciences. He had high hopes for the predictive power of statistical methods analyzing human agents and relationships mill, 1872/1987 .

He wrote, however, prior to the development of the coefficient of determination and other statistics that allow quantitative researchers to know how much outcome variability they actually account for in their statistical models. Using such statistical resources, mill x02019 s high expectations can be demonstrated to be unrealistic for most behavioral and clinical research. This article x02019 s main objective is to show that data analysis, including quantitative data analysis, is a process of interpretation involving basic hermeneutic principles that philosophers have identified in the interpretive process as applied to other, mainly literary, creations. Among these principles are a version of the hermeneutic circle, an insistence on interpretive presuppositions, and a resistance to reducing the discovery of truth to the application of inductive methods table 1 .

Related objectives are to indicate how this rich conception of interpretation becomes especially evident when qualitative and quantitative methods are combined in a single clinical research project and when the data being analyzed are longitudinal. It will be argued that the element on empathetic understanding that is characteristic of the conception of interpretation featured here gains importance when study results consist of changes in functional health outcomes over time at the end of life. Positivist approaches to scientific research accord little importance to interpretation informed by empathetic understanding. Mixed methods, especially as shaped by hermeneutic insights, can incorporate aspects of this type of understanding, and this makes them potentially valuable resources for scientific investigations of the experience of aging: a practical aim of this article is to articulate and demonstrate this contention. Doi: 10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2007.09.005 much has been published related to the epistemology of heideggerian hermeneutic research.

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