Studies in Higher Education

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Achieving Empathy and Engagement: A practical

approach to the design, conduct and reporting of
phenomenographic research

Peter Ashworth & Ursula Lucas

To cite this article: Peter Ashworth & Ursula Lucas (2000) Achieving Empathy and Engagement: A
practical approach to the design, conduct and reporting of phenomenographic research, Studies in
Higher Education, 25:3, 295-308, DOI: 10.1080/713696153

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Studies in Higher Education Volume 25, No. 3, 2000

Achieving Empathy and

Engagement: a practical approach
to the design, conduct and
reporting of phenomenographic
research
PETER ASHWORTH
Shef® eld Hallam University, UK

URSULA LUCAS
University of the West of England, UK

ABSTRACT Phenomenography is a methodology which has been quietly in¯ uential in research on
higher education, having been the basis of many studies of approaches to learning and student
understandings of a wide range of concepts in a variety of disciplines. There is a need to clarify
important aspects of the methodology so that it can be used with increasing effectiveness. This article
seeks to contribute to the discussion and clari® cation of the phenomenographic research approach in
two ways. Firstly, it is argued that phenomenography would bene® t from a more rigorous consider-
ation of how to engage with the student’ s lived experience. Secondly, drawing on that discussion, the
article sets out a series of guidelines for the conduct of phenomenographic research, and demonstrates
how these might be achieved in practice by drawing on the experience of two higher education research
studies: one into students’ experiences of cheating and the other into lecturers’ and students’
experiences of the teaching and learning of accounting.

Introduction
Phenomenography (Marton, e.g. 1981) has emerged as an internationally valued educational
research method since the 1970s. It originally developed out of investigations into students’
experiences of learning (in particular, their approaches to learning), and has extended into
the investigation of how students understand disciplinary concepts and how lecturers experi-
ence their teaching. It seeks to identify the qualitatively different ways in which individuals
experience such aspects of their world as teaching, learning or the meaning of disciplinary
concepts. Among its successes are the demonstration that variations in the approaches of
students to learning are linked with certain types of learning outcome (Ramsden, 1992). As
a research approach within higher education, it has been very in¯ uential. The widespread
acceptance that students’ learning is in¯ uenced by the wider context has led to a growing
recognition that it may be possible to alter teaching and learning in order to improve the
quality of learning outcomes. As Prosser & Trigwell (1999, p. 92) point out, work adopting

ISSN 0307-507 9 print; ISSN 1470-174X online/00/030295-1 4 Ó 2000 Society for Research into Higher Education
296 P. Ashworth & U. Lucas

this stance not only has a major place in the scholarly and professional literature of higher
education, but has in¯ uenced national programmes of reform.
Wide-ranging discussion of the nature of the phenomenographic research approach has
taken place through, for example, the Maryville (Bowden, 1986) and Warburton (Bowden &
Walsh, 1994) symposia, the journal Nordisk Pedagogik and, most recently, in a special issue
of the journal Higher Education Research & Development (1997; 16[2]) dedicated to phe-
nomenography. Discussion of phenomenography’ s epistemological foundations occurred in a
number of articles from 1981 onwards. These contributed to the articulation of phenomenog-
raphy as a coherent research approach (Marton, 1981, 1994; Svensson & Theman, 1983;
Johansson et al. 1985; SaÈljoÈ, 1988; Prosser, 1993; Marton & Booth, 1997). However, most
of these articles concentrate on the broad aims of phenomenography and lack detail about
how it is carried out in practice. In parallel to this tendency at the level of theory, reports of
empirical research tend to cover the outcome of phenomenographic research, but there is
relatively little detail about the research process itself. Yet, of course, the process by which the
research is conducted is of key importance in terms of determining whether the outcomes are
ontologically defensible and epistemologically valid.
Not only is there relatively little detail about the research process, but there are also
indications of distinct variations in method (Bowden, 1994). Entwistle (1997) states:

Some qualitative research, claiming to be phenomenographic, has been conducted

without the necessary rigour, either in design or analysis. One of the reasons for
that, however, may be the lack of precise descriptions of what is necessarily involved
in phenomenography. The practical details of the research procedures used in
identifying categories were not explained suf® ciently fully in the early publications
to allow other researchers to ensure the quality of their own methods. And still the
path from interviews through inference to categories can be dif® cult to follow,
leaving the ® ndings unconvincing. It is thus quite a challenge for researchers coming
fresh to the ® eld to see, and utilise effectively, the crucial strengths of the approach.
(p. 128)

This article seeks to contribute to the discussion and clari® cation of the phenomenographic
approach in two ways. Firstly, we argue that phenomenography would bene® t from a more
rigorous consideration of how to engage with the student’ s lifeworld. In particular, we suggest
that more attention should be paid to the processes of empathy and setting aside of
presuppositions (`bracketing’ ). Secondly, based on that discussion, we propose a series of
guidelines for the conduct of phenomenographic research and draw on the experience of two
research studies to illustrate their practical implications. (Although this paper will refer to the
student, its discussion applies to any research participant.)

The Problem: entering into the student’s lifeworld

Phenomenography emerged from educational research carried out in Sweden in the late
1960s and early 1970s, which had the objective of seeing the world from the student’ s
perspective. Thus, phenomenography is:

the empirical study of the limited number of qualitatively different ways in which
various phenomena in, and aspects of, the world around us are experienced,
conceptualized, understood, perceived and apprehended. (Marton 1994, p. 4424)

Marton (1981) refers to this focus on re¯ ected-on experience as the `second-order’ perspective.
 Phenomenographic Research 297

The aim of phenomenography is to take these differing experiences, understandings, and

characterise them:
in terms of `categories of description’ , logically related to each other, and forming
hierarchies in relation to given criteria. Such an ordered set of categories of
description is called the `outcome space’ of the phenomenon concept in question.
(Marton, 1994 p. 4424)
Latterly, Marton has referred to phenomenography as ascertaining structures of awareness
(Marton & Booth, 1997).

The Need to `Bracket’

The categories of description must depend upon an earlier evocation of students’ very own
descriptions of their relevant experience. It is, therefore, a paramount requirement for
phenomenography to be sensitive to the individuality of conceptions of the worldÐ it must be
grounded in the lived experience of its research participants. Without this, the descriptions of
students’ experience will be unsound and the categories of description will be arbitrary. Yet,
research procedures for revealing student experience are not clearly stipulated within the
literature of phenomenography. The term we shall use in this article, which indicates a central
methodological requirement for achieving understanding of the student experience, `bracket-
ing’ , refers to the need for the researcher to set aside his or her own assumptions, so far as
is possible, in order to register the student’ s own point of view (Ashworth, 1999).
Marton (1994) does mention the importance of `bracketing’ of presuppositions in
phenomenography:
It is the researcher who is supposed to bracket preconceived ideas. Instead of
judging to what extent the responses re¯ ect an understanding of the phenomenon
in question which is similar to their own, he or she is supposed to focus on similaritie s
and differences between the ways in which the phenomenon appears to the partici-
pants (p. 4428, emphasis added)
But, in practice, phenomenographic researchers have had little to say about what is involved
in bracketing (Ashworth & Lucas, 1998).
However, phenomenographers can bene® t from the wealth of methodological re¯ ection
on how the researcher is best to enter the lifeworld of research participants which phenomeno-
logical research has built up, regardless of whether they acknowledge a basis in phenomeno-
logical thought. In particular, this work contains guidance on key presuppositions which
should be bracketed. (It should be noted that there remain some presuppositions that are not
bracketed: the assumption of a shared topic, the possibility of conversing and the possibility
of expression of experience through conversing [Ashworth 1996].) These have been sum-
marised by Ashworth & Lucas (1998) and are listed below.
It must be emphasised that the following is a pragmatically-oriented list, indicating some
of the kinds of presupposition that the educational researcher should recognise as hazarding
the aim of engaging with the experience of the student. We do not deny that to expect a total
expunging of these presuppositions is a counsel of perfection. And we certainly do not
advocate here the possibility of some kind of philosophically absolute `presuppositionlessness’
(cf. Ashworth, 1996). No, but the issue is this: it is the student’s experienced world that
phenomenographic research bases itself on, and therefore steps must be takenÐ at the
beginning and throughout the researchÐ to bracket anything that would lead us from the
student’ s experience.
298 P. Ashworth & U. Lucas

Some kinds of presupposition that must be bracketed are:

· importing earlier research ® ndings;
· assuming pre-given theoretical structures or particular interpretations;
· presupposing the investigator’ s personal knowledge and belief;
· assuming, prior to acquaintance with the nature of the experience itself, speci® c research
techniques. Assumptions built into the techniques (such as the assumptions of rating
scales) tend to bend the data found using those techniques to a particular form, which may
be incommensurate with the aim of securing clarity concerning student experience;
· the researcher’ s concern to uncover the `cause’ of certain forms of student experience.
Doubtless the research participant’ s assumptions about the `causes’ of their experience
(which have no bearing on the question of the `real cause’ of the experience) might be
a valuable aspect of the meaning of the experience for them, and should be carefully
heard by the researcher. Yet, it would be a distortion to import researcher’ s notions of
cause-and-effect into the description of the experience.

The foregoing are examples of assumptions which threaten to tempt the researcher away from
careful listening. It is the research participant’ s experience which should be revealed, not the
researcher’ s expectations.

Bracketing Categories of Description

One speci® c implication of the preceding list of presuppositions which require bracketing has
a particular bearing on the work of phenomenographers. Restraint is required in actualising
the phenomenographical goal of producing categories of description. The aim of phenomeno-
graphic research is to arrive at a structure within which the various student conceptualisations
of the relevant concept are ® tted: a structure of categories of description. However, an anxiety
arises thatÐ unless this goal is bracketed during those stages of the research which are
concerned to uncover student conceptionsÐ it threatens to subvert entry into the actual
student lifeworld. It is possible that the researcher may move too quickly from the data to an
attempt to structure the data. This attempt to structure may change the way that the
researcher views the data. Walsh (1994) points out that there is:
an inevitable tension between being faithful to the data and at the same time
creating, from the point of view of the researcher, a tidy construction that is useful
for some further explanatory or educational purpose. (p. 19)

This may result in aspects of the data being disregarded. For example, a researcher talks
about their experience:

Well ¼ one or two [interviewees] talked a lot about their teaching in affective terms
and we couldn’ t somehow get that notion into our categories and maintain this
relation. Now maybe with a lot more work we could’ ve evolved a set of related
categories in which some of these affective ideas could’ ve got into it but we couldn’ t
¼ so we’ ve left that out now ¼ Now you might have actually left them in ¼ and
end up with not such a ¼ nicely related set of categories. (Walsh, 1994, p. 24)

What is the Phenomenon to be Studied?

We are to set aside presuppositions which would deleteriously affect our hearing of the
student’ s experience. However, the topic for investigation in the research has to be formu-
 Phenomenographic Research 299

lated somehow in the researcher’ s mind, and the research interviews have to be introduced
to the interviewee as being `about’ something. So there is a necessary presupposition
concerning the starting point of research. The researcher and researched must begin with
some kind of (super® cially) shared topic, verbalised in terms which they both recognise as
meaningful. If we tried to bracket this, the conversation would be directionless. It seems that
we cannot suspend our commitment to certain guiding notions. But we must hold these
tentatively lest they subvert the very aim of entering the lifeworld.
In particular, additionally, one should be cautious when disciplinary conceptions are the
object of study, as they often are in phenomenographic research. Clearly, given that research
may be motivated by the desire to investigate an area of student dif® culty, it may make sense
to select certain key disciplinary concepts as the subject for research. However, it cannot be
taken for granted that the identi® cation of key concepts is unproblematic. The key concepts
of a discipline are not always plain to `experts’ and the researcher can certainly not assume
that the selected concepts will form the taken-for-granted basis of conversation with students.
Indeed, an unforeseen (and welcome) outcome of phenomenographic research may be that
it casts a new light on what constitutes a key concept and the nature of that concept.

Is `Bracketing’ Possible?Ð the need for empathy

The attempt to bracket will only be partially successful. Some ways of viewing the world are
likely to be more dif® cult to set aside than others. Thus, it is of practical importance to
consider how personal views and beliefs can be set aside. What personal steps can the
researchers take to open themselves up to the student’ s experience?
We would argue that the achievement of empathy with the experience of the student can
greatly assist the process of bracketing (Karlsson, 1993). Empathy requires a detachment
from the researcher’ s lifeworld and a opening up to the lifeworld of the student. For instance,
views and factual claims which the student expresses in an interview may well be regarded by
the researcher as quite erroneous. The temptation would be to marginalise such material. But
the researcher who adopts an attitude of empathy with the student should ® nd such views and
factual claims of immense interest (cf. Wertz, 1983). The researcher begins to be taken up with
questions such as: what does the espousal of such notions mean; what does it say about the
student’ s experience? Does it merely mean that the student is unclear, foggy, and uncertain
on this area of experience? Or is there a more developed set of student perceptions and
conceptualisations here, such that the world looks very different for the student than for the
researcher? Empathy in this context involves imaginative engagement with the world that is
being described by the student.
The discussion so far has identi® ed two key issues for phenomenographic research
practice: the need to bracket presuppositions (in particular, setting aside initially the objective
of producing categories of description and presuppositions about the precise `thing’ being
studied), and to develop empathy. The precise wording of the viewpoint we are expressing
here is, of course, open to debate. For instance, a logician might worry whether one could set
aside presuppositions about the nature of the experience being studied, and yet detect the fact
that the student’ s description has some surprising element which deserves further probing.
Plainly, there is some kind of dialectical process involved. We want, however, to go beyond
questions of tight methodological logic in order to insist that entry into the other’ s lifeworld
is a dif® cult practical matter, which requires setting aside our own assumptions in order to
hear what is said, and to adopt an imaginative and empathic attitude in order to approach the
understanding of the student’ s meaning. So, we do not wish to claim a tight logic, but rather
to point to ways in which issues relating to the dif® cult task of entering the student’ s lifeworld
300 P. Ashworth & U. Lucas

can be addressed during the process of phenomenographic research. The following section
suggests some practical guidelines that will support the researcher in addressing these issues.

Practical Guidelines for the Conduct of Phenomenographic Research

Guidelines for the conduct of phenomenographic research which attempt to deal with the
issues raised in the previous section are set out as follows. These take into account the need
to bracket presuppositions and to develop an empathic understanding of the lifeworld of the
student.
1. The researcher should tentatively identify the broad objectives of the research study, the
phenomenon under investigation, recognising that the meaning of this area may be quite
different for the research participant.
2. The selection of participants should avoid presuppositions about the nature of the
phenomenon or the nature of conceptions held by particular `types’ of individual while
observing common-sense precautions about maintaining `variety’ of experience.
3. The most appropriate means of obtaining an account should be identi® ed, allowing
maximum freedom for the research participant to describe their experience.
4. In obtaining experiential accounts the participant should be given the maximum oppor-
tunity to re¯ ect, and the questions posed should not be based on researcher presumptions
about the phenomenon or the participant, but should emerge out of the interest to make
clear their experience
5. The researcher’ s interviewing skills should be subject to an ongoing review and changes
made to interview practice if necessary. For instance, stylistic traits which tend to foreclose
description should be minimised.
6. The transcription of the interview should be aimed at accurately re¯ ecting the emotions
and emphases of the participant.
7. The analysis should continue to be aware of the importation of presuppositions, and be
carried out with the maximum exercise of empathic understanding.
8. Analysis should avoid premature closure for the sake of producing logically and
hierarchically-relate d categories of description.
9. The process of analysis should be suf® ciently clearly described to allow the reader to
evaluate the attempt to achieve bracketing and empathy and trace the process by which
® ndings have emerged.
To illustrate what is involved in these guidelines, this section will now discuss practical
implementation issues by reference to two research studies: one into students’ experiences of
cheating (Ashworth et al., 1997), and one into lecturers’ and students’ experiences of the
teaching and learning of accounting (Lucas, 1998, 1999 and forthcoming). The study of
cheating was not carried out using phenomenography, and some speci® c issues connected
with bracketing in the phenomenological methodology that was used have been reported
elsewhere (Ashworth, 1999). Nevertheless, the study provides valuable illustrations of some
of the practicalities which we wish to review here, especially when taken together with the
work on accounting.
1. The researcher should tentatively identify the broad objectives of the research study, the phenom-
enon under investigation, recognising that the meaning of this area may be quite different for the
research participant.
Phenomenographic research has varied in the extent to which it has taken an `open’ view of
the phenomenon to be studied. Sometimes phenomenographic research will explicitly make
 Phenomenographic Research 301

assumptions about what the phenomenon under investigation is, and the categories of
description to be used. For example, at one extreme, much phenomenographic research has
been replicatory in nature. Several studies into student conceptions of approaches to learning
(Laurillard, 1979; Entwistle & Ramsden, 1983; Prosser, 1994) have explicitly used Marton
& SaÈljoÈ s (1976) predetermined deep and surface approaches to categories. This is a speci® c
kind of phenomenographic research where the analysis is not a process of discovery, but a
means of searching for predetermined categories.
At the other extreme, where little, if any, previous research has been conducted, the
researcher might in any case wish to be tentative about the phenomenon under consideration.
But this is the ideal. It may well be that the phenomenon that the researcher currently has in
mind has no place in a given individual’ s lifeworld, or takes a very different form. For
example, in our own work, some interviews were conducted with students who had com-
pleted their study of introductory accounting some 4 months previously (Lucas, 1998). It
became apparent that some students were unable to recall much about balance sheets and
pro® t and loss accounts, which had little place in their lifeworlds. But this was not seen as a
¯ aw or dif® culty in the research. It was plain that, for such students, accounting was seen as
a `subject to be studied’ (or, rather, a `subject to be passed’ ), and that this constituted the
most meaningful aspect of accounting for them. Consequently, a strenuous endeavour to
extract conceptions of ® nancial statements would have been ill-founded. The topic of the
research was, after all, students’ perceptions of accounting issues within their lifeworld.
A similar issue arose within our study on cheating (Ashworth et al., 1997). The very fact
that the research was `about’ cheating might lead one to assume that the interviewees were
talking about cheating. However, one fundamentalist interviewee was really talking about
scriptural moral proprietyÐ under which cheating was a speci® c, perhaps rather trivial,
instance. Other interviewees viewed cheating in the context of their future working lives, and
it was an issue for the investigator to address whether to understand all the interview in this
light, or whether it would be right to see the interviewee’ s life-worldly experience of cheating
as giving other meanings:

in future life when you are looking for a job, if you’ ve got a false degree then you
go for a job and you can’ t do it, then you’ re not just fooling yourself because you’ ll
make yourself embarrassed because you’ re not going to be able to do the work ¼
It’ s not going to prove any bene® t to the person who is cheating in the long run, is
it?

For some students, it was `cheating’ to take any short cut that would produce less-than-ideal
learning (it was not just a matter of assessment); for some it was not cheating to produce `joint
work’ for assessment when a fellow student was genuinely struggling and needed assistance.
In principle, the topic announced as `cheating’ could have as many meaningsÐ more
meaningsÐ than there were research participants, and it is a matter of later, scrupulous
interpretation whether certain shared categories of meaning can be discovered.

2. The selection of participants should avoid presuppositions about the nature of the phenomenon or
the nature of conceptions held by particular `types’ of individual while observing common-sense
precautions about maintaining `variety’ of experience.

Sometimes presuppositions may be implicit through the selection of students for interview.
For example, to endeavour to obtain a cross-section of students, with equal numbers of male
and female students or a range of grades, assumes that there may be a gender or ability aspect
to the perceptions of students. (Of course, not knowing the parameters of variation of
302 P. Ashworth & U. Lucas

experienceÐ indeed, realising that experience may well not have `parameters’ in the
mathematical senseÐ it is incoherent to attempt anything like statistical sampling.)
The often-stated aim of phenomenography is to obtain a range of experiences. And,
indeed, selecting interviewees who seem intuitively likely to have different lifeworlds and,
within these, different experience of the putative research phenomenon, is worthwhile. Yet,
this depends on the assumptions built into the `intuitive likelihood’ . Such assumptions should
be identi® ed and set aside, in the sense of acknowledging them and being aware of the
possibility that they are false.
It is interesting to note how such assumptions may be confounded once there is
engagement with the student’ s lifeworld. Within the study of accounting, it was apparent that
the meaning of learning accounting for a student might be intimately bound up with that
student’ s particular experience in life, and not linked as much as might be assumed to
variables such as gender or the pattern of secondary school success revealed in examination
grades. For example, one student referred, within the interview, to two key events in his life.
It was apparent that these were related to his perception of the importance of studying, and
the `security of obtaining a quali® cation in business’ . It was therefore of interest that, when
asked `what topics particularly interested you?’ , he identi® ed break-even analysis and the
margin of safety. Thus, one might interpret a relation between the security of an academic
quali® cation and an interest in accounting techniques that relate to the security of a business.
Of course, if this lead were regarded as important, the place of security within the lifeworld
would need further investigation.

3. The most appropriate means of obtaining an account should be identi® ed, allowing maximum
freedom for the research participant to describe their experience.

So far, it has been assumed that the method of obtaining an account is through the use of the
interview. Indeed, this is likely to be the most appropriate means of obtaining a detailed and
rich encounter with the lifeworld of the student. However, sometimes phenomenographers
have used short written statements to ascertain conceptions of learning, for example, in
students’ conceptions of literature reviews (Bruce, 1994) and mathematics (Crawford et al.,
1994). It has to be recognised that, whilst this enables one to extend research to a larger
number of participants, it produces responses that are limited in scope and which are dif® cult
to contextualise within the students’ lifeworlds. This approach will be entirely valid if a
particular view of the phenomenon under investigation is taken in advance, or if particular
categories of description are to be used. However, the ideal situation is one in which
the phenomenography is founded on as open a technique for eliciting experience as
possible.

4. In obtaining experiential accounts the participant should be given the maximum opportunity to
re¯ ect and the questions posed should not be based on researcher presumptions about the phenomenon
or the participant, but should emerge out of the interest to make clear their experience.

In essence, the interview should be regarded as a conversational partnership in which the

interviewer assists a process of re¯ ection. To this end the researcher should:

· make minimal use of questions prepared in advance;

· use open-ended questions;
· engage in empathic listening to hear meanings, interpretations and understandings;
· consciously silence his or her concerns, preoccupations and judgements; and
 Phenomenographic Research 303

· use prompts to pursue/clarify the participant’ s own line of re¯ ection and allow the
participant to elaborate, provide incidents, clari® cations and, maybe, to discuss events at
length.

There is considerable guidance on these matters in the literature of qualitative research,

especially that of grounded theory (e.g. Strauss & Corbin, 1990).
In addition, it would be as well for the researcher to be on the alert for warning signs that
his or her personal beliefs and knowledge may intrude. This is likely where issues of deeply
held personal opinion arise. For example, as a matter of personal research experience, it was
dif® cult, as an accounting lecturer, to hear research participants make `obvious mistakes’ and
to retain a continuing lively interest in the lifeworld of the `erroneous’ person. Thus, the
interviewer must be on the alert for such indications that his or her own assumptions, rather
than the experience of the student, may be directing the interview. Thoughts such as `why
doesn’ t the student answer the question?’ , `how can I prompt this student on to a more
relevant line of thought?’ or feelings of impatience should be noted and taken as potential
warning signals.
Bracketing can be even more dif® cult where issues of personal morality arise, such as was
the case in the study of cheating. In discussing cheating, interviewees stated opinions and
gave accounts of actions that spanned the range from extreme resistance to cheating to strong
personal inclination to cheat and cheerful tolerance of it in themselves and/or others. The
point is that the interviewer must bracket his or her own moral orientationÐ both its value
basis, and the strength of positive and negative judgementsÐ in order to hear the interviewee.

5. The researcher’s interviewing skills should be subject to an ongoing review and changes made to
interview practice if necessary. For instance, stylistic traits which tend to foreclose description should
be minimised.

The conduct of a phenomenographic interview places heavy demands on the interviewer and
requires the gradual development of interviewing skills. It can be useful, therefore, to review
the conduct of the ® rst few interviews. Within the accounting study, an analysis focused on
the type of question asked. They were categorised as follows:

· question asked from the prompt list;

· question asked as a follow-up to what the individual had said; and
· con® rmatory response or expression of interest.

This highlighted any tendency to dominate the interview or to fail to adequately follow
through on participant responses.
In addition, it was interesting to note that some questions just did not `work’ in practice.
For example, in early interviews, lecturers were asked, `are there any particular workshop
activities that you ® nd are particularly successful?’ Yet this failed to evoke a natural response
from the lecturersÐ the answers seemed forced and lacking commitment. They appeared to
accept workshop activities as a given element within the course and did not appear to
question their ef® cacy. This question had been asked because the interviewer had found, in
her own teaching, that some workshop topics seemed to strike a particular chord with
students, and were most successful in stimulating discussion and understanding by students.
But she stopped asking this question. There are two lessons to be learnt from this observa-
tion: that some questions may be generated from what is particularly meaningful for the
researcher but may have little meaning for the interviewee, and that the lack of response to
a question is as interesting as a response itself.
304 P. Ashworth & U. Lucas

6. The transcription of the interview should be aimed at accurately re¯ ecting the emotions and
emphases of the participant.

In phenomenographic research, interviews tend to be transcribed verbatim prior to analysis.

However, only Svensson & Theman (1983) consider the transcription process in any detail.
This is surprising, since transcription is not necessarily a neutral process. Kvale (1996)
observes that transcription is much more than a mere clerical task and raises methodological
and theoretical problems.
Svensson & Theman (1983) recognise this and provide helpful advice on the transcrip-
tion process. The overriding emphasis in transcription has to be to include anything that is
likely to affect the interpretation of meaning. In particular, we found it useful to listen to the
tape several times during the initial analyses rather than to analyse directly from the
transcript. This would be particularly important where transcripts are analysed by those other
than the interviewer.

7. The analysis should continue to be aware of the importation of presuppositions, and be carried out
with the maximum exercise of empathic understanding.

It is suggested that the initial analysis of interviews might be devoted to what might be termed
a `sensitisation’ . This would involve the development of an attitude of `dwelling with’ the
train of thought of the research participant (for this and associated views of the empathic
attitude, see Wertz, 1983), and procedures that sensitise the researcher to the experience of
the participant. It is not proposed that there is a `right’ or a `wrong’ way to do this. Rather,
the researcher should consider how this might be achieved. Karlsson (1993, following Giorgi,
1985) suggests that the transcript should be split into `meaning units’ . These are identi® ed
where there is a shift in meaning. However, the important aspect lies not in the (more right
or wrong) identi® cation of a meaning unit, but rather in the intention to slow down and dwell
on what is being said and the manner in which it is being said.
A further technique was developed within the accounting study. This study focused on
a much broader slice of the lifeworld, embracing a number of phenomena relating to the
experience of the teaching or learning of accounting. Thus, it became apparent at an early
stage that, within each interview, there were points of focus which appeared to be central to
the experience recounted by the participant. These foci were of signi® cance in relation to
other aspects of the experience of teaching and learning of accounting. For example, for one
lecturer, teaching accounting was about an overcoming of the perceived fears and worries of
the students. Thus, it was not surprising to ® nd, later in the interview, that she referred to
her own experience of being initially scared about learning accounting. Moreover, at another
point in the interview, she de® ned learning as an overcoming of fear about accounting.
Consequently, an individual pro® le was produced for each participant which identi® ed these
central points of focus.
It became apparent that the production of an individual pro® le could ful® l several roles.
Firstly, its production requires that the researcher dwells on the participant’ s experience. This
is an important means of developing the researcher’ s empathic understanding (Karlsson,
1993). Secondly, subsequent stages in phenomenographic analysis move away from the
experience of the individual to a focus on comparative experience, through the pooling and
comparison of quotations. Generalisations across individuals are of value, but it is important
that the individual’ s unique experience is not lost. The individual pro® le is a necessary
background against which the meanings of quotations will be viewed. As such, it provides a
necessary counter-weight to any tendency to attribute meaning out of context. Thirdly, the
 Phenomenographic Research 305

individual pro® les provide evidence of what might be termed `internal validity’ . Internal
validity refers to the consistency in the account given by the participant.
The key criteria for judging an interview are whether or not it gives access to the
participant’ s lifeworld. Several factors might hinder this, for example, the reluctance of the
participant to re¯ ect on their experience, inappropriate interview questions that close down
on certain areas of experience, and a lack of trust between the interviewer and participant.
However, it became apparent within the interviews that there was a often a coherence in the
participant’ s account that indicated a consistency of focus throughout the interview. At times
this consistency was quite striking (of course, care is needed hereÐ an inconsistency or
inarticulateness might be a proper re¯ ection of the individual lifeworld).
8. Analysis should avoid premature closure for the sake of producing logically and hierarchically-
related categories of description.
At this stage in the process, the researcher could usefully consider whether the objective of
producing categories of description (hierarchically and logically related), which must be
bracketed earlier in the research, should continue to be bracketed. This orthodox way of
presenting phenomenographic ® ndings may, in a particular piece of research, do justice to
student experience. But it may be that an alternative means of presenting ® ndings might be
more appropriate, if one wishes to ensure faithfulness to the lifeworlds of the participants.
There may be important factors which should be acknowledged (such as the affective), but
which are dif® cult to encompass in hierarchically and logically related categories of descrip-
tion. It was found in the studies on cheating and accounting that it was appropriate to present
key ® ndings in the form of themes which bear a variety of relationships, one to the other, and
allow a ¯ exibility in the presentation of ® ndings.
Within the accounting study, it was found that the production of (a) individual pro® les,
(b) themes and (c) categories of description were mutually supportive in providing both an
overview and the detail relating to the lifeworlds of students and lecturers. These three kinds
of ® nding necessarily overlapped and were complementary. In particular, it was found that
the pro® les and themes allowed the strong affective element associated with the teaching and
learning of accounting to emerge.
It is worth mentioning here that two kinds of material appear to be particularly tenacious
in the in¯ uence that they exercise over the researcher, even late in the analysis (Ashworth &
Lucas, 1998). Firstly, one should set aside the tendency to view data in a light intended to
relate to previously-constructed hypotheses, or to con® rm prior constructs. As an aid to
bracketing, it is helpful for researchers to consciously try to counteract the tendency to
assimilate the descriptions by research participants into existing theoretical structures by
looking for divergence, or emphasising differences and nuances. Karlsson (1993) usefully points
out that care should be taken about the language used during interpretation. Care is needed
here, since even the term `approach to learning’ , ® rst coined in early phenomenographic
research, is now theory-laden.
Secondly, one should put out of play all notions of cause and effect. Certainly, students
themselves sometimes came up with reasons why cheating took place: going through a
`phase’ , the inadequacy of the rules or the ease with which they can be evaded, personal
inclination or `personality’ , the attraction of a pay-off and so on. Similarly, within the
accounting study, students might attribute their interest in accounting to a liking of numbers,
experience within a family business or wanting a well-paid job. But such statements should
not be misconstrued and read as indicating `true causes’ of cheating or of an interest in
accounting. They are certainly part of the meaning of cheating or of being interested in
accounting within the interviewee’ s life-worldly experience. Possibly, they could also be
306 P. Ashworth & U. Lucas

understood as interviewees’ perceptions of people’ s reasons for cheating or being interested

in accounting. Phenomenographic work has nothing directly to say about causal connections.
The process of bracketing can be supported by the introduction of analysis techniques
which offer fresh and discerning ways of viewing the data. For example, Riley (1990)
suggests a variety of approaches for viewing data in a new light. These include well-known
phenomenographic approaches such as writing summaries, looking for commonalities and
differences and looking for surprises. But she also suggests other approaches, such as:
· adopting a variety of different imaginary roles in the process of listening to interviewees or
reading transcripts;
· re¯ ecting through self-interrogation; and
· describing the research participant’ s experience in (real or imaginary) letters to friends or
conversations.
Certainly, many phenomenographers conduct their analysis in teams and ® nd this a stimulat-
ing way of `re-viewing’ data. However, caution is needed about this. The use of a variety of
techniques to question and view data differently will always be of value.
9. The process of analysis should be suf® ciently clearly described to allow the reader to evaluate the
attempt to achieve bracketing and empathy and trace the process by which ® ndings have emerged.
A key issue for a phenomenographer is to be able to justify his or her research approach and
to respond to two linked questions:
(1) to what extent does the research investigate what it sets out as its focus of enquiry? In
other words, is the research method adopted appropriate to the object of enquiry?
(2) to what extent is the research method enacted in a way that retains credibility in terms
of what it seeks to achieve?
In order to respond to the ® rst question, the researcher must be explicit about what is under
investigation: certain critical aspects of the lifeworld of an individual. This leads to the second
aspect of justi® ability. The researcher should be able to provide a full account of the
objectives and nature of the research process. As Sandberg (1997) points out, the researcher
must:
demonstrate how he/she has dealt with his/her intentional relation to the individual’ s
conceptions being investigated. That is, in order to be as faithful as possible to the
individual’ s conceptions of reality, the researcher must demonstrate how he/she has
controlled and checked his/her interpretations throughout the research process:
from formulating the research question, selecting individuals to be investigated,
obtaining data from those individuals, analysing the data obtained, and reporting
the results. (p. 209)
Part of demonstrating this `interpretative awareness’ (Sandberg, 1997) would be to acknowl-
edge the need to bracket presuppositions and to explicitly account for how this was
attempted. Of course, one has to accept that it will never be possible to obtain an absolute
guarantee that a high degree of ® delity has occurred. Sandberg refers to Giorgi (1988), who
states that there are:
only checks and balances, and primarily the checks and balances come through the
use of demonstrative procedure. (p. 173, emphasis added)
This article recognises the dif® culty of bracketing and has shown the value of the process of
empathy, used in parallel to bracketing as part of the selfsame effort to enter the lived
 Phenomenographic Research 307

experience of the student. We have also suggested the use of a variety of analytical tech-
niques. We argue that the our guidelines provide a theoretically sound framework within
which a phenomenographer may provide an account of his or her research procedures. Not
only would such an account justify the research procedures adopted, but it would also
provide a mechanism through which phenomenographers might collegially learn from each
other.

Conclusion: the challenge of phenomenography

In this article, we have argued that, since phenomenography ® nds its basic material for
analysis in the lifeworld of the student, it ought to subject itself to the discipline of bracketing
of presuppositions. Clearly, such a task can never be fully achieved. Consequently, we suggest
that bracketing should be accompanied by empathy and the use of a variety of analytical
techniques. The requirement to engage and empathise with the lifeworld of the student may
involve the deferral (or avoidance) of the espoused objective of phenomenography: the
production of categories of description.
However, given an acceptance of the necessity to bracket and empathise, we recognise
that there is scope for variation within phenomenographic practice. As discussed earlier,
choices have to be made about the delimitation of the phenomenon to be studied, the means
of entering the lifeworld of the student, the choice of participants and the mode of analysis.
Such choices will inevitably entail different research procedures. It is for the researcher to be
explicit about such choices, and to demonstrate within that framework how bracketing and
empathy have been achieved.
To conclude, phenomenography, in actual research practice, cannotÐ and must notÐ be
seen as the application of a set of rules of procedure. Even though we have in this article
suggested some practical approaches to issues of technique, this is not at all to pretend that
the attempt to enter the lifeworld of the research participant and to see, empathically, from
their point of view, is reducible to technique. To be scienti® c about subjectivity demands a
certain fellow feeling rather than technical rationality.

Correspondence: Professor Peter Ashworth, Learning and Teaching Institute, Shef® eld Hallam
University, Shef® eld S1 2WB, UK.

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