TRANSCENDENTAL

PHENOMENOLOGY: DATA
ANALYSIS

Arceli H. Rosario
Professor, Adventist International Institute of Advanced Studies
Lalaan 1, Silang, Cavite, Philippines
 DATA ANALYSIS FRAMEWORK
(Moustakas, 1994)
1. Horizonalization
2. Clustering
3. Writing individual textural descriptions; writing composite textural
descriptions
4. Writing individual structural descriptions; writing composite
structural descriptions
5. Writing the essence or the textural-structural descriptions
 Phenomenological Interviewing
(Seidman, 1998, pp. 11-15)

• First interview – Focus on past experience with

the phenomenon of interest.
Example (study about teachers): Participants to
reconstruct their early experiences in their
families, in school, with friends, in their
neighborhood; past experiences in school and in
any such situations.
 SECOND INTERVIEW

Focus on the details of experience. The

purpose is to concentrate on the concrete
details of the participants’ experience in the
phenomenon.
Example (study about teachers): What it is
like to be a teacher?
 THIRD INTERVIEW

Reflection on the meaning. It addresses

the intellectual and emotional
connections between the participants’
work and life.
Example (study about teachers): How has
being a teacher impacted your life?
 SAMPLE RESEARCH QUESTIONS
(Based on the study about the lifeworld of teachers)

1. What deciding factors influenced professors of

selected universities to commit to the lifework of
teaching?
2. What is the lifeworld of professors of selected
universities?
3. How do professors of selected universities ascribe
meaning to their lifework?
 RESEARCH QUESTIONS INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
1. What deciding factors When was the first time you realized you would like to be a
influenced professors of teacher? How did your realization come about? What other
a selected universities to experiences followed that affirmed teaching is your calling?
commit to the lifework
of teaching?

2. What is the lifeworld What is it like to be a teacher? What thoughts and feelings
of professors of a come to your mind when you think about teaching? What
selected universities? thoughts and feelings come to your mind when you think that
you are a teacher? Tell me your defining moments as a teacher.
3. How do professors of How has being a teacher impacted your life? Where do you see
selected universities yourself going in the future?
ascribe meaning to their
lifework?
 Data Analysis—Step 1:
HORIZONALIZATION
• Highlight significant statements related to
the research question.
• Make a list of all the significant statements.
• Remove repetitive, overlapping statements.
 Data Analysis—Sept 2: CLUSTERING

•Group the significant statements to

construct thematic portrayals of the
experience.
 Activity #1
• Do a horizonalization from the interview transcripts of
P1 and P2. This excerpt is focused on how the
participants viewed teaching and their being a teacher.
• Highlight relevant statements.
• Make a list of these relevant statements.
• Remove repetitive, overlapping statements.
• Cluster the relevant statements into larger units of
meaning.
 EXCERPT FROM AN INTERVIEW – P1
• When I think about teaching, three things come to my mind: Growth. Happiness. Service. I grow as
a person with them. When I look back when I started teaching how I view life, how I view things,
how I decide, I’ve come a long way. That’s why teaching is to me growth. The second is happiness
because I really enjoy teaching, being in the classroom and talking to the students, thinking with
them and thinking through them and thinking for them. . . . What I like about teaching in the
classroom is there is always excitement in imagining how would things be—how students will
react, how they will agree. What is surprising is there is always something new. Even if you have
everything lined up, something new comes up. It gives me happiness. I see students who at the
start of the year looked hopeless but something snaps within the middle or end of the year and you
see there is learning, there is hope. I get excited because in one way or another, I am making a
change in the life of the students. And, of course, the interaction with your co-faculty. The good
thing about teaching is it is not confined in the classroom. There are other things you can do—co-
curricular activities. There is research. I don’t think I have grown as much as I have now if I am not
in teaching. I realize that the only way is up, so one has to continue learning in whatever forms.
Personally, I feel it my responsibility to grow so that my students can also grow. Service—You go
beyond office time. You do not think about yourself anymore. Primarily, it’s always about the
students. Teaching basically is not about self. You think of the students—will this enrich them, will
this makes them grow? . . . I think because you do not think of yourself, you think of others.
 EXCERPT FROM AN INTERVIEW – P2
• Teaching is owning God’s work, making God is your co-laborer in
seeking for souls. I want my classroom to be a window through which
my students will see the love of God. By God’s grace, I never get angry
in my classroom. Our classroom is filled with broken people.
Education is means of redemption. If students misbehave there may
be underlying reasons. They are a soul to be saved. It is not us. So
teaching is a redemptive work. One student at a time. They may see
everything as hell, but in the classroom they will feel that they are
loved.
 Data Analysis—Step 3A:
INDIVIDUAL TEXTURAL DESCRIPTION
Construct a textural description from the themes and delimited horizons of
each participant.
Example based on Copen’s Study of Insomnia:
The experience of insomnia for Jim is one of restless fluctuation from an
initial falling asleep to a sudden awakening. Wanting desperately to sleep
but to no avail, he is “propelled into being awake”; imprisoned by
wakefulness. This kind of being awake is powerful and charged with distress.
“It’s like being plugged in or amped . . . bug eyed.” The growing fatigue
becomes every bit as confining as the wakefulness. Sleep is nowhere to be
found; there is just this experience of being “simultaneously fatigued,
mentally and physically, but absolutely wide awake.”
 Data Analysis—Step 3B:
COMPOSITE TEXTURAL DESCRIPTION
• Example from Yoder’s Study on Feeling Guilty
The experience of feeling guilty is felt as an intense and permeating
reality. Everything else fades in comparison. The feeling of guilt
immediately severs the connections between the individual and the
world of other people. Perhaps the most telling ingredient is the felt
split from one’s own self.
The world, for the one experiencing guilt feelings, is an alien world. .
. . Pain is one central reality. The person immersed in guilt goes through
the motions of living but moves and acts without thought,
automatically, like a robot.
 Data Analysis—Sept 4A:
INDIVIDUAL STRUCTURAL
DESCRIPTION
• The individual structural description provides a
vivid account of the underlying dynamics of the
experience, the themes and qualities that
account for “how” feelings and thoughts
connected with insomnia are aroused, what
conditions evoke insomnia.
 Example – Individual Structural Description
of
Jim’s Insomnia
The structures that permeate Jim’s insomnia and evoke penetrating
and disturbing thoughts and feelings ar expressed in Jim’s relation to
time, his relation with others, work habits, and sense of responsibility.
Regarding Self in relation to time, Jim is attuned to filling time with
activity both during his waking hours and during his period of insomnia.
Time during insomnia is experienced both as too lengthy and too brief.
He is often conscious of time moving every so slowly while lying
entangled in fears, obsessive thoughts and concerns of not having
enough hours of sleep to cope with the next day. During those moments
Jim is painfully aware of time moving by with rapidity, as morning rushes
forth like a train.
 Data Analysis—Step 4B:
COMPOSITE STRUCTURAL
DESCIPTION
• Example from Aanstoos’s Study of Being Left Out
• Experiencing ourselves as left out evokes an intensely disquieting and
painful emotional storm. Previously taken for granted meanings of
who are for others, and who they are for us, are sundered from their
past familiar anchors, and now become highly questionable. The
smooth reciprocity of self-other relations gives way, and we are
confronted with a disturbing negativity. This negativity expresses itself
as a tear in the unfolding tapestry of mutual recognition between
ourselves and the others. This gap may be a fissure or an abyss, but it
discloses an essential break in our connectedness with others.
 Data Analysis—Step 5:
ESSENCE OR TEXTURAL-STRUCTURAL SYNTHESIS

• The final step of phenomenological analysis

requires an integration of the composite textural
and composite structural descriptions providing
a synthesis of the meanings and essences of the
experience.
 Example from Yoder’s Study of Guilt
• In spite of the torturous feelings and helpless, endless, sense of guilt,
there is still within the self, the possibility of recovering oneself and
regaining the sense of harmonious flow with life. There is the potential
to come to terms with guilt, to accept it, share it with another an, in this
acceptance, find a way to peace. What is required is the courage to take
the first step and risk scornful judgment and the pain of acknowledging
one’s limitations. There is no guarantee that if one freely and honestly
expresses the guilt, and recognizes the vulnerability and limitedness of
the self, that the guilty feelings will be excised permanently, but for
some of my co-researchers this acceptance and sharing enabled them to
reclaim themselves and reestablish inner tranquility.