Quality of life

TLDR

Meaning terms and hermeneutic methodology are essential for studying practical activity and relational issues, emphasizing a holistic, person‑in‑situation perspective. The study proposes a Heideggerian phenomenological framework to explain, predict, and understand health, illness, and disease, addressing objectification and subjectivism as barriers. The authors employ paradigm cases, exemplars, and thematic analysis as interpretive and presentational strategies.

Abstract

A Heideggerian phenomenological approach to explanation, prediction, and understanding in the study of health, illness, and disease is presented. The extremes of objectification and subjectivism as barriers to understanding illness and suffering are explored. It is argued that meaning terms are essential when studying practical activity and relational issues, and that a privileged position is not gained by developing structural analyses or power terms that get behind or beyond meaning. Hermeneutics, or interpretive methodology, is a holistic strategy because it seeks to study the person in the situation rather than isolating person variables and situation variables and then trying to put them back together. Paradigm cases, exemplars, and thematic analysis are described as interpretive and presentational strategies.