Introducing refractive phenomenology

Abstract

All researchers are presented with the need to choose or design a research methodology suited to the research topic or problem to be investigated. Methodology provides the philosophical groundwork that underpins investigative frameworks and choice of methodology is therefore crucial as it will indeed ‘colour’ both research process and product. Research that aims to investigate how individuals experience a given phenomenon lends itself to qualitative research methods and in particular to a phenomenological approach. Refractive phenomenology builds on hermeneutic phenomenological foundations through the use of interpretive filters taking individual depictions of lived experience and viewing, reflecting, redirecting and channelling these through a series of filters and reductive lenses until the ‘Essence’ of the phenomenon has been brought into view.