Editorial: Working with others’ experience

1 Introduction

If you pursue investigations of human experience as an upcoming researcher or practitioner, for instance in a PhD program, or if you need to diversify your research and empirically investigate others’ experience with a phenomenological or qualitative research method, then this special issue of Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences is for you.

“IPA”, “DES”, “micro phenomenology”, “phenomenological psychology”, “hermeneutic phenomenological method”, “neurophenomenology”, “reflective lifeworld research”, and “ethnographic phenomenological interviews” are just some examples of the many methods out there. While they all claim to work with subjective experience, it is not easy to identify their specificities and differences.

When you work empirically with others’ experience through interviews, you are engaging in a 2nd person method. Besides for one, all papers in this special issue describe 2nd person methods, that is, methods that engage someone else about his or her experience. Note, however, that authors and traditions differ in what they understand as 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person methods. For instance, Lumma and Weger (2021) label interview methods, “1st person” methods, while according to Michael Larkin,¹ IPA sometimes labels itself a “3rd person” method. Our editorial advice is to constrain 1st person methods to something like introspection or auto-ethnography (studying an “I”), 2nd person methods to methods by which one interacts with other subjects as subjects (studying a “you”), such as qualitative research methods generally construed, and 3rd person methods to methods by which one studies things or their properties (studying an “it”), such as quantitative research methods broadly construed.²

Historically, the method for studying experience par excellence has been the philosophical tradition of phenomenology initiated by Edmund Husserl in the early 1900s. Husserl and his followers, however, did not conceive of phenomenology as an empirical, 2nd person method. While many of the above-mentioned methods want to use phenomenology to inform their work, it is far from clear how to do so in a way that is both faithful to philosophical phenomenology and at the same time empirically effective. Consequently, several of these methods disagree about how to make the best and most correct use of phenomenological philosophy (Giorgi, 2021; Smith, 2018; Van Manen, 2017; Zahavi & Martiny, 2019; Zahavi, 2018). The purpose of this editorial and the entire special issue, then, is two-fold: We want to portray the similarities and differences between the various methods, such that one can more easily identify which one might be the best fit for a given project. We also want to shed light on the extent to which the different methods are informed by phenomenology and what that might mean in each case.

To realize this purpose, it was important for us to provide a venue for non-combative comparative discussions between some of the protagonists of these methods. Ourselves coming from different methodological backgrounds, we as editors hold the opinion that discussing which method is better or which method is more “phenomenological” is stale and unproductive. It is more fruitful to understand what kind of questions or cases within the study of others’ experience a particular method is best suited for, and which results might ensue from its analyses. This aim is in line with the stated two-fold purpose because it leads to an expansion from methods claiming a special inheritance from phenomenology, to a wider orientation towards methods that generally interrogate others’ experience without any claim to such an inheritance.

With this point of departure, we gave our contributors clear instructions in our call for papers with the following six points:

• 1) Theory and justification of use: what are the premises of the method and how did the case study fit the theoretical and practical problems the method was developed to address?

• 2) For the approaches claiming alignment with some form of phenomenology: what is understood by phenomenology in your case; why is it important and what in particular is achieved with this theoretical framing that could not have been achieved without?

• 3) Practice: how was the methodological or experimental setup created and what challenges remained?

• 4) Application: what turned out as the final gain of the study? Did it fulfill the expectations? Which gaps remained?

• 5) Generalizing from the case study: is the method particularly suited to analyze certain kinds of practices or experiences, for instance: experiences of a short, medium or long duration; existential situations; pathological conditions; human practices; expert performance; particularly intense or significant kinds of experiences?

• 6) Discussion: what do these reflections imply for the future of the method within the field? Which developments within the method are needed? Which cooperations across methods should be encouraged?

These are demanding questions, and we laud our contributors, who have all tried to answer them, with longer or shorter comparative discussions. This editorial is devoted to distilling these discussions as well as to facilitating the decision of which methods to use for which cases and how to possibly combine them.

We have invited two groups of contributors, namely 1) senior protagonists of each methodology, and 2) younger researchers who experiment with applying these methodologies in their fields. The latter category provides examples of alternative uses of the original methods or point to new fields of application and will hopefully inspire fresh developments within phenomenology and qualitative research methods widely construed. In the former category, we find DES³ founder Russel Hurlburt, IPA⁴ protagonist Michael Larkin, phenomenological psychology protagonist James Morley, micro-phenomenology⁵ founder Claire Petitmengin, and the ethnographically-informed phenomenological approach protagonist, Susanne Ravn. The most significant omission is Max van Manen’s hermeneutical phenomenological method, widely used in qualitative and healthcare-oriented research. While we did invite van Manen, neither he nor any other senior representatives of his method found the time to contribute to our issue. This is a regrettable and significant shortcoming of our SI, which could also have benefitted from contributions from grounded theory,⁶ qualitative research methodology in the style of Kvale & Brinkman,⁷ reflective lifeworld research,⁸ neuro phenomenology,⁹ or the “course-of-experience framework”.¹⁰ The general reason for these omissions is that it is not realistic for a single SI to present and compare the totality of existing methods in the field. We hope future work will continue to compare and contrast these kinds of methods also interrogating the possible integration of qualitative and quantitative methods.

2 An overview of the methods covered in this volume

For your own purposes, you might not need to familiarize yourself with all the different methods or even the discussions between them. In the following table, we give an overview of the chief characteristics of all the methods in this special issue. The categories we list are the results of our joint analysis of the most important questions to ask yourself, when choosing a method suitable for your project. The ensuing part of this editorial is concerned with elaborating on many of these categories. From this table, you might be able to identify what method is most suitable for you and then skip directly to the article that describes that method. We also recommend Lumma & Weger’s recent article” Looking from within: Comparing first-person approaches to studying experience” (2021) which also provides a relatively brief overview of many of the methods described in the present special issue. In contradistinction, if you are interested in understanding several of the competing methods, or need to qualify your own with respect to similar ones, you’ll find help in reading the entire editorial and most of the papers.

This editorial is divided in three parts. We begin by presenting the methods of each contribution also indicating a few comparative perspectives in passing. We then compare and contrast the methods along the most important parameters listed above in order to suggest how they ideally fit different kinds of cases. Readers looking for the right method to use for a specific research question or design can begin with this section to gain a first idea about which methods to further engage with. Lastly, we comment on the debate about the more or less explicit phenomenological inheritances. We do so with the pragmatic mindset that such a discussion should help our readers to find the methodological pathway that best advances their own research aims.

Some of the articles in this special issue are not related to phenomenology or even philosophy. This was necessary given our aim of the special issue to involve the most significant methods to investigate experience, tracing divergent traditions from experimental psychology to psychiatry, contemplative science, and psychotherapy.¹¹ We think this still fits with the interdisciplinary aims of this journal. We thank Dan Zahavi and Shaun Gallagher for allowing us this open space for discussion.

2.1 Phenomenological psychology (Morley & Englander)

Edmund Husserl worked extensively on describing the possibilities for a “phenomenological psychology” (Husserl, 1997). In particular, his entry on phenomenology in the Encyclopedia Britannica (1927/1981) inspired a method within humanistic psychology, simply known as “phenomenological psychology” founded by Amadeo Giorgi in the 1960’s and 70’s.¹² This approach is represented by James Morley and Magnus Englander, who both have been trained by Giorgi and are leading authorities on the method.

Their paper gives a lucid exposition of the origins and development of the method, highlighting the strong wish to protect a genuinely humanistic research tradition in psychology in opposition to its increasing naturalization and neuroscientific focus. The method has had wide impact in many professional fields, possibly not least due to its insistence on a sequence of well-defined analytic steps that transform an interview transcription into a phenomenological analysis. According to Giorgi, Morley and Englander, the phenomenological psychologist must have philosophical or phenomenological training as well as familiarity with primary literature in phenomenology. As Morley and Englander describe, the method has had several different names, some with a more existential focus, to encompass thinkers such as Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Heidegger. We here note a seeming tension within the tradition, as Giorgi himself most recently notes that the method is not to be considered generally phenomenological, but specifically Husserlian (Giorgi, 2021, 2). This emphasis, we believe is consistent with the methodological rigour of strictly applying the epoché and the phenomenological reduction at certain stages of the analysis. According to Morley and Englander, phenomenological psychology opposes more hermeneutical methods that derive from “cultural postmodernism” and its belief that “everything is an interpretation” (Morley & Englander, this vol. Section 2) criticizing Van Manen’s hermeneutic phenomenological method.

2.2 Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) (Larkin & Motta; Sanchez Guerrero)

Our special issue contains two, quite different papers using interpretative phenomenological analysis.

Larkin and Motta, representing the classical, authoritative use of IPA, define it as an “ideographic approach to qualitative research” (Larkin & Motta, this vol, abstract) The theoretical background of IPA differs substantially from that of phenomenological psychology. More modest, not aiming to develop a new kind of science or methodology, IPA is a qualitative research method making use of phenomenology in its interpretation. Its ideographic focus highlights the situated nature of the individual voicing his or her own experience and thus—compared again to phenomenological psychology—has less emphasis on general structures of subjectivity and more emphasis on an individual’s experience here and now. With its basis in qualitative research methods, IPA also gives importance to the methodological aspect of data generation, before and during the interview, i.e. ethnographic observations, field notes and the researcher’s reflection on his or her own position, motivations, and so on. By contrast, phenomenological psychology primarily describes how to work, after the interview. IPA has been criticized for being overly light on its phenomenological commitments (Findlay, 2009; Van Manen, 2017; Zahavi, 2018, 2019). Though the founding scholars of IPA do advocate for a thorough knowledge of the phenomenological tradition, many IPA studies indeed do apply phenomenology lightly, such that it more or less comes to signify something like “taking the first person perspective seriously”. In Motta and Larkin’s interesting, nuanced, and well-conducted study on the sense of loneliness in a convent, we also see that the connections to phenomenological philosophy are sparse.

But sometimes IPA is indeed rather phenomenological, not least when philosophers begin conducting qualitative research. In his paper on adolescent depression, Sánchez-Guerrero uses his background in the philosophy of emotions (2016) and phenomenological psychopathology to conduct interviews with depressed adolescents. He discusses Husserl and the role of transcendental arguments in this constellation. Sánchez-Guerrero’s work is rather similar to what we will next categorize as “ethnographically inspired phenomenological interviews” insofar as it goes to great length to discuss the philosophy of both its method and findings. That he nevertheless identifies his method as IPA, speaks to its versatility and wide appeal, and further defends it against criticism of treating phenomenology too lightly—all characteristics that are worth keeping in mind if you are a newcomer to the field. Sánchez-Guerrero’s methodological comparative remarks in Section 5 are exemplary and enlightening: his phenomenological commitment is to an “investigational attitude” and a transcendental understanding of the subject-object relation. He believes that IPA is better suited than the stepwise procedures of phenomenological psychology, to represent and realize this commitment.

2.3 Ethnographically inspired phenomenological interview methodology (Ravn; van Westen et al.)

We categorize Ravn’s and van Westen et al.’s papers together as proposing a framework rather than a precise method, in which ethnography and phenomenology or philosophy cross-fertilize (two of this volume’s editors, Martiny and Høffding, self-categorize here). We take the difference between a method and a framework to be the following: a method can be applied across the board without variation and provides reliable results regardless. A framework is a way of thinking about the general structure of some problem, discussing ontological and epistemological commitments, describing general rules of thumb, and providing guidelines. From there, one must argue for the precise methodological handling on a case-by-case basis because the pre-conditions for analyzing and understanding different object of investigation requires methodological adjustments.

The framework in question consists of two methods or kinds of inquiry that work in tandem: On the one hand, an ethnographic, qualitative investigation based on some amount of contextualizing participant observation and in-depth semi-structured interviews. On the other hand, a theoretical discussion bearing on phenomenology or philosophy more generally, especially 4E cognition, which in turn informs the analysis of the qualitative data. This combination is designed to produce thorough and conceptually clear analyses, but also—and in contradistinction to most of the other methods of this special issue—to explicitly contribute back to the domains of philosophy and phenomenology. Each of the two methods have distinct validity criteria and in order to be considered reliable and valid, the researcher must manage both (see Høffding et al., 2022). In her contribution, Ravn provides several examples, covering decades of studies with expert movement practitioners.

Van Westen et. al., do not identify their method as phenomenological, but use concepts from 4E cognition and ecological psychology, similar to Ravn’s use of phenomenology. The ethnographic procedure is more or less the same, and object of investigation, namely clinical psychiatric expertise, highlight how reflection, skilled coping and situated normativity coalesce and constitute such expertise.

2.4 Phenomenologically Grounded Qualitative Research (PGQR) (Køster & Fernandez; Klinke & Fernandez)

Using the same idea of cross-fertilizing philosophical phenomenology and qualitative research as presented in the ethnographically inspired phenomenological interview, Køster & Fernandez and Klinke & Fernandez propose an approach where they phenomenologically ground qualitative research. This is done via the application of phenomenological concepts rather than methods (such as the epoché). In particular, they use “existentials” for this grounding. Existentials is a Heideggerian term, describing invariant and essential structures of ‘being in the world’, such as intentionality, selfhood, empathy, embodiment, temporality, spatiality, and affectivity. These existentials provide a conceptual framework that qualitative researchers can use to organize their qualitative analysis.

Køster and Fernandez’ paper exemplifies their framework through a study on parental bereavement. They clarify how the phenomenological grounding focuses on pre-reflective dimensions of experience, and enables interviewees to become aware of and verbalize past experiences of which they hitherto were largely unaware.

Klinke and Fernandez emphasize that most adaptation of phenomenology in qualitative health research concern conducting interviews and analyzing interview data. In contrast, how is one to study subjects who cannot accurately reflect upon or report their own experiences, for instance, because of a psychiatric or neurological disorder? Answering this question, Klinke and Fernandez expand the area of possible application of phenomenological grounding, through a case study of hemi-spatial neglect—a neurologic disorder in which patients characteristically lack awareness of their own illness and bodily capacities. The phenomenological grounding makes it possible to interpret the patients’ experience from their expressive, bodily behavior. For Klinke and Fernandez, the phenomenological grounding of observations is therefore a way to relate embodied perspectives to qualitative interviews.

2.5 Cognitive ethnography (Lebahn-Hadidi et al.)

Lebahn-Hadidi, Abildgren, Hounsgaard, and Steffensen discuss how to mix cognitive ethnography and phenomenology. This mixing is conducted to develop a method that can capture interactions and experiences in organizational practices. If one wants to understand practices in complex organizations (e.g., hospitals), the research method must be able to capture both the systemic functionality of the organization and its members’ individual sense-makings and experiences. Lebahn-Hadidi et al. combine video-ethnographic observations and phenomenological interviews. They do so within the two-tier structure described by Høffding and Martiny (2016), where the first tier is the generation of ethnographic observational and interview data and the second tier, a phenomenological interpretation. The observational data is generated through cognitive video ethnography where the aim is to observe and understand the micro-dynamics of work practices in order to provide detailed micro-analysis of such practices. The interview data is generated by conducting in situ phenomenological interviews of how the organization’s members experience their work.

The second tier of Lebahn-Hadidi et al.’s specific approach analyses the ethnographic video data using “Cognitive Event Analysis” (CEA), and then combines this analysis with the phenomenological analysis of the interview data. CEA is a qualitative, observation-based method for providing micro-analysis of cognitive events in human interactivity—a method that allows for a detailed retrospective analysis of the observable dimensions of events, as well as their enabling conditions.

Lebahn-Hadidi et al.’s study concerns a hospital ward where nurses administer medicine to patients. They argue that the combination of cognitive and phenomenological methods makes it possible to understand the micro-dynamics of medicine management and that the method is well suited for analyzing complex organizations, such as hospitals, and hence of benefit to healthcare.

2.6 Micro-phenomenology (Heimann et al.)

Micro-phenomenology begins from the premise that attending to and articulating our experience is a non-habitual act, prone to distraction and confabulation, and thus requires effort, care and guidance. Therefore, micro-phenomenology relies on, and offers, a meticulously described interview praxis developed following the principles of elicitation interviews (Petitmengin, 2006; Vermersch, 1994). These are inspired by practices of introspection known from meditation and contemplative sciences and enriched by scientific knowledge about experimentally induced biases. Compared to the afore mentioned methods, micro-phenomenology distinguishes itself by targeting very short durations of experience. For example, in the article in this SI, an interview concerning a few experiences of a few seconds each, took about three and a half hours to conduct. The micro-phenomenological praxis concerns how to guide the interviewee back to an experience to optimize its recall (evocation), which questions to ask to facilitate its exploration in detail without priming and frontloading (structure-oriented questions), and how to respond to the interviewees’ descriptions so as to allow for correction and specification of the collected data (reformulation/repetition). The transcribed data is then subjected to a rigorous pre-processing procedure that re-evaluates the data on the basis of checking whether the interview principles were followed as well as whether the interviewees were confident and consistent in their reports. The preprocessed data can then be analyzed according to the principles developed by Claire Petitmengin (see Petitmengin et al., 2018; Valenzuela-Moguillansky & Vásquez-Rosati, 2019) The result can be the systematic mapping of the temporal development and synchronic dimensions of a single experience, or a generic structure mapping overlaps in diachrony or synchrony across different experiences or participants. Replication of these results are, as is usual in cognitive sciences, considered as strengthening the validity of the analysis. Heimann et al.´s article illustrates these procedures by turning micro-phenomenology onto itself: its example is the conduct and analysis of the experience of conducting micro-phenomenological interviews.

By its choice of name, the micro-phenomenological method implies a certain affinity with the discipline of phenomenology—a claim that has been the subject of extensive discussion (Petitmengin, 2009; Petitmengin & Bitbol, 2009; Zahavi, 2007, 2011). In this special issue, the method presents itself humbly regarding this legacy, pointing out that micro-phenomenology shares some significant questions and goals with phenomenology but that currently far from all of its results communicate with work in phenomenological philosophy. Micro-phenomenology, however, has been important in the discussion of “naturalizing phenomenology” (Gallagher & Zahavi, 2008; Petitot et al., 1999; Zahavi, 2010), not least because of Francisco Varela’s importance for both. In the same vein, micro-phenomenology is also often the go-to interview method in neuro-phenomenology and in the contemplative sciences.

2.7 Micro-phenomenological self inquiry (Sparby)

Micro-phenomenological self-inquiry, as developed and described by Terje Sparby, is an adaption of micro-phenomenology for 1st person use, that is the investigation of one’s own lived experience without the facilitation of an interviewer. As such it stands out from all the other methods, as one is not, strictly speaking, investigating another’s experience. This adaption is of use in cases where no interviewer is available or affordable but a systematic exploration is either desirable or necessary to replace spontaneous, unsystematic introspection. Due to the method’s proximity to standard micro-phenomenology, the principles of selecting a target experience stay the same: The method is not restricted to any specific topic, however the duration of the target experiences described needs to be short. The methodological principles of the interview are also upheld: a self-guided evocation of the target moment is followed by a first report of the lived experience. As there is no interviewer to repeat this report, the adapted method relies on a documentation of such report either directly in written form or as an auditory or video recording. Reading, listening to, or watching this documentation then allows the inquiring subject to correct the first report leading into a deepening of some of its aspects. The method encourages the use of self-directed questions for such deepening. It also suggests body scans or similar exercises to enhance the inquiring subject´s capacity of attending to all possible dimensions of an experience. As one takes on the double-role of both interviewee and interviewer, this method is cognitively very demanding. Hence, successful data collection requires substantial training. Pre-processing and analysis follow the same principles as micro-phenomenology. The examples in Sparby’s article concern his previous work with analyzing contemplative experiences.

2.8 Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES) (Krumm & Hurlburt)

Descriptive Experience Sampling, as developed by Russ Hurlburt, co-author of the article in this SI, is likewise interested in detailed reports of short moments of lived experience. In contrast to micro-phenomenology, however, DES insists on collecting reports exclusively of “pristine inner experience”. Pristine experiences are spontaneously occurring experiences that do not rely on any experimental intervention (such as the staging of an event in the lab, the subjective selection of a memory etc.). To target such experiences, DES offers a sampling technique using a random interval beeper to be worn in daily life. On its signal, people are asked to make a diary entry about their lived experience in the moment right before the beep. Within maximally 24 hours, the diary entries are explored in an interview.

Compared to its phenomenologically inspired counterparts, in terms of its metaphysics, DES has a more naturalistic outlook. It seems to claim that if one has the right training and follows the protocol, then what one is sampling is in fact exactly what one was experiencing, nothing more, nothing less. Phenomenologically inspired methods might object that such an approach indicates that experience can be adequately or objectively captured and hence fails to account for its irreducibly subjective and hermeneutic dimensions.

For the first time in DES history, Krumm and Hurlburt, in this article avail an entire set of interview transcripts, allowing a fully transparent evaluation of the method and its iterative skill-building. The interviews investigate occurrences of inner speech versus other ways of “thinking” or “reflecting” in a single participant who claims to experience inner speech very often. The study challenges this claim, instead demonstrating that the participant’s experience is pervaded by mental imagery. As such, the paper makes an important contribution to this special issue, in reminding us how inaccurate our reflections about our experiences can be when not studied with adequate rigour.

2.9 Thinking at the Edge (TAE) (Schoeller)

“Thinking at the Edge” as developed by Eugene Gendlin, Mary Hendricks Gendlin and Kye Nelson, here portrayed by Donata Schoeller, is distinct from all other methods presented here, as it explicitly aims at exploring lived experience with the main purpose of intervention instead of documentation. As such, TAE is research in the sense of progressive praxis rather than observation and report, and produces data only in the sense of documentation of the (process of the) progress.

Very generally, it portrays itself as a method to challenge existing concepts and cognitive habits in the tradition of the philosophical school of critical thinking—though not as a tool of deconstruction but rather construction. Specifically, it relies on the assumption that there is a bodily lived experience of any concept or idea—a felt sense of what is expressed by it or what we want to express with it in the context given. This felt sense can indicate subtleties, problems, blind spots or gaps in the current articulation or thinking. Focusing on this lived sense and articulating it, can help to complement and continually develop our thinking. The act of articulation consists in a non-imposing tentative use of language directed at the non-linguistic, bodily sense, to bring forth its meaning without prematurely fixing it. Similar to micro-phenomenology, an interviewer is necessary to facilitate articulation via the repetition of seemingly critical utterances. Schoeller´s article carefully outlines the setup of the method and gives concrete examples of its application from sessions with researchers from anthropology and the medical sciences. Schoeller’s approach shows an original and alternative use of bodily pre-reflective knowledge to steer processes of ideational exploration. TAE also highlights the possibility of using interviews as interventions – a possibility that lies dormant in several of the other methods.

3 The application, preconditions and epistemological status of the methods: similarities and differences

The aim of this special issue is to offer a first orientation for those who would like to empirically investigate others’ experience in their research or praxis. Such an orientation could rely on a list of dimensions along which to distinguish the different methods portrayed, in line with the table initially presented. While we do not consider our table above the final word on each method and do not feel comfortable claiming an absolutely authoritative oversight, all three of us continuously experience a demand to give advice on which method to use for a certain project of research or praxis. In the following, we will thus attempt to integrate our experience of giving such advice, resulting in eight guiding questions to consider when choosing which method might best fit your project. To prevent this editorial from turning into a book-length project, we refrain from comparing all the methods along all the categories listed in our table. We have chosen the following eight questions as examples of how one could begin such a comparative analysis.

3.1 What kind of experience are you looking at?

Some of the methods are particularly suited to look at specific kinds of experiences. For example: Ethnographically inspired phenomenological interviews focus on the exploration of practices and expertise, but have also provided analyses of various forms of pathologies.¹³ IPA presents itself as particularly suited to look at existential matters, such as grief or loneliness (see Larkin & Motta, this volume). Cognitive ethnography analyzes experiences in larger institutional settings to better understand their dynamics. Giorgi’s phenomenological psychology might be more broadly applied: Englander & Morley mention cases such as situations of learning, art appreciation, harassment and mental health (Morley & Englander this vol. Section 2). Micro-Phenomenology can also have many applications but over and above other methods, it is suited for analyzing experiences in experimental and lab setups, for instance the perception of various stimuli in a brain scanner.¹⁴ Descriptive Experience Sampling, though in other aspects close to micro-phenomenology, excludes such experimentally mediated experiences as unecological due to its focus on spontaneously occurring experiences.

The examples above demonstrate that if you can identify which kind of experience and what kind of setting you want to investigate, then this should lead you to identify one, or perhaps two, methods as the most appropriate for your project.

3.2 What ideal duration of the target experience does the method fit?

Another way to differentiate the methods is by what duration of experience they are designed to assess. DES asks you to focus on the moment just before the random beeper was heard, usually amounting to a few seconds in real time. Similarly, micro-phenomenology asks to focus on a specific experience of very short length (seconds to minutes) to allow attending to all aspects of the moment lived through.

While DES and micro-phenomenology yield a very high amount of details of very brief moments, it is important to ask whether relying on such short experiential moments is sufficient to answer the questions of your project. IPA and also PGQR allow you to investigate a certain emotion or existential situation evolving over days, months or even much of a lifespan. The articles on the experience of parental bereavement or loneliness in a convent are clear examples hereof. Phenomenological psychology could target a class of experiences occurring over a long period of time (think about bullying) and cognitive ethnography and ethnographically inspired phenomenological interviews can delve into several moments, experiences or developments that help grasp an entire organizational ecology or practice, respectively. Though the interviews in these methods will usually identify a few significant moments of experience to explore, they can or must be supplemented with other sources of insights, such as observations, video-analysis, background document and the like.

When initiating your project, you might need to weigh the advantage of a high amount of detail versus the need of assessing experience across long time periods. This weighing in turn, should help your choice of (or combination of) method(s).

3.3 What are the specific methodological requirements?

Some of the methods rely on a specific setup or methodological framework, which again determine what kinds of research questions can be pursued.

In ethnographically inspired phenomenological interview methodology as well as in cognitive ethnography, you must perform fieldwork, because the different kinds of observations ground the interviews and enable one to grasp the situated nature of the experience or practice in question. This aspect is not generally necessary for micro-phenomenology, DES, IPA or phenomenological psychology, though it could be included.

In this regard, DES stands out from all other methods, because of its underlying naturalist ontology: pristine experience is obscured by memory, as well as by experimental setups, and hence needs to be collected immediately after its occurrence. Therefore, it uses a sampling technique that cues participants via a random interval beeper to create diary reports describing their experience of the moment just preceding the beep. This entails that the experiences recorded not only are of very short duration but also that they cannot be pre-selected to address specific dimensions of experience.

Micro-phenomenology is concerned with non-inductive interviewing and includes several preprocessing steps to ensure the exclusion of unreliable data deriving from the interviewer’s potential priming of the interviewee. Micro-phenomenological self-inquiry stands out insofar as one is interviewing oneself, and phenomenological observational research is particular as it relies on non-verbal expressions.

The above makes it evident that each method comes with some requirements that must be met. Informing your choice of method, there should be a reflection on whether you want or realistically can meet those requirements.

3.4 What is the analytic object/focus?

Generally, most of the methods covered have identical or at least similar ideas of the interview pragmatics: being careful not to prime reports with questions or comments that bring in the researcher’s own preconceptions and hypotheses, and eliciting rich descriptions.

The methods differ more when it comes to interpreting the data obtained or generated. Here the researchers’ disciplinary background comes more clearly to the fore. Scholars with a background in health or medical sciences try to understand patterns and practices that can optimize treatment. Phenomenologically inspired philosophers target more or less invariable structures of consciousness and relate them to philosophy of mind and cognitive science with the aim of understanding something about the mind. We see this orientation working in the frameworks of Ravn or Køster & Fernandez. Proponents, especially of IPA and to some extent phenomenological psychology do the same, but seem to place greater emphasis on singular experiences. As mentioned, Guerrero-Sanchez’ IPA contribution is exceptional in its thorough use of phenomenological and psychopathological sources. Micro-phenomenology is particularly well suited to focus on the time course of an experience. It can be used for analyzing individual experiences as well as structural invariants. The scope is determined by whether the analysis is applied only to single interviews (specific analysis, focusing on the mapping of singular experiences) or across interviews and experiences (generic analysis, featuring experiential invariants) and whether it is used as a qualitative research tool or gets discussed referring to phenomenological work on the topic. DES is also often interested in portraying the general structure of some class of experience, as seen for instance on Hurlburt’s fascinating analysis of the guitar player, Richardo Cobo’s mental life (Hurlburt, 2011).

Finally, “thinking at the edge” with its psychotherapeutic influences distinguishes itself in clearly aiming at intervention rather than documentation and analysis. Undoubtably, all interview-methodologies with their respective focused inquiry into one or a few experiences, leave the interviewee changed and perhaps even more clear about the nature and significance of certain past experiences. For “thinking on the edge”, however, the very aim of the method consists in clarifying and developing the interviewee´s concepts, theories and more. For all other methodologies, the main goal is usually the knowledge production following from the interview, rather than a change in the interviewee’s understanding and sensation of a certain situation during the interview itself.

Concluding this part, we can distinguish the methods by what aspect of experience they seek to disclose and how this aspect is co-determined by the core interest of the discipline. Your project’s location in for instance, philosophy, medical science or psychology, will co-determine your interest in a particular focus or analytic object, which again will largely determine the most suitable method.

3.5 Are you looking for a method to generate, record, analyze, or interpret data?

Some of the methodologies cover all steps from data recording via analysis to interpretation, while others only cover parts. In some cases, it is possible to combine methodologies in various ways. In others cases, for reasons pertaining to validity and practical handling, such combinations are either unfeasible or not recommendable.

For example, micro-phenomenology offers a method for both the interview and its analysis. It is possible to use the interview method alone. However, because of its emphasis on very detailed data about single moments of experience as well as its strict pre-processing rules, it will likely be difficult to do a consistent micro-phenomenological analysis of an interview that was not generated with the micro-phenomenological methodology.

Giorgi’s idea of a phenomenological analysis, on the other hand, does not generally include specific guidelines for sampling or interviewing, but primarily focuses on data analysis and interpretation (see however, Englander, 2012, 2020). While it to some extent leaves you to your own devices when it comes to recording or generating data, it can be applied to a wide range of pre-existing qualitative data.

Ergo, you must clarify whether your project requires you to generate, record, analyze, or interpret data and from there ensure that the method you pick, allows you to do precisely that.

3.6 What expertise do you need?

To apply any method adequately, you need training. Though most of the methodologies do not require formal training, your empirical and theoretical work will not be able to make a scientific contribution, if you do not first practice pilot interviews and receive instruction from academic mentors, supervisors or peers.¹⁵

Different methodologies, however, differ regarding the amount of training suggested – for interviewer and interviewee alike. There are also different positions regarding the researchers’ necessary expertise in the topic explored, for example whether doing research about dancers requires dance training, or whether interviewees should become co-researchers in interpreting the data etc. To do good phenomenological psychology, you need some theoretical expertise in phenomenological philosophy, reading the foundational works. You also need training in psychology providing “experience in practical professional life-world applications” (Morley & Englander, this vol. Section 7). With this double training, you obtain the necessary “dual disciplinary citizenship” (ibid). Many current users of the method probably fall short of these strict criteria, and might more easily fit into an IPA setting. IPA, like the ethnographically and philosophically inspired approaches, has no formal training criteria, whereas micro-phenomenology and DES strongly encourages methodological training of both interviewer and interviewee. Micro-phenomenology even has a formal qualification program, with regular courses in Europe and Latin America. Likewise, Thinking at the Edge is about to establish its own teaching program as a continuation of the so-called ECT training (https://ect.hi.is/).

This aspect of training has practical implications for your choice of method, not least because the latter might depend on the particular methodological training of your peers and supervisors. You should ensure that the project you are engaging in is compatible with a method in which you can receive adequate institutional support.

3.7 What are your (field´s) criteria of validity and reliability?

Underlying most of the differences portrayed in 2.1–2.6 are more fundamental differing perspectives on what constitutes valid data. Such perspectives again depend on the historical emergence of the methods.

For example, and as mentioned, due to its naturalistic framework, DES insists on the random sampling procedure, as the only way to avoid the bias from the interviewer’s or interviewee’s selection of particular past experiences. In this framework, episodic memory is considered unreliable which is why the exploration focuses on a very short moment described right after in a diary entry.

A core influence on the development of Micro-phenomenology, Francisco Varela was attuned to the hermeneutic and phenomenological dimensions in the interview (see e.g. Varela & Shear, 1999, 14). Yet, micro-phenomenology was designed to work as a mixed method tool in neuro-scientific laboratories, and is historically committed to producing the best possible explorations in some of the least ecological settings. Required to communicate directly with neuro-science, its understanding of reliability is largely determined by replicability. This emphasis is in contrast to more qualitatively based methods, such as ethnographically informed phenomenological interviews, where validity and reliability largely are defined in terms of transparency and consistency (Kvale, 1996, chaps. 12 & 13; Petitmengin, 2017; Morse, 2017; Burke, 2017; Høffding et al., 2022) On the other hand, compared to DES, micro-phenomenology has more trust in introspection: a trust that derives from its legacy of elicitation interviews, developed by Pierre Vermersch for purposes of supervision and pedagogy (Vermersch, 1994), as well as its founders’ affinity with meditative practices. It tries to support recollection while keeping confabulation to a minimum by applying the strict rules of elicitation interviews. Interview evaluation and across-participant comparison are used to complement the criteria of replicability.

Phenomenological psychology, as one integrated method, has its own endogenous validity criteria, related to its interpretation of the epoché, reduction, and its specific analytic steps. In contrast, ethnographically inspired phenomenological methods, as a framework, defer validity criteria to their ancestry methods, namely ethnography and phenomenology.

While it is not always necessary to commit to the legacy of a methodology regarding its validity criteria, it is important to consider how it interacts with the values of your own discipline. Failing to do so, might make you a victim of the battlefield language that can be found in many discussions around the use of first and second person methods and make it difficult to publish your research. At the same time, with respect to such methodological questions, we find that the mutual games of attempted disqualifications that take place within rigid frameworks of existing power structures, are unproductive and block necessary scientific progress. The descriptions in this SI will therefore hopefully encourage you to consider the different methods as tools to explore, rather than rules to further close off, your personal interests and disciplinary possibilities.

3.8 What about the interdisciplinary potential of your methodology?

The framework methodologies mentioned are already interdisciplinary, integrating philosophical phenomenology, cognitive ethnography, and qualitative research methods. Qua frameworks, these methodologies are in principle also open to further interdisciplinary expansion and could involve quantitative or experimental measures as mixed methods (Martiny et al., 2021). In contrast to the frameworks, the singular disciplines with highly specified and set procedures, such as DES and phenomenological psychology, might generally be less amenable to interdisciplinary collaboration.

Phenomenological psychology is one such case: Giorgi wanted to institute a new kind of psychology anchored in Husserl’s thinking resulting in a unique kind of analysis of qualitative interviews. This strong foundational ideological focus on preserving and developing a genuinely humanistic psychology is praiseworthy but also tends to exclude researchers with interests in physiology or neuropsychology. Researchers with such interests are better suited turning to the framework methodologies, neurophenomenology, micro-phenomenology, methods inspired by enactivism, and the discussions on “naturalizing phenomenology” (Gallagher & Zahavi, 2008; Petitot et al., 1999; Zahavi, 2010).

In partial conclusion, we believe that thinking about the answers to the eight questions above will narrow your choice of method down to one or two. Having gone through the necessary reflections to arrive here, will hopefully enable you to produce reliable, consistent and novel work. In both philosophy and natural science, qualitative research methods are often frowned upon (Jack & Roepstorff, 2003; Høffding et al. 2022) and we ought to do better.

4 Is it phenomenological and does it matter?

One of the motivations for this special issue was to discuss many of the methods’ claims to being phenomenological, as they have been debated by van Manen, Smith, Giorgi, and Zahavi. It would of course be ideal if everyone could agree on what they meant by “phenomenology”, and how strictly necessary they believed that inheritance was for their method. But that possibility is long lost for at least two principled reasons.

The first has to do with the widespread use of the term with its history dating back to Brentano. Outside phenomenological philosophy, in analytic philosophy of mind, the cognitive sciences and neuroscience, “phenomenology” often refers vaguely and broadly to “qualia”, “content” or “what-it-is-likeness” and in various qualitative or therapeutic domains it sometimes denotes someone merely sharing their perspective.

The second has to do with a veneration of the term. For instance, for many qualitative researchers, it is as if labeling one’s analysis “phenomenological”, will distinguish it, even if many of these researchers and professionals have little acquaintance with founding scholars such as Husserl, Heidegger or Merleau-Ponty. We don’t think phenomenology deserves any special veneration. In fact, too many honorifics prevents and obscures clear thinking and clear methods.

Our editorial position is that a minimal requirement for calling your work phenomenological, should be a focus on detection and description of existential or structural invariants and an embedding in past or present findings and discussions in phenomenological philosophy regarding your specific topic. In contradistinction to phenomenological psychology, but much in line with Zahavi (2021), Køster & Fernandez (this volume) and Findlay (2009, 8) we do not think steps such as the epoché or reduction are necessary. For qualitative researchers with no special commitment to these requirements, we would recommend replacing the term “phenomenological” with “qualitative” or “experiential”. We repeat that one can do important, valid, reliable, and interesting qualitative work without it being phenomenological. Plain, thorough qualitative craft is sufficient. In that way, we could reserve “phenomenological” for analysis wanting to make claims about the structure of human subjectivity as such, with connections to philosophy.

In this respect, there is a contextual factor conjoining Ravn, Van Westen, Fernandez and Klinke, and editors Martiny and Høffding. Our various formal and informal collaborations have all, directly or indirectly, passed through the Center for Subjectivity Research directed by Dan Zahavi. All of these authors take their basic understanding of the method and purpose of phenomenology from Zahavi and have had continuing discussions about this, as well as its cross fertilization with qualitative research methods, psychopathology, health care, and cognitive science over the last ten years. This collaboration partially explains why the methods presented by these individuals resemble each other as much as they do.

Let us return to the question of this final and third section. Rather than rehearsing the entire debate on the authenticity of phenomenology in the various qualitative research methods, we want to highlight an important consideration, made explicit in Zahavi & Martiny, 2019, namely the question of impact. How much has each method enriched our scientific understanding of our world and we who live in it? Zahavi has repeatedly pointed to phenomenological psychopathology as an interesting cross-disciplinary application of phenomenology, because this line of research has produced a powerful counter-narrative to a purely naturalistic understanding of psychiatry and nosology (Zahavi, 2019, Chap. 10). It is certainly also worth mentioning Varela’s and later enactivists’ enlightening work, bringing mind, brain and world into a more coherent research program.

We hope that newcomers to the study of others’ experience, if using a phenomenologically inspired methodology, will make sure to flag how they are using phenomenology, and what they take that to mean. More importantly, however, we hope that such newcomers will make sure to use the appropriate method transparently, reliably, and consistently and we urge that you invest the most energy in your research making a solid contribution to science and human flourishing.