Abstracts of 2000 Award Winners' Papers:

Toward a Collaborative Phenomenological Method for Psychology as a Human Science:

By: Beate Friedeberg
Affiliation: Saybrook Institute

This essay examines one approach to improving the empirical quality of phenomenological methodology for psychology. Some researchers argue that human phenomena are more appropriately studied with qualitative rather than quantitative methods. Empiricism is also more broadly redefined as pertaining to "experience" (rather than being equated with "experiment") by some qualitative researchers. To be scientific, however, disciplined inquiry must be systematic and intersubjectively valid. Phenomenological methods for psychology do not yet meet these criteria. Giorgi has been developing a phenomenological method for psychology designed to meet "human scientific" criteria. If more explicit collaboration with the research participant is included, the interpreted data remains closer to the research participant's experience, and is thus more phenomenologically empirical.