Monday 26 July 2010

Textural-Structural Description of an Experience

I'm currently reading Phenomenal Research Methods by Clark Moustakas, a seminal work within Phenomenological qualitative research, to understand how to formulate my own Visual Communication research methodology. Husserl's Noema and Noesis becomes part of the methodology of understanding the meanings and essences of phenomena, through the construction of an Individual Textural Description and an Individual Structural Description.

The Individual Textural Description is constructed from transcripts of the interview going through a rigorous analysis to obtain relevant "validated invariant constituents and themes" (more in another post on that I think?).

The Individual Structural Description of the experience is based upon the textural description and "Imaginative Variation" (another post?).

The overall experience across the group can then be drawn from the descriptions into a Composite Description.

This is based on the Van Kaam method of analysis of Phenomenological data. Although the Stevick-Colaizzi-Keen method is in structure different, the use of the Textural-Structural Description appears to be the same. (pp120-122)

References used:
MOUSTAKAS, C. (1994) Phenomenological Research Methods. Sage Publications.