Hermeneutic constructivism : one ontology for authentic understanding
- Authors: Peck, Blake , Mummery, Jane
- Date: 2023
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Nursing Inquiry Vol. 30, no. 2 (2023), p.
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- Description: Nursing and nurses rely upon qualitative research to understand the intricacies of the human condition. Acknowledging the subjective nature of reality and commonly founded in a constructivist epistemology, qualitative approaches offer opportunities for uncovering insights from the perspective of the individual participants, the insider's view, and the construction of representations that maintain an intimacy with the subject's realities. Debate continues, however, about what is needed for a qualitative construction to be considered an authentic understanding of a subject's realities. Authenticity in the context of qualitative research has been described as entailing consideration of a number of well‐trodden dimensions: fairness, ontological, educative, catalytic and tactical. Taking these dimensional requirements as key, this paper argues that authenticity may not always be as well‐developed through some of the standard practices in qualitative research as perhaps expected. In particular, qualitative understandings of authenticity stress that participants should not be merely reported on but instead should be dynamically involved in and changed by the constructions and interpretations of data developed throughout the research process. As this paper illustrates, such engagements appear problematic for qualitative research approaches that are beholden to designative commitments in the context of language and meaning‐making and which tend to prioritise commonality and generality at the expense of individual authenticity. An alternative qualitative approach, Hermeneutic Constructivism, is proposed as better able to achieve the requirements of the dimensions of authenticity. As outlined, this approach is well‐placed to present an understanding of human experience through a genuinely expressivist approach and transcends the stress upon the common or the general that can be pervasive and problematic.
- Authors: Peck, Blake , Mummery, Jane
- Date: 2023
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Nursing Inquiry Vol. 30, no. 2 (2023), p.
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: Nursing and nurses rely upon qualitative research to understand the intricacies of the human condition. Acknowledging the subjective nature of reality and commonly founded in a constructivist epistemology, qualitative approaches offer opportunities for uncovering insights from the perspective of the individual participants, the insider's view, and the construction of representations that maintain an intimacy with the subject's realities. Debate continues, however, about what is needed for a qualitative construction to be considered an authentic understanding of a subject's realities. Authenticity in the context of qualitative research has been described as entailing consideration of a number of well‐trodden dimensions: fairness, ontological, educative, catalytic and tactical. Taking these dimensional requirements as key, this paper argues that authenticity may not always be as well‐developed through some of the standard practices in qualitative research as perhaps expected. In particular, qualitative understandings of authenticity stress that participants should not be merely reported on but instead should be dynamically involved in and changed by the constructions and interpretations of data developed throughout the research process. As this paper illustrates, such engagements appear problematic for qualitative research approaches that are beholden to designative commitments in the context of language and meaning‐making and which tend to prioritise commonality and generality at the expense of individual authenticity. An alternative qualitative approach, Hermeneutic Constructivism, is proposed as better able to achieve the requirements of the dimensions of authenticity. As outlined, this approach is well‐placed to present an understanding of human experience through a genuinely expressivist approach and transcends the stress upon the common or the general that can be pervasive and problematic.
Recovering the “individual” for qualitative research: An idiographic approach
- Authors: Peck, Blake , Mummery, Jane
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung Vol. 20, no. 3 (2019), p.
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- Description: As detailed examination of the experience of the individual, the Self or the I is overtaken in the intellectual climate of qualitative research by an aim to understand human experience on a collective or transferable level, the claim made by qualitative researchers to providing genuine understanding of the “what is it like” characteristics of being human arguably becomes shaky. If the wellspring from which we draw our understanding is limited to understandings that researchers recognize as general, then the unique and deeper characteristics of individual experience may be buried within the aggregate. We contend that any such restricted approach cannot begin by itself to cogently inform a theory of or a theory for examining human experience that is sufficiently sophisticated for qualitative research practice. Consequently, we propose a recovery and inclusion, into qualitative research frameworks, of a strongly idiographic consideration of the “what is it like” characteristics of phenomena, as experienced by the individual person. Recommending thereby a recovery of hermeneutic and phenomenological modes of thought, in this article, we suggest that the central ideas of KELLY’s personal construct psychology involve fertile ground for guiding such a shift in qualitative research. © 2019, Institut für Qualitative Forschung,Internationale Akademie Berlin gGmbH. All rights reserved.
- Authors: Peck, Blake , Mummery, Jane
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung Vol. 20, no. 3 (2019), p.
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: As detailed examination of the experience of the individual, the Self or the I is overtaken in the intellectual climate of qualitative research by an aim to understand human experience on a collective or transferable level, the claim made by qualitative researchers to providing genuine understanding of the “what is it like” characteristics of being human arguably becomes shaky. If the wellspring from which we draw our understanding is limited to understandings that researchers recognize as general, then the unique and deeper characteristics of individual experience may be buried within the aggregate. We contend that any such restricted approach cannot begin by itself to cogently inform a theory of or a theory for examining human experience that is sufficiently sophisticated for qualitative research practice. Consequently, we propose a recovery and inclusion, into qualitative research frameworks, of a strongly idiographic consideration of the “what is it like” characteristics of phenomena, as experienced by the individual person. Recommending thereby a recovery of hermeneutic and phenomenological modes of thought, in this article, we suggest that the central ideas of KELLY’s personal construct psychology involve fertile ground for guiding such a shift in qualitative research. © 2019, Institut für Qualitative Forschung,Internationale Akademie Berlin gGmbH. All rights reserved.
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