Speak for Themselves\' Rather Than to Allow

¶ … speak for themselves' rather than to allow the research to be guided by an overarching conceptual design. "Phenomenology is concerned with the study of experience from the perspective of the individual, 'bracketing' taken for granted assumptions and usual ways of perceiving. Epistemologically, phenomenological approaches are based in a paradigm of personal knowledge and subjectivity, and emphasise the importance of personal perspective and interpretation" (Lester 1999:1). When studying subjects from the Middle East in an American context it is particularly important to let the participants speak for themselves given the extent to which persons from Middle Eastern cultures have been objectified and essentialized in the past.

The focus of phenomenology is descriptive in contrast to, for example, grounded theory, which attempts to empirically derive a theory from the amassed information and imposes a system of 'coded' responses upon the respondent's information. For this type of research, rather than attempting to narrow the focus of the research with coded responses and to attempt to classify the participants' perspectives, the emphasis will be upon the uniqueness of their different voices, not their homogeneity. The purpose of grounded theory has been defined as to "get though and beyond conjecture and preconception to exactly the underlying processes of what is going on, so that professionals can intervene with confidence to help resolve the participant's main concerns" (Glaser 1978, cited by Calman). However, this research will not have a prescriptive focus, nor is it designed to provoke such an intervention.

Also, a wide variety of cultural texts and cultural artifacts will be drawn upon to analyze the experiences of the participants, making discourse analysis less appropriate. Although verbal responses will be important, other sources of information will be drawn upon (including non-verbal texts such as clothing, artistic media, music, and other naturalistic observations of the culture). In fact, one of the guiding assumptions of the research will be the need to transcend the purely verbal to paint a full picture of the culture. The focus will likewise be broader than with narrative research, which focuses upon how human beings tell their stories -- although the how's and why's of the individual's story-telling will be important, the broader lens of phenomenology will also allow the researchers to incorporate objective data into this holistic study of a multifaceted phenomenon.