University of Applied Sciences, Fulda

particular research question. The summary is as follows:

1. 
   The summary attempts to reduce the material in such a way as to preserve the essential content and by abstraction to create a manageable corpus which still reflects the original material
   
2. 
   explication involves explaining, clarifying and annotating the material
   
3. 
   structuring corresponds more or less to the procedures used in classical context analysis and is also viewed by Mayring (1988:75) as the most crucial technique of content analysis. [ 2000:62-64]
   

The writer has tried to use qualitative research methods in spite of some limitations which were due to the nature of the MA program.

Some Theoretical Orientations in Qualitative Approach

Qualitative inquiry is based on different theoretical traditions and orientations. This variety is caused by the “conceptualisation of what is important to ask and consider in elucidating and understanding the empirical world”(Patton, p 67).

Phenomenology

Phenomenology is a movement in philosophy that has been adapted by certain sociologists to promote an understanding of the relationship between states of individual consciousness and social life. As an approach within sociology, phenomenology seeks to reveal how human awareness is implicated in the production of social action, social situations and social worlds (Natanson 1970).
Phenomenology was initially developed by Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), a German mathematician and philosopher, who felt “that the objectivism of science precluded an adequate apprehension of the world” (Husserl 1931, 1970). He tried to find the sources or essences of reality in human consciousness.
The word phenomenology has been used to explain and speak about different paradigms, perspectives - or philosophy. As was mentioned, phenomenology in philosophy is closely connected with Edmund Husserl, the German philosopher. However, the word phenomenology was used in a number of senses prior to Husserl, all of which denote in one way or another a study based on appearances. Husserl makes two important statements regarding his own conception of phenomenology: “. . . first of all, that it is ‘descriptive’ and, secondly, that it involves a suspension of judgment, a ‘bracketing’ of the empirical beliefs that we hold (either explicitly or tacitly) about the world” (Philosophy 2:690).
Husserl actually speaks about the way people experience things and describe them through their senses. He assumed that we can only know what we experience by attending to perceptions and meanings that awaken our conscious awareness. We experience things around us through our sensory abilities, but these experiences have to be interpreted later on. Yet descriptions of experience and interpretations are so intertwined that they often become one. Interpretation is essential to an understanding of experience and the experience includes the interpretations. Thus phenomenologists focus on how we put together the phenomenon we experience in such a way as to make sense of the world and, in so doing, develop a worldview. The subjective experience incorporates the objective thing and a person’s reality.
Put simply and directly, phenomenological inquiry focuses on the question: What is the structure and essence of experience of this phenomenon for these people? The phenomenon experienced may be a relationship, a marriage, or a job. The phenomenon may be a program, an organisation, or a culture.
There are two implications of this perspective. The first implication is that what is important to know is what people experience and how they interpret the world. The second implication is methodological. The only way for us to really know what the other person experiences is to experience it ourselves. This signifies the importance of participant observation.
The final dimension of a phenomenological approach is the assumption that there is an essence or essences to shared experience. This is how people understand each other, because it is these cores that they share. Thus, in order to find out these common cores one can analyse them, bracket them and find out the essences of different phenomena, for instance, the essence of being a mother. The assumption of essence, like the ethnographer’s assumption that culture exists and is important, becomes the defining characteristic of a purely phenomenological study. According to Eichelberger phenomenologists are:

. . . rigorous in their analysis of the experience, so that basic elements of the experience that are common to members of a

specific society, or all human beings, can be identified. This last point is essential to understanding the philosophical basis of phenomenology, yet it is often misunderstood. On the other hand, each person has a unique set of experiences which are treated as truth and which determine that individual’s behaviour. In this sense, truth (and associate behaviour) is totally unique to each individual. Some researchers are misled to think that they are using a phenomenological perspective when they study four teachers and describe their four unique views. A phenomenologist assumes a commonality in those human experiences and must use rigorously the method of bracketing to search for those commonalities. Results obtained from a phenomenological study can then be related to and integrated with those of other phenomenologists studying the same experience, or phenomenon. [1989:6]

Later Hussrel’s work was adapted and used in sociology by Alfred Schutz. Schütz tried to show that meaning derived from a subjective interpretation of the world can eventually also become manifest in an objective social world.

In short, conducting a study with a phenomenological focus is different from using phenomenology to philosophically justify the methods of qualitative inquiry. The focus of phenomenology in qualitative inquiry is describing what people experience and how it is that they experience what they experience.
Phenomenology is used in two basic ways in sociology: (1) to theorize about substantive sociological problems and (2) to enhance the adequacy of sociological research methods. According to phenomenology, society is a construction of human beings, and therefore all the fields of science which aim at explaining the meaning of this social order should themselves be constructions. Phenomenology, therefore, does not take everything for granted. It tries to discover the procedure of the construction especially in those cases in which the construction is taken as an immutable reality. Hence, phenomenology operates differently from conventional social science.
Phenomenology is a theoretical orientation, but it does not generate deductions from propositions that can be empirically tested. It tries more to provide a descriptive analysis of the procedures by which a given reality/phenomenon is constructed, be it social or self-generated. It is through these descriptions that one can find out how a certain phenomenon occurs, and how it is taken as the a manifestation of the world; that is an objective reality.
Phenomenologists are concerned with how common-sense knowledge is produced, disseminated, and internalised. In order to study these phenomena, qualitative methods of inquiry are used. Researchers frequently undertake analyses of small groups, social situations, and organisations using face-to-face techniques of participant observation. Other methods, such as intensive interviewing, are also used to uncover the subject’s orientations or his understanding of the world.
Phenomenology commences with an analysis of the natural attitude. This is understood as the way ordinary individuals participate in the world, taking its existence for granted, assuming its objectivity, and undertaking action projects as if they were predetermined. Language, culture, and common sense are experienced in the natural attitude as objective features of an external world that are learned by actors in the course of their lives.
According to phenomenology, human beings experience and build up their knowledge of the world on the basis of creating classifications or typifying. Children, for example, are exposed to a variety of things around them. They start learning and distinguishing them from each other by creating categories of things, such as vehicles, human beings, and animals.
On the other hand people believe that ‘knowledge is objective’; in the sense that it is shared by everybody. However, each person is unique and each develops a relatively distinct stock of typifications.
Social interaction, then, is a process of reciprocal interpretive construction by actors applying their stock of knowledge at hand to the occasion. The researcher, therefore, can complete the puzzle by putting the parts next to each other, though the parts are made of small units, even as small as the experiences of one person.
It is obvious that such an approach to research cannot use the quantitative methods which analyse a phenomenon by measuring it in numbers.

Symbolic Interactionism

Symbolic interactionism traces its roots to pragmatist philosophers such as Peirce, Dewey, Cooley, and Mead. As Plummer notes, “it [symbolic interactionism] seeks to unify intelligent thought and logical method with practical actions and appeals to experience” (p. 227). The sociologists who developed and have continued this perspective include Blumer, Becker, Goffman, Denzin and Hochschild.
Among the characteristics of the symbolic interaction perspective are an emphasis on interactions, the self as constructed by others through communication and interaction, and flexible, adjustable social processes. Its concern tends to be the interaction order of daily life and experiences, rather than the structures associated with larger-scale and relatively fixed social forces and laws.
Blumer developed a more systematic sociological approach on the basis of Mead’s ideas. He coined the term 'symbolic interactionism' in 1937, keeping sociological perspective alive through the early 1950s at Chicago University, and then in California, where he was a professor at the University of California in Berkeley. Blumer notes:

The term ‘symbolic interactionism’ refers, of course, to the peculiar and distinctive character of interaction as it takes place between human beings. The peculiarity consists in the fact that human beings interpret or define each other’s actions instead of merely reacting to each other’s actions. Their ‘response’ is not made directly to the actions of one another but instead is based on the meaning which they attach to such actions. Thus, human interaction is mediated by the use of symbols, by interpretation, or by ascertaining the meaning of one another’s actions. This mediation is equivalent to inserting a process of interpretation between stimulus and response in the case of human behaviour. [p. 180]

According to Blumer the characteristics of this approach are (i) human interaction, (ii) interpretation or definition rather than mere reaction, (iii) response derived from meaning (iv) use of symbols, and (v) interpretation between stimulus and response. In fact, Blumer added interpretation to the process of stimulus-response and put more emphasis on individuals instead of a large group.
Some features of this theory are explained as follows:

1. 
   Symbols. Human beings are distinguished because of their extensive and creative use of communication. Communication takes place through symbols, which are formed by history and culture. It is through symbols that meaning is associated with interpretation, action and interaction. The symbolic interaction perspective emphasises the shifting, flexible, and creative manner in which humans use symbols. The process of adjustment and change involves individual interaction and broader features such as norms and order. Though in communication there seem to be routine habits and shared meaning, in reality a lot of adjustment and change takes place. The symbolic interactionists study and analyse the processes involved in all aspects of the use of symbols and communication.
   
2.