A Method of Phenomenological

Interviewing
Advancing Qualitative Methods

Mark T. Bevan

Abstract
In this article I propose a method of interviewing for descriptive
phenomenological research that offers an explicit, theoretically
based approach for researchers. My approach enables application of
descriptive phenomenology as a total method for research, and not
one just focused on data analysis. This structured phenomenological
approach to interviewing applies questions based on themes of
experience contextualization, apprehending the phenomenon and its
clarification. The method of questioning employs descriptive and
structural questioning as well as novel use of imaginative variation to
explore experience. The approach will help researchers understand
how to undertake descriptive phenomenological research interviews.

Keywords

descriptive methods, Husserl, interviews, phenomenology, research

design, research, qualitative

Northumbria University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, United Kingdom

Corresponding author(s):

Mark T. Bevan, Faculty of Health & Life Sciences, Northumbria

University, Coach Lane Campus, Benton, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, NE7
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 7XA, United Kingdom. Email: mark.bevan@northumbria.ac.uk
In this article I outline a guided approach to phenomenological
interviewing. My approach was developed out of an understanding of
phenomenological method applied to qualitative interviewing. From
the outset I drew on the phenomenology of Husserl’s (1970)
descriptive perspective, and am not intending to replace current
methods but provide an alternative for phenomenological
researchers. To begin, I introduce some important fundamental
concepts of phenomenology essential to my interview approach.
This is followed by a brief review of sources of phenomenological
interviewing approaches, which leads to an explanation of my
proposed interview guide. To demonstrate its use, examples are
drawn from my study of patients’ and nurses’ experiences of
hemodialysis satellite units (Bevan, 2007).

The interview in phenomenological research is perhaps one of the

most underemphasized aspects within the process. There is much
discussion related to overcoming the complexities of
phenomenological language and the controversies related to
polarization between descriptive and interpretative orientations. The
particular language and concepts of phenomenology are ever
present and complex, particularly to the novice researcher. What is
important for a phenomenological researcher is familiarization with
and internalization of these concepts for immersion in and
application of phenomenological research method. Clearly these
debates are important, but they have a tendency to distract attention
from practical application, which in turn impoverishes
phenomenological research method.

To aid familiarization and help maintain a theory and practice link I

begin by outlining the fundamental phenomenological concepts of
natural attitude and lifeworld. Husserl (1970) explained the natural
attitude as the way in which each of us is involved in the lifeworld.
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 Lifeworld is described as consciousness of the world, including
objects or experiences within it, and is always set against a horizon
that provides context. Being in natural attitude is effortless, and the
normal unreflective mode of being engaged in an already known
world. It is precisely the experience of the lifeworld in natural attitude
that is under investigation in phenomenological research (Giorgi,
1997). Therefore, a phenomenological researcher is interested in
describing a person’s experience in the way he or she experiences it,
and not from some theoretical standpoint.
This epistemological perspective is essentially postmodern, in
recognizing that human experience is complex, is grounded in the
world which is experienced intersubjectively, and has meaning
(Mason, 2002). In this approach I tacitly recognize that respondents
are viewed as real, active, and interpreting, and will intend to find
meaning in experience—including the research interview (Holstein &
Gubrium, 1995; von Eckartsberg, 1986). An additional element
related to natural attitude is how phenomena are presented in
different ways to individuals. Phenomenologically this is known as
modes of appearing. Modes of appearing means that a thing
experienced, such as a person, car, idea, emotion, or memory, is
experienced in many ways from different perspectives, by one
person or by many people. What this means is that a thing has
multiple ways of appearing, which provides it with an identity. For
example, a car can be experienced by one person as something
desired, something observed, something driven, and so forth. A car
is experienced from different perspectives, which are then
constituted to provide a whole phenomenon of apparently seamless
perspectives. The thing is constituted, and as such has a sense of
being. It is important to state that there is no objective reality or
residual object behind its modes of appearing; an object appears in
many ways, which makes up its being.
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 Errors of analysis of experience occur out of insufficient systematic
examination and are deemed incomplete. For example, someone
might be easily misidentified because of a glimpsed look in poor light
rather than a full gaze in clear light. Therefore it is important to say
that systematic interviewing of an individual, as well as many people,
will provide important modes of appearing and how an experience is
constituted, and will limit the likelihood of incomplete analyses.

The method of analyzing phenomena in the phenomenological

tradition is reflective (Husserl, 1967; von Eckartsberg, 1986). In
philosophical phenomenology it is the philosopher who reflects on
the givenness of a thing, whereas in phenomenological research
initial reflection is by the person who has undergone a particular
experience, and this reflection is a primary interpretation. It is
through thematized verbalization of this reflected experience that we
gain access to the thing experienced, its modes of appearing in
natural attitude, and its meaning. If we accept the supposition that
vocabulary is shared through culture and a linguistic community
whereby experience is identified and named in a consistent manner,
then interview is an appropriate means of explicating lifeworld
experience (von Eckartsberg).
Interview is by far the most dominant method for data collection in
phenomenological research; however, despite this dominance there
is very little instruction as to how it should be undertaken. There are
many research methods books and articles that provide sound
advice for interviewing which tend to adopt a general approach. This
might be wholly appropriate given the need for flexibility in the
examination of human experience. There is an assumption that
general qualitative interview method will suffice for analysis to
commence. Indeed, there appears more emphasis on data analysis
method than on how the data are obtained in a phenomenological
manner. For example, Moustakas (1994) provided only minor
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 discussion about including examples of questions. He required the
researcher to undertake the epoché (explained below) prior to the
interview. Moustakas was mainly concerned with phenomenological
theory and the analysis of data.
The influential phenomenological researcher Giorgi (1997) stated
that “questions are generally broad and open ended so that the
subject has sufficient opportunity to express his or her view point
extensively” (p. 245), which reflected a generalist approach. Giorgi
(1989, 1997) also differentiated descriptions from interviews
whereby a description provided content for the interview. Here Giorgi
implied that the phenomenological interview approach is a two-
tiered method of obtaining descriptions of context followed by an
interview for eliciting meaning. Giorgi offered no advice as to how the
interview should proceed other than via broad, open-ended
questions. What this highlighted was an important phenomenological
concept of context, which is the lifeworld of the person, as being
necessary for the interview.
Some practical advice was provided for phenomenological
researchers by Benner (1994), who recommended that questions be
asked in the vocabulary and language of the individual being
interviewed. In Benner’s view this approach enabled access to the
respondent’s perspective unencumbered by theoretical terms, and
would appear to imply a form of phenomenological reduction.
Benner also advised the researcher to listen actively, which should
lead to areas for clarification and probing. This is sound practical
advice but is generalist in nature. She also suggested more than a
single interview per person, and the importance of using clarifying
questions. Benner used questions on the basis of getting
respondents to describe experience, and structural questions for
clarity.
The often-cited Colaizzi (1978) provided some indication of
application of phenomenological theory by stressing the importance
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 of uncovering and interrogating presuppositions, implying use of the
phenomenological reduction by the researcher. However, for
Colaizzi, elicited presuppositions provided a thematic basis for
question development, leading from personal experience to a broad
themed question. In Colaizzi’s approach the researcher applies
personal understanding to the phenomenon prior to interview. This
runs the risk of covering the pheomenon’s modes of appearing with
preconceived interpretations and not letting an experience be
articulated as it is experienced by the experiencer.
More recently, Kvale and Brinkmann (2009) outlined phenomenology
as a basis for their approach to qualitative research interviewing.
Kvale and Brinkmann considered research interviewing to be a craft
that required a researcher to obtain descriptions of aspects of
experience of people in the lifeworld. The authors clearly attempted
to structure the interview via phenomenological theory by including
what they called “deliberate naiveté,” which is another way of stating
the phenomenological reduction. Kvale and Brinkmann also accepted
a phenomenon as it was, which included ambiguity and respondent
reinterpretation of experience, and stated that questions should aim
to describe specific situations and actions and not general opinions.
Both Giorgi’s (1985) context description and Kvale and Brinkmann’s
(2009) deliberate naiveté are important structural elements of
phenomenological interviewing.
A detailed description of phenomenological interview method was
provided by Seidman (2006), which is based on Schutz’s (1967)
interpretation of Husserl’s (1960) phenomenology. Seidman’s (2006)
method required three interviews per person, wherein the first is a
focused life history that provides context, followed by an interview
aimed to reconstruct the experience with its relationships and
structures, and finally an interview that allowed the respondent to
reflect on the meaning of his or her experience. Seidman explicitly
constructed context to provide meaning, which enabled behavior to
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 be put into context. Seidman also adopted the phenomenological
reduction and stated that the interviewer should recognize it is not
his or her ego that is important but to stay focused on the person
being interviewed. Additionally, he recommended the use of open-
ended questions developed from the context-building process, and if
a guide is used it should be used with caution and flexibility.
Seidman (2006), like Kvale and Brinkmann (2009), used
phenomenological theory to guide the phenomenological interview,
with the intention of providing a structured interview approach to
exploring phenomena. This is wholly appropriate for phenomenology
and is congruent with descriptive phenomenology. As a starting
point, general qualitative interviewing method provides a useful basis
for undertaking phenomenological interviews. Qualitative interviews
are generally deemed to be semistructured or unstructured
(Holloway & Wheeler, 1996). Mason (2002) made the point that
alleged unstructured interviews provide an inaccurate picture of the
process because even the most unstructured interview will have
some underlying structure to remain focused on the phenomenon
under investigation. Accepting the existence of underlying structures
in interviews, no matter how vague, is an important starting point for
a qualitative interviewer.

Applying Phenomenological Structure to the

Interview Process
Understandably there will be those who consider structure in
phenomenological interviewing as its antithesis, but they should not
be alarmed because structure does not necessarily have to tell you
what to ask but rather how to manage the process of questioning. In
support of structure within phenomenology, hermeneutic
phenomenologist Paul Ricoeur (as cited by Ihde, 1971) claimed
emphatically that “phenomenology must be structural” (p. 5) and
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 has no universal method. Therefore, a phenomenological researcher
is free to structure his or her interview in a way that enables a
thorough investigation. Phenomenological theory has sufficient
structure to examine an experience through interview in an explicit
way, which can be done flexibly. Phenomenological interviewing
should remain faithful to phenomenological method but should be
kept practical. This is also important for maintaining methodological
consistency and increased trustworthiness.
Structure in the phenomenological interview method to be explained
here is provided by the following key concepts: description, natural
attitude, lifeworld, modes of appearing, phenomenological reduction,
and imaginative variation. It should be remembered that
phenomenological method is a total method in that one is immersed
in it from the start and not only at the point of data analysis. By
integrating the points identified by the authors mentioned above, I
developed a phenomenological interview method with a structure for
phenomenological interviewing consisting of three main domains:
contextualization (natural attitude and lifeworld), apprehending the
phenomenon (modes of appearing, natural attitude), and clarifying
the phenomenon (imaginative variation and meaning). For an outline
of the structure of phenomenological interviewing, see Figure 1.

Figure 1. A structure of phenomenological interviewing.

It is important to note that each of these three structural interview

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 domains is undertaken in the phenomenological reduction on the
part of the researcher. The reduction is the means of thematizing
people’s conscious experience of phenomena (Husserl, 1970). To
undertake the phenomenological reduction a researcher is required
to abstain from the use of personal knowledge, theory, or beliefs, to
become a perpetual beginner (Merleau-Ponty, 1962) or deliberate
naiveté, in Kvale and Brinkmann’s (2009) terms.
To abstain from the use of personal knowledge is what Husserl
(1970) called “bracketing,” which is a setting aside of what we
already know about a given phenomenon. It is worth acknowledging
that total abstention is impossible, but that is not the point.
Bracketing or abstention requires a researcher to become aware of
his or her own natural attitude, immersion in their lifeworld, and how
it is taken for granted (Merleau-Ponty, 1962). Essentially, bracketing
is an attempt to overcome the uncritical dogmatism of the natural
attitude. What abstention amounts to is a dialogue with the self, to
become reflexive when asking questions. Interview questions are
posed with self-consciousness of one’s own natural attitude and, for
example, to avoid asking theory-laden questions, as Benner (1994)
suggested.
By undertaking the phenomenological reduction the researcher has
attempted to remain faithful to the descriptions of experience of the
people interviewed, and has accepted that this was how they
described their world, which maintains a fundamental level of
validity. The phenomenological reduction is a commitment to
adopting the phenomenological attitude, also known as the epoché.
The epoché is to be seen as a critical-position-taking attitude that
requires the phenomenologist to adopt and accept a resolve to take
nothing for granted. Only through the epoché does the
phenomenologist engage in the resolve to perform the reduction
(Zaner, 1975). Hence, the epoché is an attitudinal shift that is
directed at moving the phenomenologist out of his or her natural
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 attitude and adopting a critical stance. This critical stance requires
the phenomenologist to question his or her position regarding the
phenomenon under investigation. Critical self-questioning is a
reflective process that remains self-conscious. Self-consciousness
requires a critical view of bracketed knowledge that includes beliefs,
knowledge, and attitudes that present themselves in relation to the
phenomenon, and is maintained throughout the interview.
By undertaking the epoché there is a change in attitude toward the
phenomenon under investigation, which is situated in reality but it
does not attempt to exclude this reality (Zahavi, 2003). When a
researcher embarks on the attitudinal shift of the epoché he or she
will undergo new ways of experiencing, of theorizing, and of thinking
about a phenomenon, and this is where phenomenological research
becomes radical. Radical in this sense means both original and
changing.

Contextualization
Objects or experiences of the lifeworld stand out against a backdrop
of context or horizon, with a personal biography that provides
meaning to that object or experience (Husserl, 1970). Therefore, to
examine a person’s particular experience a researcher must consider
the context and biography from which the experience gains
meaning. For example, in the case of examining a patient’s
experience of a hemodialysis satellite unit, questions could not have
started directly at the experience of a dialysis satellite unit because
this would have isolated it from the patient’s lifeworld context and
rendered it meaningless. Instead, the interview must develop from a
point of providing context in which the experience is situated
(Seidman, 2006). For example, the fact that a patient had kidney
failure provided context for his or her experience of dialysis.
Therefore, a person’s context can be made explicit through asking
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 descriptive questions about such experiences as becoming ill or how
he or she came to be dialyzing at the satellite unit.
Contextualizing questioning enables a person to reconstruct and
describe his or her experience as a form of narrative that will be full
of significant information. Further detailed context descriptions can
be developed by asking him or her to describe accounts of places or
events, actions and activities (Spradley, 1979). The method of
context elicitation provides some degree of narrative, which gives
context but also highlights areas for further questioning. This
method is congruent with Giorgi’s (1989) description and interview
process and Seidman’s (2006) focused life history. The following
interview transcription is an example of an initial context question
from a patient’s experience of becoming ill:

Interviewer (I):

Can you describe to me about becoming ill with kidney failure?

Patient (P):

It happened over a period of say, six weeks. I caught flu. This is how I
found out. I caught flu and I were at work and I were getting tired,
you know, during the day. Well, I’m a wagon driver and at dinnertime
you stop for your break, and I’d have something to eat and then sleep
for a while, you know, because I was really tired. I had cold and that
knocks hell out of you anyway. I were like that for a week or so. I
thought take a couple tablets, shake it off, and kept on working and
working, and I couldn’t shake it off. And then I came home from work.
Well I got into the yard [work] and I was feeling rough, and the boss
just said to me, “Get yourself home and get yourself sorted out,” you
see. So I went home and I went to the doctor’s and I told him I
weren’t feeling well, and he said, “It’s just a bit of cold you’ve got,” so
he sent me home. Now the same day about half eleven at night
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 [11:30 p.m.] I couldn’t breathe; fluid were building up inside. I didn’t
know it were fluid building up at the time, but I couldn’t breathe. So
wife phoned for an ambulance and rushed me into hospital, and they
did some tests on me when I was there and that’s when I found out it
were my kidneys that were failing.

The above description of experience demonstrates what the patient

went through that provided context for his dialysis. In this instance
illness presented itself as an accumulation of fluid, the distress it
caused, and its impact on work. Naturally this does not give the
whole context, but it demonstrates contextual elements that
provided meaning to the experience. Description begins to show the
complexity of experience and significance of interrelatedness of
elements of experience. It is these relationships that begin to offer
the researcher insight into meaning of experience and how it is
constituted. Application of the method also requires flexibility on the
part of the interviewer to develop questions that are relevant to the
individual. It is important that as an interviewer one doesn’t start
analysis, although notes can be made of issues or elements that
might be useful for clarification questioning later.

What is important is that asking context questions allows a

presentation and examination of a phenomenon under investigation
as it stands out against context, but is intrinsically part of it and
informs meaning. To examine another mode of appearing of
experience, additional context questions can be asked. For example,
returning to the dialysis satellite unit study, most patients attended a
central or main dialysis unit before moving to a satellite unit. The
context question example below demonstrates a context experience
of a main dialysis unit as one of constant change and illness, which
shed light on how patients interpreted the dialysis satellite
experience.
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 I:

Please describe to me about being at the main unit.

P:

At the main unit it was different staff and different faces at times,
swapping and changing all the time, because at the main unit they
[patients] are mainly ill people compared to here [satellite unit], but
well, I’m ill but, I mean they were older and they had more symptoms
than I had, and needed more looking after and that.

Apprehending the Phenomenon

The next phase in my approach for a phenomenological interview is
an apprehending of the phenomenon. This directs focus on the
experience the researcher is interested in. The researcher begins to
explore that particular experience in detail with more descriptive
questions. Phenomenological method posits that the identity of a
thing or experience has modes of appearance and is experienced in
many ways (Sokolowski, 2000). For example, a patient might
experience a dialysis satellite unit in many ways, such as for the first
time, taken for granted, in the winter months, or when feeling ill. The
experience is not limited to one person but each person experiences
the satellite unit, and thus we find the unit is experienced in many
ways by many people.

In view of many modes of appearing, interviewers need to consider

exploring many experiences not just of one individual but by others,
too. The implication here is that a single question is inadequate to
present the many aspects of an experience, and therefore the
researcher should be prepared to ask more questions, which should
remain descriptive. An example of this kind of question used in the
dialysis satellite unit study was to ask participants to describe a
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 typical day for them at the satellite unit or to describe what
happened when they were not feeling well. Here the researcher will
begin to see how the person interprets his or her experience through
descriptions of events and activities.

Although the goal is to get participants to describe experience, one

cannot control how people choose to express their experience. It is
not unusual for people to describe experience in terms of a narrative
account, to use analogy, chronology, or significant events. These
expressions are interpretations of experience that assume immediate
understanding on the part of the listener. In this descriptive approach
the researcher should not accept these interpretations as already
understood, although this is not to negate their existence. The
researcher needs to investigate these interpretations to elicit clarity.
To achieve this goal, descriptive questions are supplemented with
structural questions that aim to show how individuals structure their
experiences (Spradley, 1979). Structural questions can be repeated
but should be adapted to each individual. Descriptive and structural
questions complement each other and add depth and quality to
information (Spradley).

An example of a descriptive structural question used in the dialysis

satellite unit study was to ask what a person did to prepare for
dialysis. When an interpretative statement is offered by a participant
then a structural question is used to unpick what is meant by it. The
following example demonstrates how the method works in practice.
The example is an excerpt from a nurse, who described a concern
for the health of the patient during dialysis treatment. This was her
feeling and meaning making of that experience, but what was also
needed was a structural question to expand on it. The first question
was descriptive, which was then followed by structural questions to
illuminate the aspect under inspection:
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 I:

You mentioned that you had a concern for your dialysis patients.
Could you please describe what you mean by concern?

Nurse (N):

Yeah. I think as a nurse in dialysis you have a responsibility to look

after them [patients] to the best of your responsibility, and you
provide the facilities for dialysis. You provide the extras such as
advice. You provide a service, basically, and that to me is, is, if you
have done your job right and the patient walks out with a smile on
their face, saying, “See you in two days,” “See you after the
weekend,” and leaves well [not ill] . . . if they leave well or you are
walking through a bay and everyone is nodding [sleeping] or
watching TV but someone doesn’t look very well, I think it is my
responsibility to say, “Are you all right?” They might be feeling fine or
they might be going off [having a hypotensive episode] but not
wanting to say anything, or frequently the buzzer doesn’t work
[laughs]. It is just thinking, “They’re all right or they’re quiet. What
are they up to?” Just thinking, “You don’t look very well,” and “Are
you all right?” And sometimes patients just don’t complain even if
they have got chest pain or they are feeling like they are going off,
but they don’t want to bother you because you are busy.

I:

You mentioned that you were concerned about the patients. Can you
describe what you do when you are concerned?

N:

Erm, I enjoy what I do. Silly things like having a laugh and joke with
the patients, being serious when you need to, making the place
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 comfortable for them, and being approachable so that they can say,
“Can I have a word?” Whether it is your patient or not, whoever is on
that shift. I take that as a compliment if a patient can confide in you,
and I don’t find it trouble if I find some says, “Would you mind getting
me a blanket?” or “Can I have an extra cup of tea?” You know, it is
part of their comfort, so long as they are not drinking gallons of tea
and haven’t got twenty-five blankets and everyone else has got
none. I think it is part of caring, the little things as much as the big
things. You don’t just connect them up and say, “Hi” and “Bye,” and
leave them for four hours. You have got one eye out and thinking,
yeah, feel all right, feel okay. They have got to be able to say that
they don’t feel well. That is what nursing is all about.

Here the nurse offered several descriptive structural aspects of

concern and concrete examples such as comfort and engendering
trust. She finished by attributing these aspects to nursing. The nurse
provided a wealth of information for later analysis. It is not required at
this point of the discussion to enter into data analysis, but to
demonstrate how the use of structural descriptive questions enabled
detailed apprehending of the phenomenon. It would have been easy
to accept the word concern at face value, particularly as a normal
nursing concept wherein concern for patients is an important value.
If the researcher accepted the expression of concern without
structural questioning this would have meant accepting natural
attitude interpretations, as valid as they might be, and would not
have demonstrated commitment to phenomenological attitude.
Descriptive and structural questions provide a basis for maintaining
the phenomenological reduction as well as a configuration for
examining experience and avoiding explanatory questions or
premature interpretations on the part of the researcher.

Clarifying the Phenomenon

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 This domain involves the use of elements of experience, or
experience as a whole, while exploring the phenomenon itself.
Clarification of the phenomenon is undertaken with the use of
imaginative variation. Imaginative variation is not normally used in the
interview process but is used in the analysis of interview data in its
transcribed format (Giorgi, 1985). It seems that imaginative variation
is not used at all by some phenomenological researchers. Their
rationale is unclear, but what is clear is that the likes of Husserl
(1970) and Heidegger (1962) not only emphasized the use of
description but explicitly applied imaginative variation in analysis of
phenomena. In general, the accepted methodological placing of
imaginative variation is a part of data analysis as a form of
phenomenon reduction in relation to removal of variant parts and
phenomenon clarification.
Speigelberg (1971) placed the imaginative variation earlier in the
process of examining a phenomenon. Spiegelberg’s reasoning for
the early placement was that it provided stepping stones for the
apprehension of the general essences; in other words, it helped
provide clarity for the presentation of phenomenon. Imaginative
variation is applied when the researcher is conscious of an element
of experience, which is then put through the process of imaginatively
varying its structural components to uncover invariant parts and thus
clarifying its structure (Husserl, 1960). This does not negate variant
parts, as they offer an opportunity to explore idiosyncratic elements
of experiences. To be clear, at the outset a researcher is not looking
to develop a general theory of essences of a particular phenomenon;
rather, he or she is attempting to add clarity to explicating
experience. Essentially it is about the stability of presentation of the
phenomenon under investigation. It is not unusual for a phenomenon
to have a multistable presentation; in other words, it can be
interpreted in different ways, such as a nurse’s experience and a
patient’s experience, but remains stable in its structure (Ihde, 2009).
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 A phenomenon should be examined actively (Husserl, 1967), and
therefore imaginatively varying aspects of experience makes an
interview more dynamic. This is perhaps a novel approach to
phenomenological interviewing, but it can be justified on the basis
that each person’s experience is an experience in its own fullness,
but by no means complete. It also adds consistency to method in the
examination of phenomenon, which in turn adds dependability to the
research process. This means each person’s experience can be
examined for modes of appearance and clarification. An advantage
to applying imaginative variation at this point is that it remains
grounded in original context and avoids the quick and cheap use of
obscure or absurd variations, and remains close to the original
experience.
An additional advantage is potentially important in relation to validity
claims. If the phenomenon is varied with the respondent then the
structure remains real and context-bound from the perspective of
that person, which in turn improves research credibility. By taking the
person through the imaginative variation of his or her lifeworld
experience, he or she provides adequacy of structure. This
imaginative process also has the benefit of explicitly demonstrating
questions of structural variation. Benner (1994) used a form of
imaginative variation to examine what she called paradigm cases to
identify similarities and differences, although this was undertaken as
part of the analysis, and not during the interview.
One of my initial concerns was how to implement imaginative
variation in the interview structure. Reflection on the
phenomenological method meant I could not impose predetermined
variations because that would lead to clarifying a researcher’s
unbracketed knowledge. My solution was to generate variational
questions from the interview itself. The generation of variation
questions was developed through active listening and a reflexive
approach of a participant’s descriptions of experience. Following
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 multiple interviews there might be the possibility of using commonly
experienced phenomena as variation questions. The method
required a person to describe his or her experience, which was
grounded in context and enhanced claims of trustworthiness
(Seidman, 2006).

Context and experience descriptions provide suitable material for

variation because it is context that provides meaning for the
experience. The process is active for the interviewer and the
respondent. The interviewer must listen to what is being said;
however, it does require that a judgment be made to identify an
aspect of structure of experience for clarification. The method is
fruitful; for example, returning to the dialysis satellite unit study,
patients described that in their experience doctors were present on a
main dialysis unit but not on a satellite dialysis unit. Once this
distinction was identified, variation questions could be asked, such
as, “Describe how the presence of a doctor on the satellite unit
would change the unit.” Questions can be asked in this manner
because they aim to make the person identify invariants by
describing how the experience would change. The following example
demonstrates how variation questions can be applied from context
description. Using the frequently cited absence of doctors at satellite
units by dialysis patients, the following question was asked:

I:

If there was a doctor here all the time, would that change the unit?

P:

I don’t know. I mean, if you are through here it means you are not as
ill as the other ones who are poorly at the minute. I think the nurses
have to spend more time with the ones who are really ill, do you
know what I mean? They seemed to be always rushing about through
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 there [the main unit]. You do see the staff, but I mean they are trying
to care for the ones that are really sick at the moment, aren’t they?
But if there is something the matter with somebody they would still
do the same here, but it’s because we’re pretty fit but, do you know
what I mean? With being on here, we don’t need to see the doctor all
the time.

The above variation began to show clarity of meaning of experience.

It also identified additional areas for clarification, such as the
presence and absence of illness. There is no guarantee that a
complete structure will be elicited, but this is not the aim of
phenomenological method; rather, it is adequacy that is important.
The method provides an adequacy that is borne out of real
experience that is verified by the person, and as such adds
credibility, dependability, and trustworthiness. Individual structures
can then be compared with those of other participants to provide an
intersubjective experience structure. The practical application of the
method is a form of experimenting with phenomenon to identify
invariants. The method is not unlike Ihde’s (1986) approach of using
hermeneutical devices to alter phenomenon to identify invariants of
experience. This method is dynamic, practical, and would form part
of what is called experimental phenomenology (Gallagher &
Sorensen, 2006; Ihde, 1986). Experimentation is with experience in
situ with the person present, rather than removed to a transcript and
idealized by abstraction.

Conclusion
The approach to phenomenological interviewing outlined in this
article is built on the phenomenological theory of Husserl (1970). Its
focus is one of accurately describing and thematizing experience in a
systematic way. It uses themes of contextualizing experience,
apprehending the phenomenon, and clarification of the
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 phenomenon. Questioning requires the use of descriptive and
structural questions along with the novel use of imaginative variation
for descriptive adequacy. Phenomenology is complex and its
research approach has much variety, which unfortunately allows for
obfuscation and methodological criticism. My proposed interview
structure offers an explicit, theoretically based approach for
researchers. It enables application of phenomenology as a total
method for research, which in turn adds to clarity and is not focused
only on data analysis. This method blends general qualitative
interview techniques and phenomenological methods to provide an
alternative approach to phenomenological interviewing. Its aim is to
provide an explicitly phenomenological influence to interviewing.

The method has a structure that is not restrictive and enables a

researcher to examine a person’s experience both actively and
methodically. The design has a deliberate descriptive approach to
enable phenomenal clarity that produces a sound basis for
interpreting experience grounded in the origin of the material. My
approach also enables a researcher to demonstrate consistency,
dependability, credibility, and trustworthiness, which is essential for
the quality of research. Furthermore, my approach might be
particularly helpful for novice phenomenological researchers, to
enable development of understanding phenomenology and their
interview technique. This approach does not contravene the need for
freedom necessary for phenomenological interviewing, and is built
on essential skills of interviewing. Overall, this method of
phenomenological interviewing will add to the consistency of
qualitative approaches.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of with respect to the
research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
:
 Funding
The author received no financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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Author Biography
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 Mark T. Bevan, PhD, RN, is a senior lecturer in nephrology nursing at
Northumbria University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, United Kingdom.
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