What is Essence

This chapter provides an insight into the origins and traditions of phenomenology as both philosophy and methodology. Emphasis is placed in the earlier parts of the chapter on the delineation between Husserl and Heidegger, the forefathers of the discipline, whose work into epistemology and ontology have fundamentally shaped contemporary qualitative research. Understanding the key concepts of epoché and the implications of the ‘self' within phenomenological research are explicated so that the reader can consider the practicalities of whether it is possible to suspend presupposition and epistemic bias, or whether the ‘self' is something that has simply to be acknowledged as having a fundamental relevance to what and how interpretation is undertaken and how this has a consequent and tangible impact on research findings. The latter part of the chapter gives an insight into interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) as one contemporary approach to the integration of phenomenological research methods.