Understanding experience through Gadamerian hermeneutics: an interview with Brian Phillips. Interview by Pamela Wood & Lynne Giddings

Abstract

Hermeneutic approaches to research focus on understanding and interpretation of experience but differ in process and emphasis. Gadamerian hermeneutics concentrates on expanding horizons of understanding through dialogue, between people or between a researcher and texts, in which taken-for-granted assumptions are examined and opinions willingly put at risk. This article is the fourteenth in a series of articles based on interviews with nursing and midwifery researchers, designed to offer the beginning researcher a first-hand account of the experience of using particular methodologies. It considers a Gadamerian hermeneutic research approach as interpreted by Brian Phillips (RN, PhD) in interview. Brian is Research Fellow in the Graduate School of Nursing and Midwifery at Victoria University of Wellington. For his PhD research Brian used Gadamerian hermeneutics to interpret four men's experiences of suicidality and the ideas of masculinity that might have shaped their understandings.