Phenomenology

Mundane phenomenology refers to those studies that aim to describe human experience as it is experienced, understood, and communicated by the subject. Such studies often do not refer to their approach as phenomenological, and when they do they merely use it in a cursory and superficial way. Methodologically, these studies aim to render human experience precisely as it is experienced in the natural attitude. The social scientist attempts to incite retrospective accounts that are faithful to the experience without imposing any researcher biases or inauthentic structure on the subject's account of the experience. Although for most phenomenologists such studies are exemplars of ethnographic research and not rigorous phenomenological analysis, they can often add important insights to our understanding of familial experience (e.g., Vaughn 1986).