...in the most basic possible way please? Not in the form of links from google searches but preferably as if you were explaining it to a child?

Sexually explicit pictures, writing, or other material whose primary purpose is to cause sexual arousal.

Oh.. perhaps I misread your post.....

I understand it to be when you are analysing/describing/understanding the thought processes involved in an experience.. but looking at the interpretations of the experience of a variety of people.

lol HappyDays

Thank you Tricky. But would you need a third-party to analyse your data as the method sound to be less formal (more like personal interpretations)? How would yo justify the use of this method?

(Just a quick background: one of my supervisors suggested that I won't need to carry out further user-experiments but justify some of the previous work I did by explaining them with different methods. Phenomenography seems to fill this gap, but I feel so confused with it)

Phenomenological research is an interpretation of the subjects experiences. This can include such aspects as motives, means, ends, plans, expectations etc. You would either gather this data through interviews, writing or questionnaires. Depending on what you were looking for, you could develop a coding system which would give you a quantity to be measured. E.g., Length of sentences used, pauses in speech, references to being sad/happy etc. Another way of analyzing this type of data would be to ground your analysis in a theory,
a theory/theme that emerges from your data, rather than applying a theory to it. It would depend on what your subject is. I can help you a bit more by knowing a bit more. I have a book or two on this method and had to study it in my MSc.

Thank you PinkNeuron. Starting to make sense; though I'm still confused

If it's not too much hassle, could you write the name of those books? The methodology books I have don't seem to cover it. And I can't make sense of the case studies that use this method.

Sorry to be rude, but Phenomenography and Phenomenology are two separate issues. At least the definition for the latter provided by one forum un-named user above starting with a P. is completely useless. Said forum user mixes up a number of things within her explanation and has terminology problems.

Personally, I have no idea what Phenomenography is. But Phenomenology is an epistemological stance, determined by a guy called Schutz (1967). If you read a book called "Sociological paradigms and organizational analysis" by Burrell and Morgan (1979), you will find a lot of information about this.

Furthermore, it has nothing to do with data analysis per se, as it is completely detached from the latter. Unlike many believe, epistemological stances does NOT determine or justify your research approach, methods of data collection or data analysis.

'Writing in the Dark - Phenomenological Studies in Interpretive Inquiry' by Max van Manen (The Althouse Press)

'Discourse Theory and Practice by Margaret Wetherell, Stephanie Taylor and Simeon J. Yates (Sage Publications)

'Discourse as Data' by Margaret Wetherell, Stephanie Taylor and Simeon J. Yates (Sage Publications)

These deal with both written and spoken discourse and are good books. Like I said, I have read them all through but I did use them for analyzing a TV program, Question Time.

Oh, awfully sorry, we all make mistakes by reading too quickly and doing two things at once, easily done you know

the thanks you get for trying to be helpful!

Pinkneuron was only trying to help - and saying "sorry to be rude" doesn't mean that it is then ok to be rude!

That's ridiculous. It is rather rude to offer wrong or useless information. Trying to help itself is not synonymous to giving good advice. Still, unlike you, P.Neuron offered at least something, whereas your comment must be dismissed altogether!

so you're saying it's rude to make a mistake?

What I'm saying is, a little bit of effort should go into giving advice. Ignorance does not justify the act of giving out wrong or useless information. If somebody knows something, he or she is able to give advice. Silence might be better if this is not the case.

Retrospectively I even have to say that my original answer was not rude. So please delete the "Sorry to be rude". Rather, I clarified that the information given above was wrong and the comment by P. was useless, don't know what's rude about that.

You're all wrong. Especially o.stoll.

Phenomenology is the lost science of determining the personality or character traits of an individual by studying the shape of the head and physical landscape of the said individual's scalp.

I thought that was shampo-ology, R.Academic?