Qualitative Resarch: the Thematic Analysis for the Treatment of Information from the Approach of the Social Phenomenology

Abstract

The recent diffusion and popularity of qualitative method in Social Sciences makes the reconstruction of its history necessary, and suggests it is crucial to permanently review its epistemological precepts, highlight critical remarks and point out more efficient and replicable manners of processing the diverse sorts of information gathered from the research processes. Those actions are inherent to the process of reflexivity, which belongs to this way of conceiving the human and the social world. We assume part of the aforementioned requests and present the contributions to elucidate and rigorously support this not-so-new approach, which regards people (from their biographies and their cultural-political-social and economic contexts) as sense builders and capable beings to understand their own life conditions. The inter-subjective exchange with researchers and the comprehension and interpretation of diverse worlds and social practices allows us to construct or redefine theories

Keywords

• Social sciences
• Qualitative method
• Hermeneutic approach
• Social phenomenology
• Thematic analysis.