GADAMER’S HERMENEUTICS AS A METHOD OF DATA ANALYSIS IN QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

Abstract

The objective here is to shed light on the hermeneutic-phenomenological method of operating in qualitative research, and through this, proceed to understand the speeches and experiences of the people heard in the research process. Specifically, the reflections developed here will be related to the Philosophical Hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer. In this sense, the main concern of the hermeneutic analysis rests on making meanings that can be explained, through the sharing of a speech about a human experience, resonate with the ears of the listeners and readers. And in this task, there is the intention to reveal what lies '' on '', '' between '' and by '' behind '' those words that were said, in order to try to translate, or at least approach, the truth of the world, the context, and the phenomenon through the lens of the person interviewed. Hermeneutics can be used, also as a data analysis tool within qualitative research, so here is presented the analysis strategy ‘’ elaboration of stories ’’. Such a method requires the researcher to work ‘’ together ’with the data obtained, and not‘ ’with '' them. This means 'inhabiting' the transcribed text and confronting it, until a vivid, contextualized, and revealing description about the nuances of the surveyed phenomenon can be extracted from it.