ABSTRACT
Although many quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methodologies use the word "phenomenon" to describe the focus of their inquiry, phenomenological philosophers mean something very specific by phenomenon. The phenomena of phenomenology are to be understood in a deliberately broad sense as including all forms of appearing, showing, manifesting, making evident or "evidencing," bearing witness, truth-claiming, checking and verifying, including all forms of seeming, dissembling, occluding, obscuring, denying, and falsifying. When German philosopher Martin Heidegger described a phenomenon as that which becomes manifest for us. he was suggesting that phenomena are brought into being through our living in the world. Phenomenologists do not tend to believe that humans construct a phenomenological experience. The philosophical explanations of phenomena in phenomenology can begin to become more accessible through autobiographical accounts or anecdotes prompted by film.
