ABSTRACT
The last chapter of Amedeo Giorgi’s (2009) book provides a detailed example of PQR (which he calls ‘scientific phenomenology’) in action.1 The method described during the preceding pages of the book is used to arrive at an essential structure of jealousy, drawing on descriptions obtained from two workshop participants. The descriptions were written down by the participants concerned, and were then subject to analysis by two researchers, independently of each other. This is particularly interesting, as it permits Giorgi to compare the findings of two separate PQR researchers using the same method with the same data. The researchers in question are Giorgi himself (AG) and his late wife, Barbro Giorgi (BG). Giorgi’s chapter first sets out the two descriptions of jealousy in full, and then discusses the three main stages of the method (as conducted by AG and BG) in considerable detail. The account includes: (a) the identification of meaning units, in which the descriptions are segmented into a series of smaller chunks; (b) transformation, in which the meaning units are converted into more explicit expressions of meaning in ‘language revelatory of the psychological aspect of the lived-through experience’ (145); and lastly (c) the formulation of an essential structure of the phenomenon being researched, in this case jealousy. As the application of the method is traced in an equally detailed manner for each researcher, we have the opportunity to examine four sets of meaning units (two descriptions, each analysed by two researchers), four transformations (ditto), and two versions of the essential structure. In this chapter, I propose to make use of this opportunity, and subject Giorgi’s analysis (and that of BG) to close scrutiny. The primary focus, as explained in the last chapter, will be on meaning attribution.
