A Comparison of Narrative and Phenomenological Designs

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Element	Narrative Methods	Phenomenological Methods
Philosophical roots	Narratives (including stories) as a critical aspect of the ways in which humans understand (make sense of) reality (Feldman, Sköldberg, Brown, & Horner, 2004; Patterson, 2018).	From Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Brentano; the idea that humans can be certain about the way objects present themselves to them (lived-world, pure phenomena) (Giorgi, 2010; Groenewald, 2004; Moustakas, 2011).
Basic assumptions	Individual narratives are a vehicle for making sense of the world. Consequently, by making sense of narratives, researchers can create meaning (Patterson, 2018).	Perception/experience is the main source of information about the world and its phenomena. Therefore, the goal of phenomenology is to describe individual experiences of phenomena and find similarities in them (Patterson, 2018). It does not focus on analysis, but the descriptions are supposed to help to arrive at an understanding (McLeod, 2011; Moustakas, 2011).
Terminology differences	Narrative: “grand conception that entertains several themes over a period of time” (Feldman et al., 2004, p. 149). Story: a subset of the former; specific examples of narratives.	Phenomena (internal and external): potential subjects of research, including the events or things that occur within an individual (e.g., psychological) and outside (e.g., social). Experience: the result of perceiving a phenomenon in the form of knowledge/experience. Narrative: an account of an experience.
Means by which data is collected and material is gathered	Means of collecting narratives; have to provide sufficient amounts of data; usually interviews or written reports.	Means of collecting perspectives with sufficient amounts of data; usually interviews or written descriptions of an experience.
Purposes	To “interpret the stories people tell” (Feldman et al., 2004, p. 148).	To describe the “essence of things” (Moustakas, 2011, p. 6).
Specific challenges unique to each methodology	The importance of developing a strategy for analysis.	Has always experienced issues with developing a consistent, systematic methodology (Giorgi, 2010; Groenewald, 2004). Presupposes the withdrawal from existing theories/frameworks, as well as assumptions and biases (McLeod, 2011).
Ethical differences in the participant-researcher relationship	The individual narratives are prioritized, focused on, and respected (Bruce, Beuthin, Sheilds, Molzahn, & Schick-Makaroff, 2016).	The emphasis is on the phenomenon, not the people providing the data (McLeod, 2011)

To summarize, the two designs are similar in their methods, and a superficial comparison could suggest that they focus on the same phenomena, but that is not entirely true. While both approaches use the terms phenomena and narratives, they define and work with them differently. For phenomenological research, phenomena are central; perception is the method of experiencing them, and narratives are just the means of getting information about experiences (McLeod, 2011; Moustakas, 2011). For narrative research, narratives are central, and they are a primary method of making sense of the world (Feldman et al., 2004; Patterson, 2018). Furthermore, it is noteworthy that different literature suggests that phenomenology is more focused on description than analysis; its goal is to expose phenomena as they are without bias or pre-existing assumptions (McLeod, 2011; Moustakas, 2011). Finally, phenomenology mostly seeks out similarities and shared experiences, and narrative analysis is more interested in making sense of individual stories (Patterson, 2018). It is noteworthy, however, that the methods of the two designs are very similar, and they even suffer from the same challenge of developing a systematic methodology (Feldman et al., 2004; Giorgi, 2010; Groenewald, 2004). Overall, the purposes and basic assumptions of the methodologies appear to be their primary differences.

Both qualitative methods are suitable for researching the experiences that are associated with gaming addiction. An example would be a topic that is narrowed down to the experience of “gaming highs” (that is, the state of elation that accompanies playing games in people afflicted by online gaming addiction). Little to no research on the topic has been carried out, and the experience of gaming highs has definitely not been explored (Gong, Zhang, Cheung, Chen, & Lee, 2019; Marino & Spada, 2017). Therefore, it could be a suitable line of inquiry, and both phenomenological and narrative designs could be applied to it, even though they would produce different results.

Thus, a phenomenological study would focus on the phenomenon of gaming highs and attempt to describe it as closely as possible with no pre-existing bias. On the other hand, a narrative research would focus on telling the stories of people with online gaming addiction and would consider each of them in an attempt to make sense of the gamers’ experiences. The methods that would be used to arrive at these outcomes would probably be similar or identical; both studies would use small samples, and they would likely employ interviews or other methods that can produce a large amount of data about the participants’ experiences (Groenewald, 2004; Patterson, 2018). Also, in order to ensure the authenticity of the experiences, the participants might be invited to review the transcripts of their interviews and, possibly, even the results of the analysis. Both research designs can also be empowering and, ethically speaking, require a careful management of researcher-participant relationships (Groenewald, 2004). Thus, on the surface, the research designs would appear similar, but they would demonstrate different outcomes because of their focus on different things.

References

Bruce, A., Beuthin, R., Sheilds, L., Molzahn, A., & Schick-Makaroff, K. (2016). Narrative research evolving: Evolving through narrative research. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 15(1), 1609406916659292.

Feldman, M. S., Sköldberg, K., Brown, R. N., & Horner, D. (2004). Making sense of stories: A rhetorical approach to narrative analysis. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 14(2), 147-170.

Giorgi, A. (2010). Phenomenological psychology: A brief history and its challenges. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 41(2), 145-179.

Gong, X., Zhang, K. Z., Cheung, C. M., Chen, C., & Lee, M. K. (2019). Alone or together? Exploring the role of desire for online group gaming in players’ social game addiction. Information & Management, 56(6), 1-12.

Groenewald, T. (2004). A phenomenological research design illustrated. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 3(1), 42-55.

Marino, C., & Spada, M. M. (2017). Dysfunctional cognitions in online gaming and internet gaming disorder: A narrative review and a new classification. Current Addiction Reports, 4(3), 308-316.

McLeod, J. (2011). Qualitative research in counselling and psychotherapy. London, UK: SAGE Publications Ltd.

Moustakas, C. (2011). Phenomenological research methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Patterson, C. (2018). Constructing narrative and phenomenological meaning within one study. Qualitative Research Journal, 18(3), 223-237.