DESCRIPTIVE PHENOMENOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGICAL

DESCRIPTIVE PHENOMENOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGICAL METHOD: AN EXAMPLE OF

A METHODOLOGY SECTION FROM DOCTORAL DISSERTATION

Rodger E. Broomé

Saybrook University

San Francisco, California

November 2011

Abstract

DESCRIPTIVE PHENOMENOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGICAL METHOD: AN EXAMPLE OF

A METHODOLOGY SECTION FROM DOCTORAL DISSERTATION

Rodger E. Broomé

Saybrook University

This paper is the methodology section of my doctoral dissertation that outlines the

Descriptive Phenomenological Psychological Method of research as it has been taught to me by

Amedeo P. Giorgi. Giorgi (2009) based his method on Husserl’s descriptive phenomenological

philosophy as an alternative epistemology for human science research. This method section

references Giorgi’s work and the phenomenological tradition of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty and

others. Each step of Giorgi’s (2009) modified Husserlian method is described and explained in

the context of doing psychological research on the lived-experience of the participants in my

dissertation research. The steps are: (1) assume the phenomenological attitude, (2) read entire

written account for a sense of the whole, (3) delineate meaning units, (4) transform the meaning

units into psychologically sensitive statements of their lived-meanings, and (5) synthesize a

general psychological structure of the experience base on the constituents of the experience. It is

the first-person psychological perspective that is sought so that an empathetic position can be

adopted by the end-user of the research.

Methodology

Descriptive Phenomenological Psychological Method

Historically, psychology has worked diligently to constitute itself as one of the natural

sciences (studies concerned with the physical world) through the adoption of their values and

procedures. In doing so, much of psychological inquiry has involved the use of controlled

environments or controlled aspects of environments and some form of quantified abstraction and

measurement procedures (Giorgi, 1985). Beginning with the application of experimental

procedures psychological inquiries became about studying behavior in the form of preplanned

events confined within contrived environments (laboratories) requiring the (1) isolation of

phenomena, (2) the systematic manipulation of variables, and (3) repeatability of the process

(Romanyshyn & Whalen, 1989). The isolation of psychological phenomena from their natural

contexts into the “sterile laboratory” contexts of experimental methods presupposes that the

phenomena exists independent of the context in which it is found in everyday life. The first of

these procedures assumes that the more the researcher isolates the phenomena from natural

situational “contaminants,” the more neutral the context becomes which renders the phenomena

into a condition of greater abstraction or purity (Romanyshyn & Whalen, 1989). In a natural

science such as chemistry, it makes complete sense to isolate atoms and compounds from one

another in order to manipulate and test controlled reactions between them. While there are

scientific goals in doing so, sometimes there are also inherent aspects of safety that require such

controls over the substances used in chemical experiments. But it is the plucking out of the

psychological phenomenon (along with the person in whom it is inherently found) from its

natural habitat and forcing it into the contrived context that imposes the greatest threats of

“contaminating” it prior to its analysis and subsequent understanding.

It was not necessarily a greater understanding per se, that experimental psychology was

interested in finding. Rather, it was the “prediction and control of behavior” that emerged as the

theoretical goal of psychological research (Watson, 1913, p. 58). Behaviorism and its use of the

natural sciences methodological model increased in popularity and prestige, due largely to the

fact, that it could “do something – and, more importantly, do something according to the

expectations of the time concerning science” [emphasis original] (Giorgi, 1970, p. 46). Watson’s

(1913) behaviorist’s manifesto marks a shift in psychology from a study of mental phenomena to

discovering mental laws by drawing inferences based upon the observable interaction of an

“animal” and the “stimuli” of its environment. This approach deliberately sets aside any and all

mediating mental phenomena between the presupposed causal sequence of stimulus and

response. Therefore, two distinct limitations for psychology appear due to the behaviorists’

attitude and use of experimental research designs. First, all mediating mental phenomena are

deliberately left out of the “equation” and second, the mental phenomena are threatened with

“contamination” by the alterations of the environment from the one in which they would

normally be found. Finally, having wrested the psychological phenomena from its “real-world”

context and the deliberate ignoring of its qualities and faculties, the “scientific study of behavior”

is left as a hollow shell version of psychology (i.e., a tough exterior without much substance

therein.)

The beginning and rise of the “cognitive revolution” moved psychology back to the

perspective of including mental mediation between the stimulus-response of behaviorism. It was

the development of the computer processing metaphor that became the dominant explanation for

the psychological phenomena mediating between the person and situation. But the computer

processing metaphor has been taken too far by many and literalized to the point that the human

mind is often regarded both atomistically and mechanically (Aanstoos, 1987; Giorgi, 2001). It

was through this paradigm that the presuppositions of mental elementalism were kept as the

foundations for formulating the information-processing explanations of psychological

phenomena (Aanstoos, 1987). Whether meant literally or not, such theoretical concepts as

templates, schemas, scripts, and stereotypes were described as the “programming” of the mind

based on perceived environmental features acquired as data entry that is encoded into memory

through life experiences. The information-processing computer model evolved to become

synonymous for “cognition” within the mainstream of psychology (Aanstoos, 1987).

Phenomenological psychology however, recognizes that a person is an historical being and

experiences are part of his or her constitution as such (Giorgi, 1970). The divisions between

thinking, feeling, imagining, and their physiological correlates are distinguishable but essentially

indivisible. The cognitive perspectives readmitted the mental processes back into psychology but

left their nature within the realm of being products of the physical world. Consequently, the

dominant cognitive view of the mind is that it is a product of the brain and still considered within

the natural sciences framework (Giorgi, 2009).

A phenomenological perspective of the mind acknowledges consciousness as the most

fundamental life-quality that coexists with the body and thus, a person is regarded as an

embodied consciousness (Husserl, 1977; Merleau-Ponty, 1962). Husserl (1977) and Merleau-

Ponty (1962) point out that people know one another’s consciousness through their physical

bodies. This means that we know our own consciousness by reflection but cannot know the

consciousness of the other except through the body. On the other hand, a body without

consciousness is a corpse (Husserl, 1977). Therefore, consciousness cannot be ignored or

discarded as Watson (1913) asserted, and it would be going too far to assert that it is merely a

product of the nervous system. For Husserl (1977), consciousness synthesizes experience

through its intentional acts toward objects that are both sensorial and purely mental in origin. In

other words, objects that are governed by time, space, and causality are called “real” and those

that are imagined, remembered, anticipated, hallucinated, etc., are called “irreal” because they do

not physically exist (Husserl, 1977; Zahavi, 2003). Because the natural sciences were intended to

study only the “real” world, Husserl’s (2008/1931) project for phenomenology was to develop a

method in the form of an eidetic science (science of possibilities) for psychology which would

necessarily include “irreal” objects in its analyses. In a sense, phenomenology would be a

“science of possibilities” for human studies in a similar way that geometry is for physics. For

there are geometrical concepts that are accepted as theoretically sound, (such as the two-

dimensional plane) but that are physically non-existent in our three-dimensional world. So for

psychology, phenomenology would be the investigation of consciousness through the

examination of its actions upon objects that it takes without positing the origins of the objects.

The concept that consciousness takes objects for itself is called intentionality. Husserl

(2008/1931) explained that consciousness is naturally directed-to objects, which is to say,

consciousness is always conscious of something beyond itself. Zahavi (2003) explains it in the

following way:

One does not merely love, fear, see, or judge, one loves a beloved, fears something

fearful, sees an object, and judges a state of affairs. Regardless of whether we are talking

of a perception, thought, judgment, fantasy, doubt, expectation, or recollection, all of

these diverse forms of consciousness are characterized by intending objects and cannot be

analyzed properly without a look at their objective correlate, that is, the perceived,

doubted, expected object. (p. 14).

I believe that one can see from the above explanation of intentionality, why a phenomenological

psychological method is well suited for the proposed study of police officers’ use of deadly

force. In the above description of intentional acts of consciousness, one can see that both “real”

and “irreal” objects of consciousness must be considered to understand the whole experience in

its natural context, and as it was lived by the participant.

The natural context of a social interaction of any kind has been shown by social

psychology to be an important influence on people’s behavior and understanding of their

experiences. Experimental-like research done in “the field” is when the researchers contrive a

situation in the real world, but do so without allowing the persons being studied to know about

the research until afterwards (Babbie, 2010). By design, this type of research involves deceiving

the people being studied with the idea that their “reactions” and “behaviors” will be more

authentic and natural than if they had known. While the distinct advantage to such field research

is that the researcher can observe the persons “in the act,” it does so without their prior consent.

The Descriptive Phenomenological Method provides the lived-context of the participant and

does so focusing on his or her perspective without the use of deception (Giorgi, 2009). Further,

the method allows the researcher to keep the “voice” of the participants in the research without

abstracting their viewpoint out through analysis. Rather, it is the subjective-psychological

perspective of the participant that captures my interest as the researcher (Giorgi & Giorgi, 2003).

As such, it is not only the “reactions” and “behaviors” that are included in the data, but also the

thoughts, impressions, feelings, interpretations, and understandings of the participants’

experiences that I will be analyzing.

The Descriptive Phenomenological Psychological Method is a five-step system of

research that holds Husserlian Phenomenology as its philosophical foundation. Because Husserl

was a philosopher, Giorgi (2009) needed to modify Husserl’s method to be useful for

psychology. In doing so, Giorgi’s (1985; 2009) five-step method provides the systematic rigor of

“science” while not being reductionistic in its treating of the persons studied. Further, the method

is discovery-oriented rather than verification-oriented. Therefore, I do not propose a hypothesis

to be supported by the evidence, but rather intend to describe the structure of the psychological

phenomenon so that it can be understood in a deeper, holistic and more comprehensive way than

other methods can provide. In the proposed study, it is the first person “meaning(s)” of the

experiences that are of interest to me rather than mere objective interpretations of behaviors.

More detail about how this is achieved will follow in the “data analysis” section of this proposal.

Participants

The participants for this research are from an exclusive population of people. Police

officers that have used deadly-force in the performance of their duties are relatively few in

number within the greater law enforcement officer population. As a former law enforcement

officer, I had personal access to the law enforcement community through my vocational ties that

other psychological researchers do not necessarily have. Therefore, I contacted local law

enforcement acquaintances seeking their assistance in recruiting officers that have used deadly

force in the line of duty. It is important to make the distinction here, that it is the experience of

using deadly force that was of interest, regardless of whether or not the force’s outcome was fatal

for the suspect. Police officers are trained to “stop” the violent behavior of the suspect and not

“kill” him or her (Klinger, 2004; Murray, 2006). Additionally, most deadly force applications

involve the use of firearms. However, there are acts of deadly force that involve the deliberate

use of a police automobile as a weapon (Alpert & Fridell, 1992). However for this study, I used

officer-involved shootings as the kind of the deadly force experience in which the suspect died.

What I believe is essential to this study is that any use of deadly-force was a deliberate act on the

part of the participant.

Data Collection

The raw data for this study is the “naïve description” of the deadly force experiences

from and in the words of the participants. For Husserl, (2008/1937), “natural cognition begins

with experience and remains within experience” (p.5). So the naïve description is the first-person

account of the experience as it was lived and understood by the participant in his or her everyday

common sense mode of understanding. Since no other person can co-experience the subjective-

psychological perspective of any lived-experience with the participant, the best and only

“record” of such an experience exists (admittedly, only in part) within the memory of him or her

who experienced it from the subjective position. Therefore, I captured an audio recording of

separate in-person interviews with each of the participants about his or her experience. To

initiate the telling of their experiences, the initial question for the participants was very simply

presented like, “In as much detail as possible, tell me what it was like for you to use deadly force

on a suspect as a police officer?” This general question is open-ended and intended to offer the

participant a wide range in which he or she can verbally describe the experience. As the

participant related the experience to me, I made mental note of verbal transitions in which I

sensed more could be said about something or that the participant incidentally veered away from

which naturally occurs when people are speaking. When the participant reaches a point that he or

she has said all that can be said spontaneously, I asked one or more follow-up questions like,

“You spoke about such and such, can you tell me more about that?” (Giorgi & Giorgi, 2003).

The follow-up questions are not purposefully “leading” in the sense of trying to “pull out” of the

participant particular information of a kind. Rather, it is an interviewing technique intended to

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“re-open the door” to an aspect of the account that was presented but not fully and expressly

described by the participant. As the researcher, I wanted to acquire a verbal “re-living of the

experience” expressed by the participant, to the greatest possible degree.

Getting an account of the experience based upon the memory and report of the participant

carries with it a certain degree of dubiousness about its accuracy. Data acquired through self-

report methods (questionnaires and interviews) are always subject to memory decay, alterations

or participant response errors (Giorgi, 2009). There are no perfect descriptions, but adequate

descriptions are obtainable and they are pregnant with psychological meanings to be analyzed

(Giorgi, 2009; Giorgi & Giorgi, 2003). Further, the interviewing strategy is not intended to

“spur” or “jog” the participants to remember some “obscured details,” but rather help them to

simply relate as fully as possible “what it was like” for them during their experiences. I trust that

the data provided by these interviews was be sufficient to acquire the most salient and personally

important aspects of the experience, because they have been kept in memory. It was through the

phenomenological psychological analysis that both the explicated and implied meanings of the

experiences will be accessible to be elucidated (Giorgi, 1985). More explanation will follow

about the analysis below.

The naïve descriptions provided by the participants were recorded for later transcription.

A digital voice recorder was used to capture the interview contents and I transcribed the

interviews into text for further analysis. It was the transcribed text that was used as the raw data

for analysis. As part of the data collection process, all identifying information that would have

revealed the participants’ and other people’s identities, places or things that could make such

identities easily known was replaced with pseudonyms or other fictitious representations as are

appropriate to maintain the privacy of those interested parties. Such informational replacements

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took place during my transcription process so that only the participants and I will know their

identities and other private details.

Data Analysis

The Descriptive Phenomenological method in Psychology uses a five-step method of data

analysis based on some principles of phenomenological philosophy (Amedeo Giorgi, personal

communication). In each step, I will explain the procedure and its corresponding philosophical

concept that supports its purpose and character. Therefore, the data analysis is done once the

interview has been transcribed and the text has become the “empirical evidence” to be analyzed

for its psychological implications.

The first step of the phenomenological psychological method is for the researcher to

assume the phenomenological attitude. The phenomenological attitude is different than the

natural attitude or everyday way of understanding the world. In the phenomenological attitude,

the research “brackets” his or her everyday knowledge to take a fresh look at the data. In other

words, the researcher puts aside his or her presuppositions, theoretical, cultural, experiential, or

otherwise. The concept of “bracketing” comes from Husserl’s (2008/1931) epoché in which the

researcher allows him or herself to be present to the data without positing its validity or

existence. Simply being present means that the researcher allows him or herself to “see” the data

as it appears in itself and in its own context without doubt or belief. In this way, the researcher

can remain true to the phenomenological slogan “back to the things themselves” (Husserl,

2001/1901). Additionally, the researcher does not posit the real existence of any object or state-

of-affairs that is given to consciousness. Rather, because it is given to consciousness, the

researcher takes the object (or state-of-affairs) as it presents itself rather judging its veracity from

the objective perspective (Husserl, 2008/1931). In this, each object and intentional act on that

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object by consciousness is included in the analysis because it was there for the participant’s

consciousness. So the bracketing and withholding of existential positing allows the researcher to

see and thus describe what was present for consciousness from the participant’s first person

perspective. I assumed the phenomenological attitude and then proceeded to the next step.

The second step in the data analysis requires that I read the entire “naïve description” to

get a sense of the whole experience (Giorgi, 2009, 1985; Giorgi & Giorgi, 2003). The “naïve

description” provided by the participant was taken in the natural attitude in the way that he or she

would experience things in the mode of everyday living from the commonsense perspective. This

is done without a critical reflection on the experience. However, the I remained in the

phenomenological attitude that “puts out of action” all commonsense presuppositions in order to

conduct a critical reflection about the participant’s experience in order to describe how it was

phenomenally experienced (Giorgi, 2009; Husserl, 2008/1931). It is in the phenomenological

attitude that I was present to the data as it is given.

The third step in the data analysis is the demarcation of “meaning units” within the

narrative so that the data can be dealt with in manageable portions (Giorgi, 2009, 1985; Giorgi &

Giorgi, 2003). As the researcher, I went through the narrative text in a subsequent reading(s)

with the purpose of determining where places of meaning shift within it. The stream of

experience in consciousness has “landmarks” in a way that is analogous to how we see the

windings, rapids, and falls in a water stream. Another analogy used by James (1996/1912) is that

a bird’s flight is marked by where it perches more than the actual distances in which it flies. So

as I read the text through after getting a sense of the whole, the subsequent reading is done with

the idea of marking where meaning-shifts occur which are like the “landmarks” or changes in the

flow in some way (Giorgi, 1985).

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To distinguish the meaning units, I marked the meaning unit demarcations with a forward

slash (/) at the cleavage between two meaning units, but each meaning unit will be identifiable

by its numerical labeling at its beginning point. The numerical identification will be expressed in

superscript. Therefore, the meaning unit will begin with a superscript font numerical identifier

and end with a forward slash. According to Giorgi (2009), how or where the meaning units are

delineated is not absolute. Different researchers may delineate the meaning units in different

places in the same data. However the same or different the meaning units may be among

researchers, it is the results that are important to the overall quality of the analysis (Giorgi,

2009).

Additionally, distinguishing meaning unit can be a self-correcting process in which the

researcher discovers that meaning units are too long or too short in their delineation. It is

acceptable to combine or divide meaning units as one’s familiarity with the data provides clarity

about better places for their distinctions. Overall, the researcher does not have to commit to the

initial delineations and battle through them as an inviolable rule (Giorgi, 2009).

The fourth step I took was transforming the meaning units into psychologically sensitive

descriptive expressions of each of them. The researcher takes the phenomenon at the

psychological level to practice science rather than the transcendental level which is to practice

philosophy (Giorgi, 2009). The psychological level is an individuated, worldly and personal

level rather than a transcendental (universal, unconditional, and independent of experience)

(Giorgi, 2009). It is in this third step that the first change is made to the data in the analytical

process. The meaning units are re-expressed in the third-person while remaining faithful to the

meanings expressed by the participant. The change to the third-person language does not change

the meaning content, but assists the researcher in remaining in the phenomenological attitude by

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not being empathetically drawn to the participant’s natural attitude (Giorgi, 2009). Taking each

meaning unit in its third person form, the research transforms it into a statement that expresses its

essential psychological meanings. Using a mode of psychological sensitivity means that the

researcher intends to locate and elucidate the psychological meanings contained in the data.

Transformations from the third-person versions of the meaning units into descriptive

psychological transformed expressions are performed to bring the psychology to the forefront.

The transformations require the researcher to use Husserl’s (2008/1931) intellectual procedure

known as imaginative variation to determine the essence of the phenomenal structure of the

experience (Giorgi, 2009).

Imaginative variation is performed by the researcher by changing qualities of the object

being analyzed so as to determine which qualities are essential and which are accidental (present

but not required) (Giorgi, 1985, 2009; Giorgi & Giorgi, 2003; Husserl, 2008/1931; Zahavi,

2003). By taking each third-person meaning unit individually, the researcher dwells with it and

considers what is being psychologically expressed through it. A psychologically focused re-

expression is transformed in a descriptive manner and placed next to it.

The transformations are psychological formulations of the essential meanings of each

meaning unit. Because the researcher is still in the phenomenological attitude, each

transformation describes what the meaning unit expresses psychological without any

interpretation or positing about its “truth.” It is only describing how it was experienced and

understood by the participant from his or her point of view without explanation of “why” it was

experienced in the way it was. The phenomenological attitude of the researcher in the

psychological analysis of the data is what makes the results both phenomenological and

psychological. The general structure of the lived-experience is synthesized from the participants’

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transformations when taken generally together in a comparative view by the researcher (Giorgi,

2009).

The general structure of the experience is a descriptive paragraph which lays out the

lived-experience of the researched topic from a psychological approach. The fifth step in the

analysis is the synthesis of the general psychological structure from the psychological

constituents of the experience. Constituents differ from the concept of elements because they are

context dependent (Giorgi, 1985). Constituents therefore cannot be independent of each other,

but are necessarily part of the whole structure. The purpose of this procedure is grounded in the

phenomenological concept of parts and wholes. Sokolowski (2008) points out that concept of

parts and wholes is not original in phenomenology but was actually developed by Greek

philosophers Plato and Aristotle. Nevertheless, the concept expresses the idea that the “whole” of

some things or states-of-affairs are irreducible to its parts. In other words, the value of the whole

is greater than the sum of its parts.

Parts are regarded in phenomenology to fall into two distinctions: pieces and moments.

Pieces are parts that can subsist separately and detached from the whole to which they belong.

There is an identifiable independence about pieces apart from the whole that moments do not

have. Moments on the other hand, are dependent upon their whole and have their essential

identities as being a part of the whole (Sokolowski, 2008). Each constituent must therefore, hang

together interdependently with the others forming a general (whole) psychological structure.

Consequently, there may be psychological aspects of one or more of the individually situated

experiences that one could find to be a “piece” which is more like an element. Pieces or elements

can subsist on their own and therefore would not be constituent (moments) of the general

structure (Giorgi, 1985; Sokolowski, 2008). Being identified as a “piece” or accidental quality of

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the experience does not render the aspect useless, but simply not an essential part of the general

structure.

The constituents are determined by viewing the transformations of all of the participants

for convergent meanings. Still using the imaginative variation, the researcher can see the shared

meanings of the participants pertaining to their general psychological consistencies. The

researcher applies a descriptive word or phrase to the constituents based on their psychological

givenness. This is not a process of thematizing or merely creating nominal categories (Giorgi &

Giorgi, 2003). The constituent “title” must be descriptive of its psychological meaning. These

constituents are put together in a descriptive paragraph which is the general descriptive

psychological structure, that is, the structure is the outcome (results) of the analysis. All other

“pieces,” whether psychological or not, are set aside for the later and broader discussion with the

extant literature in dialog with one another.

It is important to note that the phenomenological concepts of parts and wholes are kept

intact throughout the study. From the interview, the naïve description is obtained from the

participant with as much continuity as possible. The follow up questions are only used to mine

deeper into aspects that are already given by the participant. The naïve description is read

through in its entirety while the researcher is in the phenomenological attitude. Meaning units are

delineated but the whole data remains intact. The meaning units are transformed using

imaginative variation within the phenomenological attitude and psychological perspective to

elucidate their essential psychological meanings. The essential meanings (constituents) are

examined for their interdependence as part of the psychological structure (whole) and described

as such. The determination of an essential moment versus an accidental (nonessential) piece of

the experience, which differentiates the constituent from an element, requires the use of the

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imaginative variation still in operation. It is through the imaginative variation that the eidetic

nature of the data can be brought forth (Giorgi, 2009).

The phenomenological concept of presences and absences is an important one to use

during one’s use of the imaginative variation. This is how the explicit data can reveal the

existence of the implicit meanings without them being concretely expressed in the data by the

participants (Giorgi, 2009; Sokolowski, 2008). During the transformations, the researcher can

not only “see” the explicit data and meanings, but also uncover the implicit meanings through the

imaginative variation and having the “sense of the whole” still in mind from the initial step of the

analysis. When synthesizing the general structure, the researcher can also find that as the

structure emerges, some constituents are given implicitly in a similar way. In this way, the

descriptive phenomenological approach is more comprehensive than mere empirical approaches

in the natural attitude (Giorgi, 2009). This is justified through understanding that what is

“present” often implies or indicates an “absent” quality. Because we “see” things in profiles,

meaning we cannot view an object circumferentially all at once, we only view them through the

aspect that is facing us. But this does not mean that we disregard the fact that there exists an

aspect on the other side which is hidden from our view (Sokolowski, 2008). For example, when I

see someone face to face, I also understand the person to necessarily have a back that

corresponds to his or her front. But I draw this logical inference from a totality of the other’s

presence.

Husserl (2008/1931) points out that our experience is self-correcting. This concept is

important here because when one is considering the whole data, he or she can see the structure

and determine if there may be an essential aspect that is “absent” in one participant’s data that is

present in the data of the other participants. Further, the interdependent nature of the

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“constituents” when assembled together through imaginative variation, reveals the “absence” of

the constituent among the “present” other constituents. So there are two levels of “wholes” that

are considered in the analysis and synthesis resulting in the general structure. First, in the

individual level the explicit data may reveal an implicit quality that was not verbalized by the

participant, but is an “absent” essential quality that we can logically infer existed in the

experience. Second, that “absent” essential quality can also be supported by its explicit presence

in the data of the other participants that had the same kind of experience. Therefore, these logical

inferences are supported by evidence and not merely hunches or wishful thinking on the part of

the researcher. Upon review by others, the veracity of the logical inference drawn through the

analysis can be critiqued, accepted or refuted (Giorgi, 1985).

It is important to note here that the expressions from the participants can be one or

multiple examples of instances when the constituents were experienced. The grid configuration

allows the researcher to place a note in a cell of an instance when a constituent is implicitly in

the data rather than providing an explicit example. Further, it also can help the researcher to

determine if there emerges a structure among the participants that is different than the others.

This is important because it not only demonstrates that we may classify a kind of experience in a

way that is experienced differently and might be classifiably different. Further, the differences in

the structures that emerge might provide insight about how and why the psychological

experiences were different phenomenologically when we would regularly consider them the

“same” in the natural attitude.

The emergence of one general structure of the experience was sought, but not necessarily

the goal of the proposed study. Because the descriptive phenomenological approach is a method

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in the mode of discovery rather than validation, the discovery that different general structures of

police deadly force experiences would not be a failure of the method or the study (Giorgi, 1985).

Ethical Considerations

It is the overall goal of the proposed study to find a deeper and richer understanding of

what it is like to use deadly force as a police officer. One of the benefits to the participating

officers and perhaps the law enforcement community at large is a richer understanding of the

personal meanings of the officers that they may not be fully aware of or had come to understand.

Giorgi (2009) points out that when someone says something there is always more meaning in

what was said than even the speaker is aware of, in the natural attitude. The natural attitude

causes a lot of psychological aspects of experience to be taken for granted. It is my hope that the

proposed study will bring out some clarity and new insights regarding the psychology of police

deadly force incidents.

The law enforcement community might find some valuable insights for training, policy,

or even ways to better support officers that go through such experiences. Where Klinger (2004)

obtained and organized a lot of valuable information about police shootings in his deadly force

research, the phenomenological approach can take us deeper from the natural attitude to the

phenomenal level of the officers’ perspectives

I believe that it was important to maintain the participants’ voices in the research as much

as possible. One of the ethical advantages to the descriptive phenomenological approach is that

no deception is required to get the data in its real world context. Of course, some may criticize

my approach by saying that observing behavior as it is naturally acted is more legitimate than

self-reported accounts of the incidents. But police deadly force encounters are not events that we

can predict well enough to conduct observational research. Further, to do so would be solely an

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objective viewpoint which is what the natural sciences position would value most. However, it

was the subjective psychological perspective that descriptive phenomenological approach

pursues (Giorgi & Giorgi, 2003). Further, other self-report methods would suffer the same

criticism but have demonstrated over time that they are legitimate ways to gather important data

that are not necessarily less valid or reliable that observational or experimental methods.

Moreover, Giorgi (2009) points out that falsified memories (through various distortions) can be

more interesting for psychology because they reveal more about the psychological life of the

individual due to their subjective origins. So for the proposed study, I am most concerned with

how the officer psychologically experienced a deadly force encounter rather than creating an

abstracted version of the incident filtered through already existing psychological theories and

nomenclature. In sum, there is no deception, context changes, or meaning-twisting imposed on

the officers’ experiences or recounting of them. Phenomenological psychological analysis is a

mode of discovering the psychological meanings as they were lived and how they inform our

understanding of such experiences on a deeper level. The officers and law enforcement in

general may be provided some new insights about police deadly force that have not yet been

discovered or precisely because a phenomenological perspective was adopted.

The participants in the proposed study had the control over the information and the way it

is given. Of course, I sought the most full and honest descriptions from the participants that they

can provide. I had no reason for initial skepticism about getting anything else but the truth from

these volunteers. But I also recognize the possibility of willful omissions or distortions in the

accounts provided by the participants. I will take no measures to manipulate or control the

participants into providing information they do not freely want to give. Clearly, informed

21!

consent agreements secured clear understanding about the relationship between the participants

and me as the researcher.

The benefits that I sought from conducting the study are academic, professional, and

personal. Primarily, the study was intended to be a part of the requirements to be met in

completing my doctoral degree in psychology. Professionally, I have served as a police officer in

my emergency services career and currently work in higher education in the public safety

disciplines. The completion of a doctoral degree is required for my advancement in my current

position as well as adds to my credibility as a college instructor.

Finally, because I have been a certified peace officer for 22 years, I feel a personal desire

to know more about deadly force experiences and how an officer might be better understood. As

Klinger (2004) points out, many police officers have experiences of “close calls” in which a

perceived or real lethal encounter are lived-through but for various reasons the officer selects not

to use deadly force. As a police officer, I have had such situations in my law enforcement career

which provided a little insight into what it might be like to use deadly force. But because of my

own “holding fire,” I have a personal curiosity about the experiences of those that pulled the

trigger. I believe the descriptive phenomenological psychological method will provide a greater

understanding about the topic due to its purpose and design (Giorgi, 2009, 1985; Giorgi &

Giorgi, 2003).

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