Abstract
This article considers one of the philosophical sources of reflexivity, the concept of “pre-understandings” as envisaged by the German philosopher, Hans Georg Gadamer. There are a number of empirical research studies employing a Gadamerian approach, and while some authors may describe methods of examining pre-understandings and applying findings reflexively to hermeneutic enquiry, there remains a general lack of sufficient detail given over to the “how” in relation to this process. Furthermore, Gadamer describes how the “provoking” of one’s pre-understandings is required in order to make them realizable and this is rarely evident within authors’ work. As part of a hermeneutic research project exploring health professionals’ views of conscientious objection to abortion, we as a research team undertook a process of “provoking” our pre-understandings surrounding conscientious objection to abortion. This was undertaken by a preliminary discussion to examine our preunderstandings. A second discussion followed to examine if and how our pre-understandings had altered, and was conducted after the research team had read five transcribed interviews from a study on health care professionals’ perspectives of conscientious objection to abortion. By reviewing our pre-understandings, we were able to begin to make conscious what was unconscious, widening some of our initial views, being more definitive in others and in some cases endorsing our original pre-understandings. Using a reflexive process, we assimilated these findings with our research project and used it to inform our data collection, analysis and interpretation, demonstrating the application of rigor to our hermeneutic study.
Highlights
Qualitative research is firmly established in a number of health disciplines with its recent rise to prominence being outlined by Alasuutari (2010)
We argue that authors often pay “lip service” to the provoking of pre-understandings, it is important to consider how pre-understandings contribute to the reflexive process of gaining understanding within hermeneutic research
This paper aims to detail a process of “provoking” our preunderstandings as a research team and describes how this initiates a reflexive process to alterations in understanding within an active research project
Summary
Qualitative research is firmly established in a number of health disciplines with its recent rise to prominence being outlined by Alasuutari (2010). 416) posited, “the vexing question of whether we can ever be free of our own conceptual understanding and particular historical point of view is doubted: Even if we, as researchers, can bracket our own viewpoints, what of the participants?” The reverse situation has come to the fore with the concept of reflexivity being considered key in rigorous qualitative studies (Dodgson, 2019). Pre-understandings characterize a person’s range of vision at a specific point in their life, which can be perceived and challenged throughout lifeexperiences and situations but are flexible and dynamic in their nature meaning that they can change during or after experiences that are made during reflexive processes This explains why Gadamer attributes importance to the aspect of becoming aware of one’s pre-understandings as an initial point during the process of understanding. As this paper is concerned with an ethical issue that continues to stir up acrimonious debate in many countries (Fleming & Robb, 2019), we feel it is important that our own positions be aired and challenged throughout the research process, reflexivity becomes a major component of our journey toward understanding
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