Hermeneutic Constructivism: One ontology for authentic understanding

Nursing and nurses rely upon qualitative research to understand the intricacies of the human condition. Acknowledging the subjective nature of reality and commonly founded in a constructivist epistemology, qualitative approaches offer opportunities for uncovering insights from the perspective of the individual participants, the insider's view, and the construction of representations that maintain an intimacy with the subject's realities. Debate continues, however, about what is needed for a qualitative construction to be considered an authentic understanding of a subject's realities. Authenticity in the context of qualitative research has been described as entailing consideration of a number of well-trodden dimensions: fairness, ontological, educative, catalytic and tactical. Taking these dimensional requirements as key, this paper argues that authenticity may not always be as well-developed through some of the standard practices in qualitative research as perhaps expected. In particular, qualitative understandings of authenticity stress that participants should not be merely reported on but instead should be dynamically involved in and changed by the constructions and interpretations of data developed throughout the research process. As this paper illustrates, such engagements appear problematic for qualitative research approaches that are beholden to designative commitments in the context of language and meaning-making and which tend to prioritise commonality and generality at the expense of individual authenticity. An alternative qualitative approach, Hermeneutic Constructivism, is proposed as better able to achieve the requirements of the dimensions of authenticity. As outlined, this approach is well-placed to present an understanding of human experience through a genuinely expressivist approach and transcends the stress upon the common or the general that can be pervasive and problematic.