[Phenomenography--a way to do qualitative research]

The purpose of this paper is to describe and evaluate theoretical principles, possibilities and limits of the qualitative research method called phenomenography. The article is based on a literature review. Phenomenography is a research methodology initiated by Ference Marton and his research group in Sweden in the 1970s. Unlike phenomenology, phenomenography is not a philosophical school. It is a pragmatic method for doing qualitative research. In phenomenography, the aim of research is to describe the qualitatively different ways in which people perceive the world around them (the second-order perspective). The most common method of data collection is thematic interviewing. The results are categories of description representing the different conceptions of a phenomenon found among a certain population. Phenomenography is a useful method for qualitative analyses. However, it has also been criticized for a static view of human thought--a criticism that points toward the risks of relying on a single method in qualitative research.