Understanding the Differences between Husserl’s (Descriptive) and Heidegger’s (Interpretive) Phenomenological Research

Phenomenology is one of several qualitative research traditions. Undergraduate and graduate nursing students have sought to understand the differences between Husserl’s descriptive and Heidegger’s interpretive phenomenology. This article is a basic resource for nursing students that describes and interprets the differences between the two philosophical phenomenological schools of thought. The origin of phenomenology is presented. A descriptive and an interpretive article from two peer reviewed nursing journals are compared and contrasted based on their purpose, data collection and data analysis. The selected articles were chosen based on their topic of relevance related to nursing students in educational settings. *Corresponding author: Gina M. Reiners, Assistant Professor of Nursing, University of Saint Joseph, 1678 Asylum Avenue, West Hartford, CT 06117, USA, Tel: 860-231-2080 (Off) & 203-271-2980 (Res); Fax: 8602316755; E-mail: [email protected] Received July 10, 2012; Accepted August 25, 2012; Published August 27, 2012 Citation: Reiners GM (2012) Understanding the Differences between Husserl’s (Descriptive) and Heidegger’s (Interpretive) Phenomenological Research. J Nurs Care 1:119. doi:10.4172/2167-1168.1000119 Copyright: © 2012 Reiners GM. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.