03 · What You Need to Know
How to Recognize and Formulate a Phenomenological Research Question
Begin With a Phenomenon, Not Merely a Topic
A topic identifies a general area of interest. A phenomenon identifies what is to be investigated as experienced.
For example, "online learning" is a topic. "Experiencing isolation while studying in a fully online doctoral program" identifies a more specific experiential phenomenon. Similarly, "teacher burnout" is a broad topic, whereas "the experience of losing a sense of professional efficacy during prolonged occupational exhaustion" offers a more focused phenomenological direction.
The distinction matters because phenomenology does not ordinarily aim to investigate everything participants know or think about a topic. It asks how a particular phenomenon presents itself in their experience and how that experience may be understood.
Identifying the phenomenon requires conceptual care. A researcher should not define the experience so narrowly that the proposed findings are already assumed. For example, studying "the experience of feeling abandoned by unsupportive university administrators" presupposes both abandonment and administrative failure. A less leading formulation might investigate how early-career faculty experience institutional support and its absence during professional transition.
The researcher's task is to make the phenomenon recognizable without determining in advance what participants must have felt or what the analysis must reveal.
Ask About Experiential Meaning Rather Than Simply Reported Information
A phenomenological question may investigate what an experience is like, how it is understood, or how it is constituted within participants' lived worlds.
This is different from asking participants to provide information about their practices or preferences.
| Research question |
Primary purpose |
Phenomenological fit |
| What challenges do teachers report when using generative AI? |
Identify reported difficulties. |
Weak unless the inquiry is substantially reframed toward experience. |
| How do teachers implement generative AI in classroom assessment? |
Describe instructional practices. |
Usually better suited to a practice-oriented qualitative design. |
| How do teachers experience uncertainty about their professional judgment when AI participates in assessment? |
Understand the experience of professional uncertainty. |
Potentially strong. |
| How do teachers make sense of changes to their professional identity following the introduction of generative AI? |
Investigate personal meaning-making. |
Potentially strong, particularly for an interpretive approach. |
| What is the experiential structure of feeling professionally displaced by AI-mediated teaching practices? |
Examine the structure of a specified experience. |
Potentially strong for an appropriately justified descriptive phenomenological approach. |
The last three questions are not automatically methodologically sound. Their suitability still depends on whether participants have encountered the phenomenon, whether the formulation imposes assumptions, and whether the intended analysis can address the experiential objective.
Distinguish the Phenomenon From Its Causes, Consequences, and Solutions
A common difficulty arises when researchers begin with an experience but formulate questions primarily about its causes or practical consequences.
Suppose the phenomenon is academic rejection.
"What factors contribute to manuscript rejection?" is principally an explanatory question about editorial outcomes. "What coping strategies do researchers use after rejection?" investigates responses and actions. "How does manuscript rejection affect subsequent publication productivity?" concerns consequences.
By comparison, "How do early-career researchers experience and make sense of receiving their first journal rejection?" directs attention toward the experience itself.
This does not mean phenomenological researchers must ignore circumstances, actions, or consequences. These may form part of how an experience is lived. The difference lies in their analytical role: they help illuminate the phenomenon rather than replacing it as the central object of inquiry.
Different Phenomenological Traditions May Require Different Questions
Phenomenological methodologies share an interest in experience but do not necessarily pursue identical forms of knowledge. Their philosophical differences should influence question formulation.
Descriptive Phenomenology: What Is the Structure of the Experience?
Descriptive phenomenological approaches, including Giorgi's descriptive psychological method, seek to investigate the phenomenon through careful examination of experiential descriptions. The researcher adopts a phenomenological attitude and analyzes accounts to articulate a general psychological structure of the experience.
A possible question is: "What is the psychological structure of the experience of receiving unexpected academic dismissal among university students?"
Such wording makes the intended analytical orientation relatively explicit. A more accessible question, such as "How is unexpected academic dismissal experienced by university students?", could also be compatible with descriptive phenomenology when the methodology establishes how the experiential structure will be investigated.
The question should not assume that all participants experience dismissal as humiliation, injustice, or personal failure. Those meanings must remain open to investigation.
Hermeneutic Phenomenology: What Does the Experience Mean Within the Lifeworld?
Hermeneutic phenomenology emphasizes interpretive understanding of lived meaning. In approaches associated with van Manen, phenomenological reflection may attend to how an experience is lived through relationships, embodiment, temporality, and the person's situated world.
A possible question is: "What is the lived meaning of being unable to establish a sense of belonging as a first-generation university student?"
The researcher might investigate how belonging or its absence is experienced through ordinary interactions, institutional spaces, relationships, and expectations. The question is not merely whether students report belonging or which institutional services they prefer.
Hermeneutic inquiry does not require every question to use the phrase "lived meaning." Its orientation should be evident from the purpose and methodological commitments rather than from a prescribed grammatical formula.
Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis: How Do Particular People Make Sense of Significant Experiences?
Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), developed within a tradition associated with Jonathan Smith and colleagues, examines how particular individuals make sense of significant experiences in their lives.
IPA combines phenomenological attention to experience with hermeneutic interpretation and an idiographic commitment to detailed examination of particular cases. Researchers interpret participants' attempts to understand their own experiences, an analytical relationship often described as a double hermeneutic.
A possible question is: "How do early-career academics make sense of their first experience of being publicly challenged about their research credibility?"
The question invites detailed exploration of personal meaning-making without assuming that participants respond in the same way. It is especially compatible with an approach that examines individual accounts closely before considering patterns across participants.
Smith, Flowers, and Larkin's treatment of IPA emphasizes the importance of experiential questions and the relationship between the question, case selection, and interpretation. The methodological orientation should therefore be chosen deliberately rather than after the interview transcripts have been collected.
Should You Ask "What Is It Like?" or "How Do Participants Make Sense of It?"
Both formulations can support phenomenological inquiry, but they direct attention somewhat differently.
What is it like to experience this phenomenon?
Emphasizes the character, qualities, or structure of the experience. This may suit descriptive or interpretive approaches, depending on the analytical orientation.
How do participants make sense of this experience?
Foregrounds interpretation and personal meaning-making. This is particularly characteristic of IPA, although it is not exclusive to that methodology.
Neither formulation guarantees methodological quality. A question beginning with "What is it like?" can still be too broad, while a question about sense-making may drift toward a general account of opinions unless it remains anchored in a particular experience.
How Specific Should the Research Question Be?
A useful phenomenological question ordinarily identifies the phenomenon clearly enough to guide participant selection and data collection. Contextual details may be included when they are central to the experience.
Compare "What are the lived experiences of university students?" with "How do first-generation university students experience the transition from home to residential university life?" The latter identifies a recognizable transition and a potentially relevant participant group.
Yet specificity has limits. Adding every demographic characteristic, institutional condition, and anticipated emotional response can create an unnecessarily restrictive question.
The research question should distinguish the phenomenon from the surrounding topic without prematurely defining its experiential meaning. The necessary degree of participant homogeneity can then be considered in relation to the methodological approach.
Must Phenomenological Questions Focus on Negative or Transformative Experiences?
No. Phenomenological inquiry is not limited to trauma, crises, major transitions, or emotionally difficult experiences.
Ordinary experiences such as waiting, learning, feeling competent, encountering uncertainty, being recognized, or participating in a community may be phenomenologically significant. What matters is whether the experience warrants close examination and can be investigated meaningfully.
IPA commonly investigates personally significant experiences, but significance does not necessarily imply distress or an extraordinary event. The researcher should explain why the selected phenomenon merits investigation rather than assume that emotional intensity is a requirement.
How Do You Avoid Building the Expected Findings Into the Question?
A research question becomes problematic when it treats an interpretation as an established feature of the phenomenon.
For example, "How do teachers experience the loss of autonomy caused by generative AI?" assumes that AI causes a loss of autonomy. Some teachers may experience greater control, no meaningful change, or competing feelings of dependence and empowerment.
A more open formulation might ask: "How do teachers experience changes in their professional autonomy when generative AI becomes part of their instructional work?"
Even this question presupposes that participants have encountered changes. If that cannot reasonably be established, the researcher might instead investigate how professional autonomy is experienced in AI-mediated teaching.
Phenomenological openness does not require a question without boundaries. It requires sufficient openness for participants' accounts to challenge the researcher's initial understanding.
How Many Research Questions Should a Phenomenological Study Have?
There is no universal numerical requirement. A single overarching phenomenological question, supported by a limited number of compatible subsidiary questions where necessary, may provide a coherent structure.
However, subsidiary questions should not turn the study into several unrelated investigations.
For example, a study asking how teachers experience professional uncertainty could explore how that uncertainty appears in instructional decisions, relationships with students, or understandings of expertise. These may remain connected to the central phenomenon.
By contrast, adding questions about AI adoption rates, predictors of student achievement, and institutional implementation costs would introduce different analytical objectives. Those questions might require another design or a deliberately integrated mixed-methods study.
The number of questions is less important than their conceptual coherence and the feasibility of addressing them through the chosen phenomenological methodology.
The Question Must Remain Consistent With the Analysis
A phenomenological question establishes expectations for what the researcher will investigate and what the findings should explain.
If the question concerns the lived meaning of academic exclusion, a findings section limited to categories such as "financial problems," "communication barriers," and "lack of support" may be insufficient. Those categories could be relevant, but they do not necessarily explain how exclusion is experienced.
Depending on the phenomenological approach, analysis may need to examine how participants encounter institutional spaces, understand their relationships, experience time, or interpret their changing identities. Such dimensions should emerge through defensible engagement with experiential material rather than being mechanically imposed.
This alignment is especially important when deciding whether the analysis will emphasize experiential structure, individual variation, or both.
Researchers should also consider how prior theory will inform the inquiry without predetermining what participants' experiences must mean.
