[1] It is an approach to educational research which appeared in publications in the early 1980s.
[3] While being an established methodological approach in education for several decades, phenomenography has now been applied rather extensively in a range of diverse disciplines such as environmental management, computer programming, workplace competence, and internationalization practices.
Its data collection methods typically include semi-structured interviews with a small, purposive sample of subjects, with the researcher "working toward an articulation of the interviewee’s reflections on experience that is as complete as possible".
These categories (and the underlying structure) become the phenomenographic essence of the phenomenon.
Analysis is whole group orientated since all data is analysed together with the aim of identifying possible conceptions of experience related to the phenomenon under investigation, rather than individual experiences.
There is emphasis on detailed analysis of description which follows from an assumption that conceptions are formed from both the results of human action and from the conditions for it.