I like that you emphasized how phenomenology helps you understand feelings and thoughts that are “hard to explain” with numbers. Your example of asking conversation ...
I like that you emphasized how phenomenology helps you understand feelings and thoughts that are “hard to explain” with numbers. Your example of asking conversation questions and looking for common things is a good start. To push your thinking further: phenomenology isn’t just about finding “things that they all say” – that sounds closer to thematic analysis in a generic qualitative study. True phenomenology seeks the essence of the lived experience, including unique variations. A question: how would you handle cases where one participant’s experience is completely different from others? Would you exclude it or include it as part of the essence? Also, what alternative design like grounded theory might help if you wanted to build a new theory about how stress develops from your data, rather than just describing experiences?