Vignette Research: Research Methods.

The book Vignette Research: Research Methods is a phenomenological guide for researchers and practitioners, explaining how to conduct Vignette Research in a variety of settings throughout the world. Vignette research is a phenomenological approach that is exploratory in nature and attempts to access the experiential basis of knowledge by investigating lifeworlds in everyday settings, going to the things themselves (Husserl). The vignette methodology enables researchers to capture their experience of others experience as it occurs in the field, adopting a stance the authors refer to as co-experiential experiencing. As an experience-focused text, the vignette aims to provide a depiction of everyday events that is as close as possible to the lived experience. At its core are the experiential circumstances that affect researchers in the field (e.g., school, home, hospital, traffic, outdoors). Vignettes consist of short, concise narratives in which something surprising, special or peculiar is revealed, and the aim of their condensed, experiential narratives is to resonate with readers. Vignettes are subjected to phenomenological analysis, a process the authors refer to as vignette reading. In reading a vignette, researchers neither operationalize nor categorize what it reveals. Rather, they engage with the vignette as readers, exercising rigorous restraint so as not to draw conclusions from the experience. Vignette research is a qualitative, narrative and phenomenologically oriented research methodology that has now gained international recognition, sparking interest from a wide range of institutions, environments and individuals.