Researching health care as a meaningful practice: Toward a nondualistic view on evidence for qualitative research

Being able to describe how research findings become evidence is crucial in providing a justification for all kinds of research findings. However, qualitative researchers in health care, including those who conduct phenomenological research, are usually fairly modest when it comes qualifying their research findings as such. We advocate a view of evidence for phenomenological research, an approach that is rooted in philosophy of science, including perspectives of ontology, epistemology, and methodology. We suggest that phenomenology can become an exemplar for how qualitative research can make convincing arguments and thus can be better appreciated. In this article, we present a philosophical foundation for phenomenological evidence by exploring the notions of objectivity, validity, and generalizability in terms of openness, meaning, and essence.