A choir or cacophony? Sample sizes and quality of conveying participants’ voices in phenomenological research

Misunderstandings about qualitative methods, whether phenomenological or otherwise, are prevalent in social science research. Such misunderstandings leave researchers, reviewers, and editors less equipped to conduct or evaluate this method. Evaluation of phenomenology is especially complicated given the different variants that exist and the need for flexibility within these studies. Methodologists have created guides for conducting specific variants of phenomenology; however, these do not provide clear guidance as to what is an adequate sample in phenomenology. The purpose of this systematic review was to help improve implementation of phenomenological methods by exploring sample issues as they relate to study quality. We implemented an explanatory sequential mixed methods design to test relationships between samples and studies’ quality then deepen our understanding of these findings with a focused content analysis. First, we reviewed and coded 200 manuscripts following the PRISMA method. Larger samples were associated with lower quality and studies aligned with a specific phenomenological method tended to be of higher quality. Second, we identified two cases from the studies reviewed and subjected them to deductive qualitative content analysis to identify features that demonstrate quality. Findings are discussed with respect to implications for phenomenological methods in social and health sciences.