As the worm turns: hope as meaning construction in the wake of grief and loss.
This article presents findings from reimmersion in the data from a study on hope in Australian youth. Carried out in 2002 using a Gadamerian hermeneutic phenomenological approach, the study explored meanings that young people ascribed to their experiences of hope. It was clear from original analysis that the participants expressed hope as a driving force characterized by a necessity for human connectedness and the need to have options and choices in life which when experienced produced feelings of at-one-with. However, missing from this description is the acknowledgement of hope as an embodied experience that enabled resolution of grieving and loss. Reimmersion in the data added new dimensions to my understanding of hope and how it functions in people's lives. In this sense, engagement in secondary analysis fulfilled the goal of philosophic hermeneutics, which is to understand what is involved in the process of understanding itself.
de Sales
Turner
T
School of Nursing, Deakin University, Burwood, Victoria, Australia. desales.turner@deakin.edu.au
D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000293:Adolescent; D001290:Attitude; D001315:Australia; D006117:Grief; D006801:Humans; D000297:Psychology, Adolescent