Phenomenological psychology & descriptive experience sampling: a new approach to exploring music festival experience

Abstract

This paper provides an in-depth discussion of a methodological approach to the study of music festival experience, using phenomenological psychology to understand the ideographic experiences of attendees. The research is grounded in the philosophy of existential phenomenology and its' conceptualisation of experience, using the work of Husserl (1936Husserl ( /1970 as its' phenomenological foundation. From this position, the research argues for the adoption of an interpretative phenomenological perspective (Heidegger, 1929(Heidegger, /1962 Merleau-Ponty, 1945/1962 in order to more fully understand the live music festival experience. By engaging with the phenomenological psychology of Smith, Harre and Van Langenhove (1995) and Ashworth (2006;, it becomes possible to better understand the contribution that the music festival experience makes to an individual's Lifeworld. Smith's (1996; Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) then provides a robust process for understanding the music festival experience on an idiographic basis.Nine participants used the Descriptive Experience Sampling (Hurlburt & Heavey, 2001) approach to gather data about their experiences before, during and after the Green Man Music festival and then further explored in detail during subsequent individual phenomenological interviews. The use of Descriptive Experience Sampling method and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis also provides a contrasting conceptualisation of experience to previous research, with findings that contribute to Ashworth's (2003) theories of Lifeworld as well as Krueger's (2014Krueger's ( , 2015 Hypothesis of Individual Extended Emotions and his Hypothesis of Collective Extended Emotions. The main focus of this paper is on the method's application and adaptability to the Music Festival context and gives consideration for future studies.

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