Feeling grateful: a Parse research method Study

Feeling grateful is fundamental to being human. Feeling grateful is a lived universal experience that is significant to health and quality of life. Therefore, the human-becoming school of thought (Parse, 1981, 1998, 2007, 2010) was an appropriate choice of theoretical perspective to underpin this study. The purposes of this research study were to: discover and explicate the structure of the lived experience of feeling grateful as a universally lived phenomenon, contribute to the advancement of nursing knowledge through a scientifically rigorous process enhancing the theory of humanbecoming (Parse, 2007), and add to the body of knowledge about the phenomenon of feeling grateful. The humanbecoming (Parse, 2007) school of thought was the theoretical perspective foundational to this study. The Parse research method, underpinned by the ontology of humanbecoming (Parse, 2007), was used to answer the research question What is the structure of the lived experience of feeling grateful? The participants were 10 individuals in the community. The Parse research method processes of dialogical engagement, extraction-synthesis, and heuristic interpretation, were used to discover the structure: Feeling grateful is potent elation amid tribulation arising with the assuredness-unassuredness of benevolent alliances. New knowledge was discovered that advanced the humanbecoming theory (Parse, 2007), enhanced the understanding of the experience of feeling grateful, showed new possibilities for research, and provided implications for the teaching-learning process and nursing practice.