"I've heard that I could use hermeneutics for explaining the meaning of my project. But what precisely are hermeneutics?"

The task of interpretation involves describing the meanings you derived from-or attributed to--the information you collected. Those meanings take the form of answers you found for the explicit and implied questions that your research was designed to resolve. Explicit refers to questions or hypotheses that you specifically stated earlier that your project would address. There can be two sorts of explicit questions. The first consists of the original issues you intended to investigate. The second involves unanticipated questions or issues that emerged during the process of conducting the research, questions you then intentionally adopted as further matters to be included in the study. The term implied questions concerns material you include in your interpretation as answers to questions which were never directly asked. The following example illustrates the distinctions among these three sorts of questions--the original and emerging explicit questions, and implied questions

Imagine a study titled "Ways of Conducting a Census: A Comparative Analysis" in which the author in the opening pages of her dissertation explains that she initially designed her research to answer this three-part question:

What are common methods of conducting a population census, what criteria have most frequently been used for evaluating those methods, and which methods are judged best and which poorest when they are assessed by means of such criteria?

However, in the process of collecting data to answer that query, she is obliged to recognize that a variety of social and cultural conditions influence the census methods adopted in a particular society. Consequently, explaining why a given method was chosen calls for describing how influential conditions within each society affected that choice. Thus, she adds a further question that she would attempt to answer:

What social and cultural conditions within a society significantly influence the selection of how the census will be conducted?

In the final writing of the dissertation, this question is appended to the original one, and the student explains how such a question was generated during the process of data collection.

Later, in the final pages of the dissertation, after she has described the way she collected and organized her data, she first writes an interpretation of the answers to her explicit questions, then attaches this paragraph.

The extent to which--and the manner in which--census outcomes are publicized affects how census data are applied in decision-making by government agencies, educational institutions, and business enterprises. This point is demonstrated by the following comparison among the five nations that have been included in the present investigation.

Her comparison assumes the form of statistical evidence and a discussion of how the five nations' census practices have been analyzed. This attached material is an example of an implied question. That is, the inclusion of information about the manner of reporting census results and the practical applications of census information does not derive from a question posed earlier in the dissertation. Instead, it reflects a latent question--one not central to, but nevertheless relevant to, the main thrust of the study and thus considered appropriate for inclusion among the project's interpretations.