I would add one last point.  Research that aims to understand and explain how people make sense of experience can account for the gamut of experiences: from “alien abduction” to “personal salvation.”  Or as Clifford Geertz put it, rocks and dreams are both part of experience.  Researchers studying experience, in other words, are not attempting to argue with the ‘reality’ or ‘accuracy’ of the claims made by the people they are studying.