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Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis - Y2 - Coggle Diagram
Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis - Y2
Humphrey and Lewis (2008) - Autistic children often associate their educational experiences with negative stereotyping
The theory
What is interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA)?
It is a qualitative methodology which seeks to understand the experience from the individual’s point of view
It seeks to understand how people make sense of their lived experience in the context of their personal and social worlds (Smith et al, 2009)
It can be used to address a variety of research questions in different areas e.g. becoming a parent, transitioning to university, migrating, health-related experiences
Key theoretical foundations
Phenomenology - this is the philosophically grounded concern with attempting to provide an account of lived experience which is, as far as possible, conceptualised in its own terms
Hermeneutics - IPA sees phenomenology as being an interpretative endeavour; researchers are attempting to make sense of participants who are trying to make sense of events, objects and interactions they encounter
Idiography - IPA values the examination of each case in great detail, only after doing that is there a move to look for patterns of convergence and divergence across cases
Theoretical underpinnings of IPA
Phenomenology (experience) - Husserl, 1859-1938:
Concerned with how things appear to us through experience
Some relationships between the analysis and reality exists
As individuals, how do we perceive and talk about objects and events
Hermeneutics (interpretation) - Heidegger, 1889-1976:
An in-depth exploration of people's interpretation and meaning they attribute to that interpretation
The researcher aims to assume an insider perspective - to stand in the shoes of the participants
Double hermeneutic (dual interpretation process):
The participants are trying to make sense of their world - the researcher is trying to make sense of the participants making sense of their world (Smith and Osborn, 2003)
Critical questions the researcher must ask of themselves -
What is the person trying to achieve here?
Is there something else coming across that wasn't intended?
Is there something else going on here that the person themselves is less aware of?
IPA follows an idiographic approach - idiographic = focusing on the particular over the universal
In contrast, nomothetic studies work at the group/population level to make probabilistic claims / predictions
IPA aims to gain a holistic understanding of the individual
Basic principles of IPA
Inductive - approaches the data without any preconceptions
It is data driven (bottom-up)
Individuals actively interpret their experiences and their world - in fact we cannot not interpret
The questions should not be based on previous research - they should just ask questions that help to understand experience
Do not link themes to particular questions - the themes should be organic
Research is a dynamic process - the researcher is active in the research
Orienting the interviews -
Most IPA studies collect data through in-depth one-to-one interviews with participants
Open-ended questions (rather than hypotheses and fixed answer methods of data collection) to gain rich and detailed descriptions of the experience
Constructing an interview guide -
Researchers construct an interview guide to facilitate the interview but this is used very flexibly in the interview itself - semi-structured
Participants are encouraged to talk in detail about the elements they consider most important, and the interviewer attempts to facilitate this process, offering prompts and probes to enable delving deeper
Sampling and data collection - Samples are small due to the depth and richness of the data collected
Sampling - purposive sampling is usual as the researcher is looking to understand the experiences of a particular group of people
Limitations -
Small sample sizes - however, this method does not have to be limited by sample size (RASP method)
-> Novel, generalisable method for combining idiographic and citizen-science survey data, allowing phenomenological study at scale
-> A set of experiential themes capturing representative phenomenology
-> A resource and a film
How participants communicate their experiences -
-> IPA rests on detailed experiences of participants
-> This rests on ability and use of language
How to conduct IPA - data collection:
Use semi-structured interviews - using IPA with focus groups is difficult
Carry out data collection - record your interview
Follow your interview schedule -
-> Be guided by the schedule, the participant shapes the interview
-> Ask open-ended questions
-> Allow participant to answer how they wish
-> Probe interesting areas as they arise
-> Use prompts only when participant is struggling for an answer - do not lead or rush the participant and observe non-verbal behaviour
Transcive data verbatim - use Teams or Zoom transcription
How to conduct IPA
Interview analysis - IPA analysis involves a slow step-by-step, inductive process of engagement with the transcript of each interview (Smith and Nizza, 2022):
Prepare transcript for analysis by constructing a word document with 3 columns, copy interview material into the central column
-> Make the third column on the right for making exploratory notes on - the language employed, notes on especially interesting content, pointers to elaborations or ambiguities arising in the narrative
Exploratory notes - descriptive notes:
Basic notes that summarise the explicit meaning-making of the participant and describe what matters to them in terms of objects, events, experiences, processes, locations, principles etc
The overall aim is to identify those elements that structure a participant’s experiences and sense-making, taking them at face value
Linguistic notes - notable language
Note how language is used in the transcript, including actual words used and how they are used to convey a particular experience
Include use of metaphors and figures of speech, pronouns, verb tenses, pauses, laughter, repetitions, hesitations, and tone as these inform interpretation
Underline notes relating to language in exploratory notes column
Conceptual notes - questions or expansions:
These relate to questions that the transcript raises for you as a researcher - typically, they move away from the explicit claims of participants and consider their and your understanding of what is being discussed overall
The aim is not to judge but to be open and curious about the participant’s standpoint - these interpretations take time and reflection, drawing on both your psychological understanding and personal experience
Often these comments are stated in the form of questions, especially at the start of analysis, which may be answered as you get deeper into the analysis
Format as italics
Formulating experiential statements -
Having completed exploratory notes for the whole transcript, return to the beginning of the interview and record experiential statements in the other margin
These push the analysis to a next level of conceptualisation, attempting to provide a short concise and pithy summary of what is being learned about the participant’s experience which is rounded in but moving beyond their verbatim report
Concise, specific and dense:
Each experiential statement should be a concise summary of what the researcher identifies as important from your exploratory notes associated with the corresponding portion of the transcript
Statements need to be specific enough to be grounded in the data but also conceptual so that they capture the psychological substance of a transcript
Statements need to be dense and rich - pointing to both the psychological process and context/content of that process being invoked by the participant’s report
Moving from experiential statements to personal experiential themes (PETS):
The next stage in analysis involves looking for patterns within the experiential statements and clustering them accordingly
Clusters are labelled as personal experiential themes (PETS) because they represent the core experiential features for that individual emerging from the analysis
Having completed table of PETS for the first case, start from scratch again with the second case, repeating steps 1 and 2
After having conducted this process with each case and having a table of PETS for each case, then look for patterns of similarity and difference across cases, culminating with a table of group experiential themes (GETS)
Moving from experiential statements to personal experiential themes (PETS)
Step 3 in an IPA analysis involves looking for patterns within the experiential statements ad clustering them accordingly
Clusters are labelled as personal experiential themes (PETS) because they represent the core experiential features for that individual emerging from the analysis
Step 4 - cross-case analysis - From PETS to GETS:
Having completed a table of PETS for the first case, start from scratch again with the second case, repeating Steps 1 and 2 until you have a table of PETS for each case
Cross-case analysis -
-> Although it is possible to write up a single case study in IPA, most projects include a number of participants
-> This means that once all cases have been analysed, then it is time to look for divergence and convergence across cases
-> This involves looking for common patterns and idiosyncratic within those similarities
-> This will result in a new table of group experiential themes (GETS) which form the basis for your write up of the analysis
How to get from PETS to GETS -
Review each table of PETS for each participant -> re-order PETS if will help comparison looking for overlaps -> print out all PETS tables and lay them out so they can be easily reviewed together
Look carefully at material within and between tables and looking to identify connections, similarities and differences
Start by looking at the PETS, the move to the level of the experiential statements