Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis

Question 1

Ontology and Epistemology

Answer 1

• Ontology: is concerned with the nature of being (reality- what things exist)
• Rooted in questions of trying to understand what we understand e.g., do souls exist?
• Epistemology: is concerned with what constitutes knowledge and the methods to measure knowledge
• Rooted in the philosophy of knowing how we come to understand something e.g., how can we know whether souls exist?
• Both influence the questions we ask and the methods we as researcher use to answer these questions.
• Each methodology will have a different epistemological underpinnings.
  IPA has to be situated in interpretivism as we are interpreting a situation

Question 2

IPA epistemology

Answer 2

• Hermeneutic phenomenological epistemology.
• We are immersed in a linguistic, cultural, historical, physical world)
• Idiographic approach to understanding
• Do not access experience directly- we engage in a process of interpretation (meaning making, double hermeneutic)
• Reflexivity is important – understand what we bring to the data and make these clear.
• ‘‘The end result is always an account of how the analyst thinks the participant is thinking’ (Smith et al, 2009, p.80).- very distinct separation from grounded theory- IPA allows the researcher to insert themselves within the data
• Trying to understand the experience of individuals not the masses
• Usually only 3 or 4 people- not trying to generalize theory to the whole population but to understand a certain experience e.g. study on a rare disease. Need a tool that will equip you to analyse data for few rather than many
• Hermeneutic- holds that the most basic fact of social life is the meaning of an action. Approach is the theory and methodology of interpretation

Question 3

key characteristics of IPA

Answer 3

• IPA explores a persons ‘life world’ via their ‘meaning-making’
• The 3 I’s:
  
  • Idiographic- very specific to the person you are interviewing. starting with the detailed examination of one case until gestalt
  • Inductive- rooted within the data you get. techniques which are flexible enough to allow unanticipated topics /themes to emerge
    Interrogative- repeatedly ask question in the data to get your final answer. a key aim of IPA is to make a contribution to psychology through interrogating or illuminating existing research.

Question 4

what is IPA

Answer 4

• It aims to understand the experience of a phenomenon from a particular perspective within a particular context
• Concerned with the lived experience- the participants life world
• Concerned with the meaning making- how people make sense of a given experience
• Tries to bring to light the taken for granted aspects of our life.
• Interpretative process
• It draws on 3 philosophical strands
  
  • Phenomenology
  • Hermeneutics
    Idiography

Question 5

Phenomenology founded by Husserl

Answer 5

• Husserl developed the phenomenological method to capture the structure which make up the human experience.
• A method of studying experience or what is often termed the participants life world.
• Aims to capture the essence of the experience as it appears to our consciousness.
• To create objective means to study subjective experiences by suspending own pre-judgments (bracketing).
• But more focused on objectivity than later thinkers.
• Widely used as a methodology- phenomenological method came to try and understand the phenomena of human experience- specifically in terms of transition points in someone’s life e.g. illness
• Overlap between consciousness and phenomenology- between this there is an awareness (or lack of) between the experience e.g. awareness of dying. Concerned with the consciousness of the experience- this is where it comes into psychology as you can see
  Push to make IPA more objective- idea of suspension/bracketing in IPA (holding biases/thoughts about a phenomena- acknowledge how we understand the world but we keep it separate from analysis)– when we interpret data we can look at these and see if it is a true reflection of the data or if the researcher inserts this in

Question 6

Phenomenology beyond Husserl

Answer 6

• Heidegger: Our interaction with the world/ human beings are interpretative. Interpreting respondents meaning making is a key to phenomenological enquiry.
• Merleau-Ponty: Embodiment. The body is central to human experience, it is a fundamental part of our knowing the world
  Sartre: The important role of ‘others’ in shaping our experiences (both their presence/ lack of presence)

Question 7

what do we mean by lived experience?

Answer 7

• IPA is interested in capturing how people understand their life-world- so we explore meaning making, how people make sense of their experiences
• When we are looking at experience we look to capture cognitions, perspectives, beliefs, emotions and bodily feelings (embodiment)
  Recognition of the role/importance of context- historical, cultural, personal, social etc.

Question 8

Hermeneutics

Answer 8

• Methodology of Interpretation
• Access to experience/meaning made available through interpretation.
• Interpretation is founded on pre-conceptions, but we may only be aware of these only once interpretation has started.
• Bracketing is important, but we may not be able to achieve this fully (reflexivity)
• Researcher can bring added meaning to a participants account by engaging with psychological theory and through having access to a larger dataset.
• Key thing: fusion of understanding- meaning making is interactive- between the researcher and the researched.
  We must have an openness to the text and to the individuals account

Question 9

what hermeneutics looks like in IPA

Answer 9

• Two types (Ricoeur, 1970)
• Hermeneutics of questioning /suspicion
• Challenging the text, asking questions of it, drawing on external perspectives – not challenging the truthfulness of the text (conceptual commentary)
• Hermeneutics of empathy
  We are accepting of the text, focusing on the perspectives of participant, describing the account, important in the interview process too (descriptive commentary)

Question 10

research suited to IPA

Answer 10

• Novel or understudied phenomena.
• Important for when interested in exploring a personal account of a given experience within a given context.
• Bringing to light the accounts of marginalized groups/under researched areas.
• Brings out rich understanding of the phenomena- opening new research avenues.
  Clinical and health

Question 11

Research examples

Answer 11

• Clients’ experiences of one-to-one low-intensity interventions for common mental health problems: An interpretative phenomenological analysis.
• Stigma and the delegitimation experience: An interpretative phenomenological analysis of people living with chronic fatigue syndrome.
  Researching recovery from psychosis: a user-led project

Question 12

sampling

Answer 12

• Homogenous
• Purposive
• Small samples (N = 5 -10 Smith, (2004))
  Case studies

Question 13

a key to a good analysis is good data

Answer 13

• Good data
  
  • Is detailed
  • Involves eliciting content relating to the individuals feelings, thoughts and their embodied experience.
  • Involves first person accounts of their life-world (‘I’ etc.)
  • Is obtained through good interview technique
• Bad data
  
  • Data which is about other people
    Data which involves descriptive accounts of things and events

Question 14

data

Answer 14

• Traditionally- words
• Interviews- usually individual one-to-one, more than one individual you have to consider impact of group dynamics etc.
• Diary entries
• Blogs
  Creativity is encouraged, people use photographs, drawing etc. to elicit conversations

Question 15

developing the interview schedule

Answer 15

• Developed from your understanding of the key features of the given experience (based on scoping research)
• Can involve a range of stakeholders (clinicians, patients, researchers)
• Interview schedule can be piloted: aim to capture the clarity of questions, flow of interview, rule out ambiguity, leading questions, prompts to be added.
  Numbers of questions is based on the topic

Question 16

the interview

Answer 16

• Semi structured interview
  
  • Open questions
  • Flexible protocol
  • Pursue relevant/unexpected topics - use of prompts
  • Participants agenda is prioritised- participant is the expert
  • Employ hermeneutics of empathy
• Recorded via Dictaphone
  Ending interviews can be difficult if something personal was talked about – can be cathartic for the participant.

Question 17

transcribing the interview

Answer 17

• Transcribed in conversational style
• Page is split into three, with the transcripts being placed in the middle, with initial codes to the right and emerging themes to the left. Work on electronic or printed version
• Listen back to transcripts to ensure all material was captured correctly.
  Analyse one transcript at a time!

Question 18

the art of analysis

Answer 18

• Each interview read individually (multiple times)
• Open coding , develop potential themes per person
• Emergent themes organised into a preliminary structure
• Assess possible interrelationships in emergent themes
• As reaching gestalt condense themes per person
• Compare case for convergence and divergence
• Organise shared themes
  Compare each case in an iterative manner until final superordinate

Question 19

the 3 coding levels in IPA

Answer 19

• Descriptive Coding
  
  • Focus on describing what the participant has said
  • Notes on important statements that make up the participant’s lifeworld
• 2. Linguistic Coding
     * Focus on the meaning of the language used
     * The ways in which content and meaning have been presented/imparted
     * Consider pronoun use, repetition of words, use of similes & metaphors etc.
• 3. Conceptual Coding
     * Engaging at an interrogative and conceptual level
     * More interpretative – a move away from the explicit claims
     * Start to interpret what is being said behind the words- is there anything conceptually we can take away from it
     * Begins to capture the overarching understanding of the experience/topic
     Often takes the form of questions (when starting out this can be helpful)

Question 20

developing emergent themes

Answer 20

• Shift from working primarily with transcript to using initial notes.
• Themes aim to capture ‘essential quality’ of data
• When similar themes emerge, use same label
• Theme labels are grounded in participant’s narrative but may use psychological (or other) terminology
• Develop plausible and grounded themes from your codes
• Whilst initial notes may have felt ‘loose’ and ‘open’, themes are more of a reflection and understanding of the data.
• Turning these notes into themes involves producing a concise statement that captures what was important
  Consider this in relation to the examples from Jack’s extract that were presented.

Question 21

searching for connections across emergent themes

Answer 21

• The aim of this step is to draw together the emergent themes from one participant’s account and to produce a structure which illuminates the most important and interesting aspects.
• Map the existing themes (which until now have existed in chronological order) by considering how they fit together.
• Not all emergent themes need be included – some can be discarded. May depend on the research question.
• There are various ways this can be done (these are examples and not prescriptive):*
  
  • • Abstraction – Subsumption – Polarization – Contextualization – Numeration - Function -
      Once this process has finished make a graphic representation of the structure of the emergent themes (diagram, table, figure etc.)

Question 22

moving to the next case

Answer 22

• You can write up a single case study, but usually you have multiple participants.
• Move to the next participant’s account and repeat the whole process.
• Remember ‘ideography’ – ensure you treat this case as unique.
• Bracket the ideas and findings from the previous participant
  As much as possible, you are wanting new themes to emerge from each case.

Question 23

looking for patterns across cases

Answer 23

• Can help analyst to move to more theoretical level
• Participants have unique, idiosyncratic instances but can also share higher order qualities.
• See example from Shineborne (n.d) cited in Smith et al (2009: 101)
  
  • Usually, a table of themes like this
    Illustrates how the themes are nested within superordinate themes

Question 24

clustering emergent themes

Answer 24

• Emergent themes organised into a preliminary structure
  
  • Capturing the sense of the participants account at a very basic level of analysis.
• Assess possible interrelationships in emergent themes
  
  • Looking for interrelations between different emergent themes
• As reaching gestalt condense themes per person
  
  • Consolidate the information
    End up with a set of clustered themes

Question 25

compare case for convergence and divergence

Answer 25

- Compare case for convergence and divergence * Look for similarities and differences across each of your participants account * What’s happening overall for your participants? - Organise shared themes Task is to cluster themes across all samples

Question 26

superordinate and subordinate theme development

Answer 26

- Subordinate * Recurrent themes which appear across one third or half of the participants in the study. * Analytical work which aims to capture the most significant aspects of participants accounts whilst also brining out the nuances within the theme. * They are more descriptive - Superordinate themes Highly abstracted themes which aim to capture the key aspects of the experience and the subordinate theme from a more abstract/conceptual lens. (hierarchical)

Question 27

writing

Answer 27

- Be aware that you might not be able to write everything you have done- focus on aspects which appear key to participants accounts. - Opportunity for you as the author to reflect the analytic work you have completed - Don’t hide behind multiple quotes- be confident in your analytical work and let it be the focus of your writing (paper) - Capture similarities in participants accounts but also bring to light individual nuances (see next slide). Read other qualitative work for inspiration!

Question 28

reflexivity

Answer 28

- IPA recognises the central role of the researcher within the research process-the final analysis is after all the product of interpretation. - Heidegger ideas around preconceptions- important to note these down (e.g. memo notes) Allowing the reader to assess its trustworthiness