RMC, W8 Flashcards
What is qualitative analysis?
• Qualitative analysis are a way of generating meaningful patterns in the data.
• There is a spectrum of analytic approaches ranging from descriptive to the interpretive
• Qualitative analysis follow up on creating systematic ways of generating insights into a phenomenon, with each type of analysis taking a different focus to the phenomenon.
- The way analysis is done + what is prioritised differs between techniques - different parts of talk prioritised
Types of qualitative analysis
• Content analysis: can be quite varied in approach and often has a focus on superficial content of data + may use coding frameworks
• Thematic analysis: most common qual analysis + seen as a cornerstone > tends to focus on the identification of common themes and is good for exploring different topics.
• Discourse analysis: considers talk as a function of social action + language is used purposefully. Discourses work in a very similar way to a theme.
○ They represent patterns in the data that reflect something of the constricted nature of the phenomenon. With the focus on language essential to how the phenomenon of population is conceptualised.
• Conversational analysis: focuses on how interactions are represented by a talk and what action that talk represents and naturally occurring conversations, i.e. the process of interpretation, how it’s managed and constructed.
• IPA: is a methodological approach in of itself. has a series of philosophical assumptions that underpin it.
○ Primarily, IPA focuses on individual sense making and focuses on experiential knowledge and attempts to do this through attempting to understand participants experiences from that perspective, through themes within which are descriptive linguistic and conceptual comments
• Grounded theory: is interested in the identification or confirmation of theoretical models of human ideas > Participants talk is used to theorise about the nature of the phenomenon.
Deciding what analysis to use
- No “right or wrong” method but is important to choose the most appropriate one - some analyses are suited to answering certain questions or work better with certain data collection
- Decision making should be a holistic and iterative process
- The questions data collection and analysis methods all feed into each other.
- focus should be on selecting and the analytic technique that helps to meaningfully generate data that will help answer the research question - some methods allow flexibility like TA which can explore data from a number of researcher perspectives using a range of data > contrastingly, IPA has limited flexibility due to pre-defined philosophical positions
What is IPA?
• Qualitative Methodology in it’s own right
• Focus on personal sense-making of lived experiences
• This sense making is recognised as an interpretative enterprise for both the participant AND the researcher
• Useful for examining topics which are complex, ambiguous, and emotionally laden > is well used when people are responding to an unusual circumstance that would require a psychological response and engage in psychological processes to try understand the event such as transition to motherhood
Well-suited to clinical and health research due to this^
Philosophical underpinnings of IPA: Phenomenology
• The study of phenomenon, specifically the structures of experiences
• IPA cares about how participants make sense of their lived experiences while embedded in their personal and social worlds
• IPA researchers are interested in understanding personal perceptions and accounts of the experience as opposed to trying to identify the truth of the experience or producing an objective statement of objects or event
○ previous personal experiences or personal ways of thinking influence how they speak, story, and make sense of their experiences, how they think about the event and how they think about themselves, and how they think about other people
• Ultimately, IPA has a concern and interest in how people perceive or account for an experience.
Philosophical underpinnings of IPA: Hermeneutics
• Hermeneutics is the theory of interpretation > in response to an event or experience, people begin to use interpretive processes.
○ They begin to make sense of that experiences and start to use psychological processes to do this.
• Critical realist approach is used here too > There is an assumption that personal social lenses and psychological processes are being used to develop an account of their experiences
• After ppts have made sense of their experiences, the researcher then has to understand these processes. This is where the researcher begins their own interpretive processes > researcher interprets their interpretations > this is the double hermeneutic
• Almost like the researcher uses two interpretative processes because the lenses of the researcher themselves may come into play like for the ppt > social lenses + psychological processes + lens of being a researcher
• In this, IPA is more distinctly aligned research and participants as having shared, as well as distinct interpretive processes > highlights need to situate role of researcher in the researcher process using reflexivity
• Double hermeneutic highlights the central role of the researcher in the research process > inextricably linked to the interpretive process
• You can also do this curiously/critically, i.e., ‘What is the person trying to achieve here?, ‘Is something leaking out that wasn’t intended?’, but always empathetically
• Ultimately, IPA assumes that participants have internal processes, but may not always be able to communicate this well, thus the role of the researcher is to interpret and ‘fill in the gaps’ of internal processes from their talk
○ In doing so that you’re trying to unpick and identify the meanings that participants have attached to their experiences and be able to communicate this to others
Critical realism
• IPA conceptualises the person as having internal processes (i.e., cognition, affect that are used when responding to an experience) and there is a connection between their talk and internal state
• However, this connection is not always clear and direct, people may struggle to articulate their thoughts and feelings & the researcher is responsible for helping bring clarity to those processes
○ Researchers role to unpick and understand the meanings people used to create stories and meaning around their experiences.
• Why is IPA a critical realist perspective? Because we cannot ‘get at’ the ‘real’ experience/event, instead we understand the experience/event through the participant’s account.
- Consequently, accounts represent something of the reality of that experience/event > However, the accounts are influenced by the personal and social lenses of the participants and are limited by their linguistic practices thus, the accounts can tell us something of the nature of the phenomenon, but not its true form
Further influencing principles: Symbolic interactionism
- basically a consideration of language and the argument that the mind + self, which is the focus of examination, emerges from social interactions.
• This theory stipulates that we come to understand human and personal experience through interaction and exchange of meaningful communication or symbols.
○ language has symbolic meaning or assumptions built into them, and the linguistic choices we make therefore have social consequences. (by changing the intonation, tone or words selection, we can drastically change the meaning of that language and have that point of communication.)
• People are active in making their own understandings of the world, rather than the world shaping them
• These linguistic processes are not static. They are subjective processes of continual personal adjustment to an interaction with other people, cultures and institutions.
Further influencing principles: Idiography
- Most of psychology is nomothetic (aka makes claims at population level) but IPA focuses on particular things thorough detailed analysis by understanding how the phenomena has been understood from particular people or contexts.
• Not necessarily meaning we look at one person > There’s a recognition that experience is embodied and situated, but experience is also worldly and a relational phenomenon. The individual therefore does not exist as a discrete actor. This is also reflected in the processes of conduct in an IPA. - In the analytic stage, you look at the data on a case by case basis before moving on to the next interview, this allows you to build up a picture of the participants personal meaning making practises. > contrasts TA where you do the analysis for all dataset step by step before moving on to the next step in analysis
Conducting an IPA
Planning an IPA project
• Assumes agency of the individual > when the individual talks they have control and often understand (But not always) that there are consequences to how they phrase and story their accounts
• Primary focus on understanding individuals’ lived experiences and how they make sense of those experiences > phenomenology and hermeneutics
• Dynamic interpretive endeavour as there is no fixed way of thinking or talking so interpreting is dynamic
• IPA research questions tend to be open-ended with the purpose of gaining a rich description of the phenomenon > So you want to have a question that allows you to explore alongside the participant their experiences in their own way, usually a focus on a significant event so it would lead to them HAVING to use psychological processes + processes of meaning-making
e.g. How do people make sense of the experience of being a single father?
Conducting an IPA: Sampling
• No correct answer for sample sizes but usually smaller sizes (partly due to needing homogeneity of ppts)
• Focus on homogeneity > essentially means the interest in those who have some shared experiences and or characteristics
• The specific sample size depends on the commitment to the case study analysis. The more the focus is on the individual, the smaller the sample size will be. (e.g. some studies need just one ppt)
• Also need to consider richness of individual cases, if one ppt will be able to provide enough data which is rich enough to answer your question you may use one person - or if looking at one person in a lot of depth answers your question this may be enough
• How much detailed info can you get through your data collection
• You also need to think about the organisational constraints > Are you limited by the number of people who could participate, or are you also wanting to explore comparison or contrast in cases?
- Tend to smaller sample sizes because there is a focus on the detailed account of experience, and it is easier to adhere to the principles of IPA with fewer cases.
Conducting an IPA: Selecting the method
- Usually, IPA uses semi-structured interviews used to collect detailed accounts and you have more scope to explore in depth the personal meaning making people have attributed to their experiences.
- Semi-structured interviews also allow for researchers to explore topics that come up in the interview.
- Interviews provide the space to explore sense-making practices
- interviews can also be a space for participants to engage in further processes of meaning making
- their meanings and sense making practises are not necessarily set in stone or static before the interview, meanings and the story people tell of their experiences are fluid, flexible and can alter within and after the research context.
- Semi-structured interviews let you achieve a detailed snapshot of that current sense-making practises. > consequently semi-structured int are most useful but people also use diaries for this
- Some people use focus groups or observations > but this is unlikely to give a detailed account > Focus groups are not good at accessing individual experiences and interpreting the language of participants + obs are not good at accessing individual languages
Principles for analysis
• Case by case analysis > run each stage of analysis on one ppt then move onto the next ppt
○ This builds richer accounts + more understanding and awareness of personal meaning making practises.
• There is an assumption that participants counts represent a fluid meaning making practise, and that doesn’t mean it’s going to be the same before or after or even within the interview. (sometimes people say contradictory things within interviews - is normal)
• Core principle is that we are interested in how they’ve come to make sense of their experiences rather than trying to get out the reality or nature of event. > interested in what they have to say + why they may be saying it
Process for analysis
• Not prescriptive > not linear, can come back to things at different times > an iterative process
- Multiple ways of doing each stage but essence of keeping the stage has to be kept (doesn’t matter if you do it on a computer, by hand or mix both)
Stages of IPA
Stage 1: Reading and re-reading (Transcript)
- Getting an appreciation of the flow of the data and the focus is on entry in the life world of the participant which ensures that the participant is the focus of the analysis.
- helpful to listen to the participants voice at the same time as reading the transcript, as it can help situate the tone and context of the participant and keeps the voice essential to the interpretation as possible.
Stage 1 of IPA: beware of
Be aware of:
• Over-interpretation: when you begin to see the themes already ready and eager to go further on with your analysis
○ a way to combat this is try to record the “noise” of interpretation (aka over-interpretive bits) elsewhere > This stage is all about focussing on participants, voice and later readings > You may want to add these comments. They may all be questions or comments and in this in this stage, you are trying to understand the main elements of participants accounts.
• Emotional responses to the data: if you do have an emotional reaction to data, identify where and when you react in this way, thinking about whether elements of the story an early interpretive stages are as a result of interpretation or how you feel about the content.
Be mindful to note this down + make it clear which the interpretive comments and also which the emotional ones. - reflexive process
Stages of IPA
Stage 2: Initial coding
• Here you start noting the interesting or significant points from what ppt has said
• Must be clear what stage of analysis this is from compared to the other steps
• Look for paraphrasing, summarizing, or connections, imagery, colloquial terms, unusual phrases, and assumptions
• Important to keep an open mind and pay attention to the imagery and metaphor used by participants
• When coding think about the semantic content and the language used > Look out for colloquial terms, unusual phrases, assumptions and emotions.
• Different types of comments
○ Descriptive: accounts where you take them at face value, where there is a focus on key words or phrases used looking out for key issues that matters to the participant.
○ Linguistic: specific use of language used, such as pauses, pronoun use, fluency, repetition and specific terminology.
○ Conceptual: integrative approach and movement away from the explicit claims in this type of commentary. There is a drawing together of other descriptive comments and may also be useful in identifying variations in the dataset, especially later down the line after previous transcripts.
○ Deconstruction: decontextualise parts of the interview, so you might do this like reading paragraphs backwards or look at accounts in different context > can help eliminate elements of the texts or highlights assumptions and inconsistency.
• Essentially, initial coding is about reducing but maintaining the essence of the data by saying close to meeting the participants while starting the stages of interpretation.
You may even wish to add in some interpretive comments though making it clear that these are distinct from the codes themselves.
Stage 2 of IPA: beware of
Be aware of:
• Theoretical concepts: sometimes you may read an account + a psychological concept really resonates with that > It’s ok to be aware of these, but try to avoid importing top down explanations into your analysis. > Instead, think about how you can discuss these in the discussion section > Try to avoid using them to explain away elements of the data.
• Jumping to theme development: try to remain as close to the participant’s account, make a note elsewhere > a way that you can combat this is to ask yourself, is this grounded in what the participants are saying? You may try make links across ppts but because IPA is idiographic, ppts voice needs to be recognised > when this happens make a note elsewhere
Stages of IPA
Stage 3: Developing themes
• Here, you’re trying to capture the meaning of the participant who are trying to convey in the ways that they are able to make sense of their experiences.
• This stage requires a higher level of abstraction and draws on psychological terminology.
• This stage is about reducing but maintaining the essence of the data. The stage needs to be distinct from the previous stage (could use another margin)
• Questions to ask yourself:
○ What is the person trying to achieve here?
○ Is there something leaking out that wasn’t intended?
○ Do I have a sense of something going on that the participants themselves are not aware of?
• This stage needs to be repeated several times
