week 9 Flashcards
IPA and individual personal experiences.
Phenomenology is the epistemology Individual experience
Interpretation: How people make sense of that experience.
Involves a detailed examination of a particular case or a small number of cases.
History of IPA
Jonathan Smith’s paper (1996)
IPA was developed and centred on psychology:
IPA’s early work – health psychology.
Clinical and counselling fields, as well as social and educational psychology.
Starting to be used in other related disciplines
A long and a short story… (Smith et al., 2022)
IPA appeared in the mid-1990s, but drawing on concepts and ideas which have much longer histories.
Phenomenology
Phenomenologists tend to share an interest in thinking about what the experience of being human is like, especially in terms of things which matter to us and which constitute our lived world.
Hermeneutics
A theory of interpretation.
IPA is concerned with examining how a phenomenon appears, and the analyst is implicated in facilitating and making sense of this appearance.
Double hermeneutic
IPA researchers engage in a double hermeneutic (Smith & Osborn, 2003).
Second-order sense-making of someone else’s experience.
The researcher is making sense of the participant making sense of their experiences.
Empathetic and critical interpretation
Empathic – Point of view of the person, take their side and stand as far as possible in the shoes of the participant.
Critical – Standing a little back from the participant and asking curious and critical questions about their account.
Idiography
Unique individual experiences.
IPA’s commitment to the particular operates at two levels:
In the sense of detail and, therefore, the depth of analysis.
How a particular experiential phenomenon (an event, process, relationship) has been understood from the perspective of particular people in a particular context.
IPA studies: Aims and research questions
People’s experiences and/or understandings of particular phenomena.
Perceptions and views of particular participants.
Inductive procedures that focus on the interpretation of meaning.
Research questions:
Should be open and exploratory.
Should reflect the process rather than the outcome.
Questions are quite specific about whose point of view the research is aiming to understand.
How do people in the early stage of Alzheimer’s disease perceive and manage the impact on their sense of self ? (Clare, 2003)
The participants included (i.e., the sample)
Sample sizes are small
Participants all share similar characteristics and criteria (homogeneous)
Participants are identified and selected based on criteria relevant to the research question (purposeful / purposive selection)
A growing number of published single-person case studies.
They “represent” a perspective rather than a population.
Sample specificity
Samples should be as uniform as possible (e.g., social factors) – so we can examine in detail their other forms of variability within the group.
Generalizability is not the goal!
Detailed analysis and placed in context.
IPA identifies convergence (similarities) and divergence (differences) within a small set of cases/accounts.
Bracketing
Bracketing is a method used in qualitative research to mitigate the potentially deleterious effects of preconceptions that may taint the research process”
Discussion…
How would your groups research topic be explored using IPA?
How does this compare to a focus using RTA?
Data collection and IPA
Typically, semi-structured interviews.
In-depth and involved interviews
Usually lasting over 1 hour.
Best conducted alone with the participant.
Other forms of data collection have been used e.g., diaries.
Data collection and IPA
Typically, semi-structured interviews.
In-depth and involved interviews
Usually lasting over 1 hour.
Best conducted alone with the participant.
Other forms of data collection have been used e.g., diaries.
