Interpretative Phenomenological
Analysis
Kathryn Kinmond
Manchester Metropolitan University
k.kinmond@mmu.ac.uk
Objectives
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
To situate IPA within the broader context of
qualitative research
To introduce the theoretical underpinnings of IPA
To describe the appropriate research questions,
sampling & data collection methods
To describe analytic process
To offer the opportunity to do some IPA
To offer some suggestions for emphasis in teaching
To offer some suggestions for supervising IPA
projects
IPA within qualitative research
•
•
•
•
•
IPA is a qualitative approach
IPA is a specific qualitative approach……
IPA uses a small purposive sample
IPA analyses themes
IPA engages in ‘in-depth’ study & creates ‘thick data’
IPA as a specific qualitative approach
• So what makes it
distinct?
• When should it be
used?
IPA as a specific qualitative
approach
• “The central objective of IPA is to
understand what personal & social
experiences mean to the people who
experience them” (Shaw, 2010 p178)
Example research question
Key features
Suitable approach
What are the main experiential
features of being abused?
Note the focus on the common structure of ‘abuse’ as an
experience.
Phenomenology
How do people who have been
abused make sense of it?
Note the focus on personal meaning and sense-making in a
particular context with a particular experience.
Interpretative
phenomenological analysis
(IPA)
What sorts of story structures do
people use to describe abusive
events?
Note the focus on how narrative relates to sense-making (e.g.
via genre, structure, tone or imagery).
Narrative psychology
What factors influence how people
manage abuse?
Note the willingness to develop an explanatory level account
(factors, impacts, influences, etc.).
Grounded theory
How do people talk about ‘being
abused’ in close relationships?
Note the focus on interaction over and above content, and the
caution about inferring anything about anger itself.
Discursive psychology
How is ‘abuse’ constructed in
incident reports from Social
Services?
Note the willingness to use a range of data sources, and the
focus on how things ‘are understood’ according to the
conventions of a particular setting.
Foucauldian discourse
analysis
IPA as a specific qualitative approach
• An experience of ‘existential import’
• ‘Experience-close’ rather than experience per
se
• How the participant makes sense of the
experience
• The meaning of the experience to the
participant
– (Smith & Larkin, 2009)
An example
• Sandra, mother and carer of two adult sons
(one who is married) with major learning
disabilities and now, also to her husband
following his recent stroke.
• Experiences of ‘existential import’ which
Sandra is struggling to make sense of.
A personal example
• Consider a personal
experience of ‘existential
import’.
• How are you thinking about
it, feeling about it, making
sense of it?
Assumptions of IPA
• “Human beings are sense making creatures & therefore
the accounts [they] provide will reflect their attempts to
make sense of what is happening to them”
•
But……..
• “Access to experience always depends on what Ps tell
us about that experience… The researcher needs to
interpret that account in order to understand that
experience” (Smith et al., 2009)
Aims of IPA
• Dual Aim - To provide:
– an in-depth exploration of people’s lived
experiences
– a close examination of how people make sense of
these experiences
Theoretical underpinnings of IPA:
Phenomenology
A philosophical approach to the study
of experience
• Concerned with what the experience of
being human is like
•
Key phenomenological philosophers
• Husserl – emphasised ‘going back to the things
themselves’; carefully examining the experience as an
individual psychological process
• Heidegger – concerned with the ontological question of
existence itself & with the practical activities &
relationships through which the world appears to us
• Merleau-Ponty – focused on subjectivity & embodiment
• Sartre – “existence comes before essence” (1948 p26);
we are always ‘becoming’
Theoretical underpinnings of IPA:
Hermeneutics
• The theory of interpretation
• Concerned with people as interpreting &
sense-making individuals
Theoretical underpinnings of IPA:
Double hermeneutic
• Dual interpretation process
“the participants are tying to make sense of
their world; the researcher is trying to make
sense of the participants trying to make
sense of their world.” (Smith & Osborn, 2003:
51)
Theoretical underpinnings of IPA:
Idiography
• Focus on the particular rather than the
universal/general
• Relating to the study of the individual who is
seen as unique.
• Idiographic studies work at the individual level
to make specific statements about those
individuals
Basic principles of IPA: a summary
• Inductive – rejects the hypothesis in favour of open-ended
questions
• Idiographic – works at the individual level
• Assumes agency to the individual
• Individuals actively interpret their experiences & their world (in
fact we can’t not interpret)
• It is concerned with understanding individuals’ lived experiences
& how they make sense of those experiences
• It is data-driven (bottom-up) – prioritises participants’ accounts
• Research is a dynamic process – the researcher is active in the
research
– (Shaw,2009)
Planning an IPA project: research questions
• Directed towards phenomenological material & focus
on people’s understandings of their experiences
• Open, exploratory questions
• Focus on significant issues in life:
– Identity, sense of self
– Hot cognition – current issues, emotive, dilemmatic
– Cool cognition – longer term, reflection across life course
Planning an IPA project: sampling
• Small sample sizes because of the case-by-case,
idiographic approach to analysis
• Number of Ps depends on:
–
–
–
–
Researcher’s commitment to the case study level of analysis
The richness of the individual cases
Decisions about comparison/contrasting cases
The pragmatic restrictions one is working under
• Data collection needs to focus on experience &
recognise multiple influences on that experience
Planning an IPA project: research tool
• Need to collect detailed stories, thoughts &
feelings……so:
• Semi-structured interviews are most-used
• But other methods have been used
• Postal questionnaires
• Email dialogue
• Focus groups
• Observations
Planning an IPA project: constructing
the questions
• Open, expansive questions to facilitate a detailed
account of the experience being investigated.
• Minimum input from interviewer
• Start with a question which allows the P to recount a
descriptive episode
• Move to more analytical questions later
Example questions (Smith et al., 2009)
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Descriptive – please could you tell me what you do in your job?
Narrative – can you tell me about how you came to get the job?
Structural – what are the stages involved in dispatching orders?
Contrast – what are the main differences between a good & bad
day at work?
Evaluative – how do you feel after a bad day at work?
Circular – what do you think your boss thinks about how you do
your job?
Comparative – how do you think your life would be if yu worked
somewhere else?
Prompts – can you tell me a bit more about that?
Probes – what do you mean by ‘unfair’?
What not to ask……(Smith et al., 2009)
• Over-empathic questions (eg. I can imagine your job is
quite boring – is that right?)
• Manipulative questions (eg. You’ve described your job
as repetitive. Is it even worse than that?)
• Leading questions (eg. So, I don’t suppose you’d say
your job is rewarding?)
• Closed questions (eg. So you’ve been working here for
five years then?)
Transcription
• Formatting [line numbers, margins, line-spacing] for
workable transcripts;
• Transcribe the whole tape
• Transcribe only major prosodic features (e.g.
SIGHS/LAUGHS; interruptions and overlaps; ums and ahhs) not lengths of pauses etc.
• Anonymise as you go.
Doing the analysis: an iterative & inductive cycle
(Smith, 2007)
• stage 1: Identify themes in the first case; list your ‘stream of
consciousness’ words, comments and initial ideas in the left hand
margin of the transcript.
• stage 2 – In the right hand margin the extracted words, comments
and ideas (already listed in the LH margin) should be transformed
into emergent theme titles in concise phrases which aim to capture
the essential quality of what was found in the text.
• stage 3 – List the emergent themes separately to the transcript and
examine them for connections between them and also themes
which are not convergent. This Clustering of themes should be
checked against the original transcript to ensure that they hold true
against what the interview.
• Direct quotes from the transcript should be attached to each theme
to ensure that the original meaning of the theme is not lost in the
interpretation.
Theme Clusters – looking for connections
• stage 4 – Compare the emergent themes to see which
share commonality or again which contradicted each
other. These are then formulated into super-ordinate
themes made up of sub-ordinate themes.
• Create a table of master themes
– NB: Ensure each theme is represented by data in the transcript
to avoid researcher bias
Continuing with Other Cases
• Continue with other cases
• Start with the master themes from case 1 & look for further evidence
in case 2
• Be ready for new themes to emerge in case 2
• The process is cyclical: go back case 1 to see if they are
represented there also
• Be prepared to go over the phases of analysis several times, going
back over transcripts & rethinking theme clusters
Writing Up
• This is the final stage of analysis
• The aim is to translate your themes into a narrative
account
• Deciding which themes to focus on requires you to be
selective
• The choice is not purely based on prevalence but also
on the richness of particular passages that highlight the
theme & how the theme illuminates other aspects of the
account (Shaw, 2009)
Tips for emphasis in teaching
• IPA is about individuals’ experiences
• IPA is interpretative –we want participants to reflect on &
interpret their experiences in the interview & we want to
interpret them in the analysis
• Interviews are analysed on a case-by-case basis (there
may only one case – a case study)
• Doing IPA is a creative process – the active interpretative
role of the researcher is valued
• An IPA analysis usually reveals something about
participants’ meaning-making processes & how an event
or state impacts on identity (Shaw, 2009)
Tips for supervising IPA projects
• Awareness of the time necessary – much longer than
a quantitative project
• Guidance & support for student in analysis stage
– watch for over-cautious analysis (too descriptive) / overinterpretative analysis / mis-directed analysis (difficulties with
focusing on sense-making).
• Care in managing the word limit - not being
overwhelmed; deciding what to cut.
• Use of the first person
• Need to achieve some visible level of reflexivity
Useful references
• Forrester, M. (ed) (2010) Doing qualitative research in Psychology.
London. Sage.
• Langride, D. (2007). Phenomenological Psychology: theory,
research and method. Harlow, Pearson.
• Moran, D (2000) Introduction to Phenomenology. Routledge.
• Smith, JA, Flowers, P, Larkin, M (2009) Interpretative
phenomenological analysis: Theory, Method, Research. London:
Sage.
• Smith, J.A. & Eatough, V. (2006) Interpretative phenomenological
analysis. In Breakwell, G.M, Hammond, S., Fife-Schaw, C., & Smith,
J.A. (Eds.) Research Methods in Psychology. 3rd Edition. London:
Sage.
• Smith, J.A. & Osborn, M. (2003) Interpretative phenomenological
analysis. In J.A. Smith (Ed) Qualitative Psychology: a practical guide
to research methods. London: Sage.