Thinking about, doing and writing up research using interpretative phenomenological analysis

Murray, Craig and Wilde, David (2020) Thinking about, doing and writing up research using interpretative phenomenological analysis. In: Handbook of Theory and Methods in Applied Health Research : Questions, Methods and Choices. Edward Elgar Publishing, Chichester, pp. 140-166. ISBN 9781785363207

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Abstract

This chapter is primarily concerned with the qualitative data collection and analysis method of interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) in which individuals’ experiences, and their meaning-making about their experiences, are the centre of research attention. IPA was developed by psychologist Jonathan Smith with the vision to return the study of lived experience to the centre ground of research attention by cultivating a phenomenologically based methodology that was inherently psychological in nature. IPA treats language as disclosing participants’ being-in-the-world, and the meanings of this for them. It is an approach intended to explore how participants experience their world, and hence enable an insider’s perspective of the topic under study. This approach has emerged out of a set of philosophical and theoretical traditions that have given rise to a suite of qualitative research methods that can be characterised as ‘phenomenological’ or concerned with lived experience. Before presenting IPA in detail, it will be helpful to first summarise some of the phenomenological traditions and research methods that precede or sit alongside that of IPA.