An Interpretative Phenomenological Approach

As stated by Willig (2008), phenomenology is interested in the world as

experienced by human beings within particular contexts and at particular times, rather than in general or more generic observations of the nature of the world more broadly. It is concerned with the phenomena that appear in our consciousness as we engage with the world around us. Phenomenology is therefore focused at the idiographic level, which was a term originally developed to distinguish the study of specifics from the study of ‘things in general’, although it is traditionally associated in psychology with the study of individual persons (Larkin et al., 2006).

Larkin et al. note that the analytic processes described by Interpretative

Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) are largely unremarkable when compared with other qualitative methods, and that it may be more appropriate to describe IPA as a

stance or perspective from which to approach the task of analysis. They assert that

the IPA researcher must approach their data with two aims in mind. Firstly, to try and understand their participants world and to describe ‘what it is like’. This requires a focus on the ‘experience’ of the participant in regard to the area under investigation, and the production of a coherent, third person, and psychologically informed description. The second aim is to develop a more overtly interpretative analysis, which positions the initial description in relation to a wider social, cultural, and perhaps theoretical context. It is this consideration of existing theoretical constructs, and a more speculative approach that in part distinguishes IPA from grounded theory approaches, which I also considered.

Although phenomenological approaches, as described by Willig (2008), have been established since at least the early twentieth century, the method of IPA is

attributed to Smith (1996). IPA shares the aims of other, more descriptive

phenomenological approaches to data analysis in that it aims to capture the quality and texture of the individual experience. It recognizes, however, that such

experience is never directly accessible to the researcher, and as such accepts that there is a need for interpretation at every stage of the process. IPA aims to

produce knowledge of what and how people think about the phenomenon under investigation, and in this sense it can be conceptualized within a realist tradition. It recognizes, however, that a researcher’s understanding of the participants is necessarily influenced by his or her own way of thinking, assumptions and conceptions. These are not considered biases to be eliminated, but rather a

necessary precondition for making sense of another person’s experience. An open and reflexive stance is required to enable this to be undertaken in a way that will allow others to make judgments as to the validity and trustworthiness of the accounts that emerge.

Larkin et al. (2006) in considering the ontological and epistemological bases for investigating the ‘person in context’, point out that perhaps the most pressing issue for psychology is the recognition that it is not actually possible to remove

ourselves, our thoughts and our meaning systems from the world in order to find out how things ‘really are’ in some definitive sense. They note psychology’s

reluctance to accept the idea that ‘reality’ might be an intellectual construction, and acknowledge concerns within the research community that accepting these

propositions could create challenges in terms of distinguishing ‘good’ claims from ‘bad’, and ‘rampant relativism’. The more considered view, they suggest, is that accepting such ideas does not automatically lead us to a state of disciplinary anarchy. The position of minimal or critical realism means that our success as phenomenologists will depend on our being prepared to do the most sensitive and responsive job we can, given our inherent epistemological and methodological weaknesses.

If the subject/object distinction is accepted as a false one from a researcher perspective, it follows that any reality I might discover is partly dependent on my own process of intellectual construction and my own subjective engagement with the area under investigation. It therefore reveals something of me, something of the participants, and something of the broader reality of the phenomena under investigation. An additional level of complexity is added when studying the accounts of others. The double hermeneutic described by Smith et al. (2009) involves me as researcher making sense of the participant who is making sense of the phenomena under investigation. Smith et al. emphasize the importance of a positive process of engaging with the participant over the process of bracketing my own biases, the reasoning being that skilful attention to the former inevitably

facilitates the latter.

Willig (2008) identifies three key limitations to an IPA approach. Firstly that it assumes that language provides participants with the necessary tools to capture the experience- i.e. it relies on the representational validity of language. This is

problematic as it can be argued that language constructs as well as describes reality. Secondly, it relies on participants’ descriptions of their experiences, which raises the difficult question of to what extent their accounts constitute suitable material for phenomenological analysis. Are participants able to capture the subtleties and nuances of their experiences? The third limitation relates to what can be revealed. The focus on participant perceptions and experiences may reveal

what and how they understand, but not why such experiences take place, or why

there may be differences between individual representations.