Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA)

IPA is an inductive qualitative approach to research which is “committed to the examination of how people make sense of their major life experiences” (Smith et al., 2009, p.1) without this experience being expressed according to pre- determined categories. It therefore works to uncover subjective reports of an individual’s experience, rather than objective information. In this way, capturing rich and detailed data which reflects the depth of a lived experience is central to IPA research with the experience of starting secondary school deemed to be a significant experience for both the young people and their parents. IPA

therefore acknowledges that when a person engages with an experience, they “engage in a considerable amount of reflecting, thinking and feeling as they

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work through what it means” (Smith et al., 2009, p.3) and thus IPA seeks to explore this further.

IPA has three key philosophical underpinnings; phenomenology, hermeneutics and idiography, which are now described in turn. The process of conducting IPA in the current research is discussed in section 3.8.

3.4.1.1 Phenomenology.

As described by Smith et al. (2009), “phenomenology is a philosophical approach to the study of experience” (p.11) and whilst there are different emphases amongst phenomenologists, the commonality refers to the desire to explore how an individual makes sense of their own subjective experience (Smith et al., 2009).

The approach draws on phenomenological philosophers and the ideas of introspection and reflection on one’s own consciousness in order to focus on and understand an experience. Husserl was particularly interested in finding out how an individual might come to know their own experience and its essential qualities by stepping out of that everyday experience and adopting a

“phenomenological attitude” to examine perception (Smith et al., 2009). He argued that to truly attend to an experience, we must attempt to put our previous knowledge aside, in order to minimise its influence on our

interpretation of the current experience. This ‘bracketing’ enables us to focus on each element of the current experience in its own right (Smith et al., 2009).

Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Satre moved away from Husserl’s transcendental approaches. Instead they considered the interpretative emphasis in phenomenology, questioning whether it was truly possible to

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bracket previous experiences. Heidegger argued for the concept of ‘inter- subjectivity’; that a particular experience cannot be detached from our

engagement in the world and thus an individual is a ‘person-in-context’ (Smith et al., 2009). In this way humans attempt to make sense of an experience by drawing on previous knowledge in order to interpret what has happened (Smith et al., 2009). This view of understanding experience as a mental and personal process means that any attempt to understand another’s experience will rely on interpreting how the individual attempts to make meaning (Smith et al., 2009).

3.4.1.2 Hermeneutics.

Originating from Bible study, the second underpinning of IPA is hermeneutics or the theory and practice of interpretation (Smith et al., 2009). IPA is an

interpretative phenomenological approach which attempts to understand individual experience as close as possible whilst also recognising that this involves interpretation from both the researcher and the individual themselves. Hermeneutics also recognises the active role of the researcher in creating meaning. Exploring an individual’s experience will be dependent upon what that individual shares which will then be interpreted by the researcher to inform their own understanding. The researcher is therefore “engaged in a double

hermeneutic because the researcher is trying to make sense of the participant trying to make sense of what is happening to them” (Smith et al., 2009, p.3). This highlights the dual role of the researcher as both like and unlike the

participant.Like the participant, the researcher is a human-being and is making sense of the world. Unlike the participant, the researcher does not have direct access to the experience and therefore sees the participant’s experience through their own ‘lens’ influenced by their own knowledge and experiences.

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The researcher therefore aims to understand the experience through both empathising and questioning (Smith et al., 2009).

3.4.1.3 The Hermeneutic Circle.

The hermeneutic circle describes the dynamic processes of interpretation in that to understand any given part, it is necessary to look to the whole and, to understand the whole, an individual must first look at the parts before returning to the whole in a cyclical process (Smith et al., 2009). Therefore when conducting IPA and attempting to make sense of the experience being described, the analysis is iterative, in that the researcher will move between different ways of thinking about the data rather than analysing it in a linear fashion. By moving between different but related levels of data, the researcher is able to explore varying perspectives on the parts of the data and their coherence with the whole (Smith et al., 2009).

3.4.1.4 Idiography.

As described by Smith et al. (2009), “idiography is concerned with the

particular” (p.29) and therefore the emphasis is placed on interpreting individual examples on a deeper level as opposed to generalisation to the wider

population. This idiographic commitment operates on two levels moving from a detailed analysis of what an experience was like for an individual through to exploring what a particular experience was like for a particular group of people in a particular context. For this reason, IPA often involves a small homogenous sample. This idiographic underpinning allows for an exploration of similarities and differences between cases whilst ensuring individual experiences continue to be heard (Smith et al., 2009).

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3.4.1.5 Limitations of IPA.

As with any methodology, there are limitations to the use of IPA. IPA relies on the use of certain data collection techniques which allow participants to express their experiences using language. These methods therefore assume that

language is enough to capture the specific experience being explored (Willig, 2013). If a researcher were to subscribe to a discourse analytic view, it could be argued that language constructs reality rather than describing it, such that the experience is described in a way which is dependent upon the words chosen at the time. Therefore the data gathered through an interview would provide more evidence about how “an individual talks about a particular experience within a particular context, than about the experience itself” (Willig, 2013, p.94).

Nonetheless, as the researcher has acknowledged a social constructionist position, the current research did not seek to know an objective real experience, but instead explore how it is constructed and made sense of through language.

A further limitation considers the suitability of the accounts gathered. IPA approaches rely on the memory and perceptions of the participants, how they choose to convey these perceptions and how successfully they are able to do so. Additionally, whilst IPA generates rich data about experiences, it does not explain the reasons for these experiences and why they involve what they do, limiting the generalisability of the conclusions drawn. Nonetheless, the current research did not aim to produce wide generalisations and instead aimed to focus on the lived experience of a small group of adopted young people and their parents.

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