Reflections on methodology

Whilst IPA has been expanding into educational research, it remains an under-utilised approach to WP research. Therefore, this study was a methodological journey of discovery. Having explained my rationale for using IPA earlier on in this thesis, I was very aware of the words of Langdridge (2007). Langdridge suggests that reflexivity is particularly important when studying vulnerable people or communities, as there is a danger that the research will misrepresent the participants, instead reflecting the researchers

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own position as an outsider. However, I needed to balance the principle that IPA relies on the researcher being able to engage with and interpret the participants view of the world. Because of this, an IPA researcher will always be implicated in the analysis (Willig 2013). It therefore appeared to me that reflexivity within IPA was a balancing act. I needed to leave my preconceptions at the door, whilst ensuring I represented the experiences of participants in a manner that was a fair reflection of their interpretations.

To achieve this balancing act, I attempted several things. Firstly, I did no research into the school involved in the research (such as looking at Ofsted reports) until the final themes had been constructed and written up. Similarly, although I had a very basic knowledge of the areas in which participants lived, I did not seek to gain my own self-built knowledge of where they lived. Additionally, although I often met briefly with a staff member at the end of the day’s interviewing, I did not discuss interview content, nor did I seek clarity from them over anything that the participants had told me (particularly in relation to the school). This relates back to the thinking of Husserl and his call for phenomenologists to bracket past (or even current) knowledge. In attempting to do so can help the researcher to remain vigilant to the ways in which their own “personal intellectual baggage might distort the description of the phenomenon” (Finlay 2011, p.45).

Using IPA in the context of researching aspiration did throw up some methodological challenges. I discuss the two predominant ones below: the use of language and being swamped in themes.

5.9.1 The use of language

Although I have conducted many interviews with young people, I will admit to feeling nervous when stepping into the school to conduct the first set of interviews. So many things ran through my mind: have I got the right

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questions? how will they respond? will they give short answers? how will I deal with silence? will the questions be too leading? will they get upset? The overriding feeling was I felt under pressure, this was my PhD, three years of work was reliant on me getting this part right.

It became apparent early on that one of the challenges of using IPA was the use of language. The formal process of an interview sees the use of ‘talk’, or language, as the way in which participants communicate their experiences. Willig (2013) however suggests that this presupposes that the use of language provides participants with a suitable tool with which to share their experiences. In early interviews, the young people sometimes found it hard to articulate their experiences or opinions, responding with short answers, leaving long pauses or responding with ‘don’t know’. Linked to this is the issue of suitability of accounts. Willig (2013) raises questions around how successfully participants can communicate their experience and whether they can do this in a way to produce suitable data for phenomenological analysis.

In reaction to this, in the second set of interviews, I employed some more projective techniques. These can be described as “a category of exercises that provoke imagination and creativity” (Mariampolski 2001, p.206). Of benefit appeared to be the use of completion techniques. Participants were presented with several picture cards which all contained the start of a sentence. Participants selected a card of their choice and completed the sentence. This then formed a basis for further discussion. Whilst this approach was useful in enabling participants to share their thoughts and ‘relax’ into the interview, it was felt that persisting with this approach in further interviews would have moved the study too far away from the theoretical underpinnings of IPA. It was felt that the interviews would have become too structured with the researcher controlling the flow of information and defining what was important in the lives of participants. I was keen to

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hear how these young people could or could not articulate their feelings without the use of prompts.

Similarly, some IPA studies that look at aspiration, such as Elmi-Glennan (2013), have used photo-elicitation as a means of enabling participants to share their experiences. Frith and Harcourt (2007) suggest that one of the benefits of such an approach is that the researcher can access areas of the worlds of participants that they may not have been able to do so in person. Larkin (2017) recommends approaches such as photo-elicitation when participants may be reluctant to engage in the research process. I opted instead to retain the more traditional approach of semi-structured interviews whilst focusing on more narrative and reflective accounts (Larkin 2017). On reflection, given the age of participants, this study may have benefited from an approach such as photo-elicitation. However, it is difficult to ascertain what additional insights I may have gathered using such an approach.

5.9.2 Being swamped in themes

As Smith et al. (2009) suggest, IPA studies should be able to demonstrate their commitment to the ‘thing itself’, to do justice to the phenomenon (Finlay 2014). One of the challenges in achieving this within an IPA study is the sheer volume of themes produced from the raw interview data. At times this could become overwhelming, leading to a concern that the phenomenon was becoming lost. It is important to refer back to the idea that the frequency of a theme is not the only indicator of importance. It was more than an exercise in counting themes, the phenomenon needed to be explicated holistically (Finlay 2014). Wagstaff et al. (2014) suggest that fundamental individual differences can become obscured by the need to focus on the common experience. In this sense, the volume of themes can create a tension that puts the idiographic nature of IPA under severe strain. Indeed, Wagstaff et al. (2014) suggest this conflict is the greatest weakness of IPA. This was something I battled with throughout: how could I produce super-ordinate

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themes that represented all participants, whilst at the same time keeping within the idiographic traditions of IPA?

To combat these issues, Finlay (2014) suggests the researcher needs to keep going back to the data and to keep reminding themselves to focus on lived experience. This was a challenge in itself. When preparing for interview schedules I would often sit there with a thought going round and round in my head: what exactly am I after? what do I need to talk to these young people about to answer my research questions? In the analysis period I would come back to the thought: what exactly am I looking for?

Through the creation of ‘contact summary forms’ (see Appendix 6 for an example), completed after each interview, and constant reference to the interview transcripts, I began to note what I felt were the key aspects of each participant’s narratives that stood out, that needed to be told. I began to construct a biography of each participant, outlining these key themes, along with evidence from the interviews. I then revisited the interview transcripts and highlighted key passages that were critical to the narrative being told. I felt for one participant, for example, their statement that that some of their siblings had required psychiatric help, was vitally important in explaining some of their aspirations. In a similar vein, another participant seemed to be torn between two different worlds and this helped to explain how their aspirations were formed.