T HE STAGED APPROACH OF IPA

Whilst IPA has much in common with other forms of interpretive phenomenological analysis, it does suggest a three-pronged idiographic approach to the interpretive process, which whilst not prescriptive, does provide a framework identified through the following stages (Smith & Osborn 2008).

In stage 1, the researcher is required to analyse, in detail, one transcript from the interviews before moving onto the others. The transcript is read and re-read a number of times and points of interest are annotated in the text. Akin to free textual analysis, there are no rules about what points can or cannot be noted at this stage. As the researcher iteratively re-enters the text, so themes begin to emerge and these are initially colour coded in the text and collated into a simple list. Through repetitive re-immersion into the text, so one begins to identify

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connections between these listed themes and finally categorises and clusters these into an initial table of themes for this first interview.

In the second stage, this process is repeated for each interview. Links and connections between these different data sources are continually compared and contrasted looking for both patterns and new emergent themes. These are developed and collated into a working table of themes. This inductive and iterative process eventually leads to the third stage, in which the researcher moves beyond pure description to the final stage of interpretation and identifies the key or superordinate themes, which are collated into a final table of themes (Biggerstaff & Thompson 2008). This process can be challenging because the final themes have to be ‘warrantable within the data and checked out’, meaning that the link of key theme to data is an integral aspect of quality and rigour in the writing up process (Biggerstaff & Thompson 2008:220).

In adopting this method, I began by looking at one interview transcript in detail before moving on to examine the others. Because of the inductive and iterative stance employed, the interview data was initially read and re-read to look for meaning (Crabtree & Miller 1999; Smith & Osborn 2008). Issues of interest were highlighted in the text and brief annotations made.

From this initial stage, I re-entered the data and emergent themes were noted, colour coded in the text, and then collated into a simple list of themes as they occurred in the transcript. Table 4.5, appendix 10, summarises this stage from the first transcript analysed i.e. participant 0105 (01 denotes Merlin social services;

05 the number allocated to the participant). Through further immersion and re-reading of the data, these themes were categorised and clustered into a second table representing the emergent themes from that particular interview data (see Table 4.6, appendix 11). I worked through this clustering process in a systematic way.

First, the themes I identified were crosschecked in the transcript to make sure the connections were relevant to the source material i.e. the themes were compared against the actual words of the participant. This is an important process because the credibility of the findings are linked to their auditability in terms of what participants are actually saying (Pringle et al 2011). In this stage, I re-immersed myself in the text and critically questioned my own process of sense-making by checking what people were actually saying and comparing this to the analysis I was making. This iterative and inductive process enabled me to adopt a reflexive

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stance, through not only challenging my own thinking, but by critically examining the themes as they emerged, cross-checking these with the available data, and, as more data was analysed, considering similarities and differences in participants accounts. According to Reid et al (2005) this kind of analytical commentary can lead to useful insights in the data that can have wider implications in terms of the relevance of the findings.

As more transcripts were analysed, so the themes were further developed. For example, from transcript 0104, the theme of constant work pressure clearly emerged. This was common to many other transcripts so became a key theme.

From transcript 0207, the theme of gender and the role of mother as a salient identity strongly emerged. This too was a common theme in other accounts and also became a key theme. Notably, this interview not only identified a preference for the role of mother, but actually illustrated how she prioritised this role over paid work in everyday life. This was a more unique theme and highlighted an interesting difference from other texts, yet was very informative in terms of the purpose of the study. Through this idiographic and iterative process, so a working table of key themes was developed (see Table 4.7, appendix 12). In the final interpretive stage, these themes were analysed and ultimately built into the final table of superordinate or key themes found in Table 4.8 (appendix 13).

Themes identified at this interpretative stage acknowledged not only that the workplace cultures of Aslan healthcare and Merlin social services did influence work-life balance in quite profound ways for employees, but that these cultures actually drove and created work-life imbalance by using time and energy in paid work to the detriment of participation in other life domains. As occupational therapists, participants described a disturbing sense of being undervalued and disempowered in the workplace. This was recognised as causal to a sense of subjective stress, pressure or ill-health for participants, which not only identified a link between work-based relationships, work-life imbalance and personal well-being, but also evidenced the influence of this imbalance at multiple levels, influencing the well-being of the family, community and social domains.

It became clear that workplace cultures were situated in the wider structural and agentic forces of everyday life and that these levels of significance worked in synergy with the workplace cultures to co-produce the lived experience of work-life imbalance. These findings, whilst perhaps not surprising were, none the less fascinating in terms of identifying how work-life balance is constructed and co-produced in contemporary life. What struck me as significantly absent in the data

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were any accounts of using the human resources of time and energy to reflect, think, plan or just be present in the world as active and reflexive beings, either in the natural or socially constructed environment.

In the ensuing chapters I intend to discuss these findings in depth and hope that these emergent themes and their connections and interrelationships will become clear as the thesis progresses.

4.6. Conclusion

In this chapter I have described the preparatory thinking and preliminary steps that were taken in designing this study. I have also clarified the process of data collection and analysis to hopefully enable the reader to consider the trustworthiness of the approach taken and methods employed. Further, I have noted some pertinent reflections that occurred throughout the process when actually carrying out the research. These will be substantiated throughout the ensuing discussions in the thesis. Following carrying out the analysis, the complex and multi-layered themes that emerged have been clustered into a final table of key themes in Table 4.8, appendix 13. These themes identified complex and interconnected relationships in how participants made sense of work-life balance and the nature of how this unfolded will be discussed in the following four findings chapters. I have tried to make the process as transparent as possible by using participants’ accounts and sharing my thinking throughout the analysis process. However I am cognisant of the fact that although IPA can initially appear simplistic in its approach to analysis, the application of an interpretive stage is challenging in terms of transparency and can result in confusion over how the final themes were achieved. By offering direct quotes and in-depth discussion in the following four findings chapters I hope to offer a pathway for the reader to travel.

Using participants’ accounts, chapter 5 will discuss how occupational therapists framed their understanding of work-life balance in terms of their relationships with significant others in the workplace and their feelings about paid work. It identifies how their sense of work-life balance was influenced by hierarchical organizational structures and the cultures supporting those relationships. Through the perceptions shared, it also provides a temporal snapshot of the workplaces at the time the study took place, offering the reader a window on the participants’

subjective worlds of paid work.

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The ensuing three findings chapters describe the themes in Table 4.8 in detail and hopefully elucidate how these emerged from the data by in-depth discussion and using direct quotes to illustrate the link of data to theme. In order to give some structure and clarity to the content of these chapters, they have been organised in relation to the chronological order of the themes collated in Table 4.8.

Chapter 6 considers those themes clustered under points 1 and 2 (see Table 4.8), which reflect how individuals identified the organizations’ attitudes to and values about work-life balance and flexible working in the workplace as relevant to their experiences of work-life balance and (2), how this could cause ethical and moral conflicts for occupational therapists in their everyday lives.

Chapter 7 discusses the themes clustered under point 3, which identify how organizational power and drives for performance in the workplace created work-life imbalance and (4), which encapsulates the importance of relationships at work and how the forces of professional power were prevalent factors in the work-life balance of occupational therapists.

Finally, chapter 8 discusses those themes clustered under points 5-7 in Table 4.8.

These include the wider social values that contextualise the hegemony of paid work in contemporary life, and the loss of well-being, not only at individual, but at multiple levels of significance as a consequence of overt and covert practices of work-life imbalance in everyday life.

These chapters will be followed by an in-depth discussion (chapter 9) of the interconnected nature of these findings and the relevance of the study to existing work-life and more briefly the occupational balance literature. The thesis will then be finally summarised and concluded in chapter 10.

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Chapter Five

Cultures, Structures and Feelings about Work

This chapter will provide an introduction to Aslan healthcare and Merlin social services and aims to serve as a contextual framework for the ensuing findings chapters. It will describe the professional structures of the occupational therapy teams in each setting and contextualise a little of the feelings participants shared about their working lives in each organization. It will offer a snapshot of the contemporary forces of change that were driving forward a process of re-structuring and re-profiling notable in the experiences shared by respondents in both organizations and will illustrate how the beliefs of limited professional value and recognition by Aslan healthcare and Merlin social services pervaded respondents’ accounts. I will identify the emergence of cultures of pressure and stress and strong emotional contexts in the experiences of participants in both workplaces.

I will argue that organizational cultures emerged as a significant force in participants work-life balance and will posit that these workplaces were ‘emotional arenas’ (Fineman 2000:1), where the complex relational aspect of working with others and the structures and cultures of the workplace could constrain or facilitate work-life balance and identify how people subjectively felt about work-life balance. This created a dialogue between physical and psychological pressures and stresses in the emergence of workplace cultures and the individual’s experience of work-life balance.

Where local documentation is used, the organization’s pseudonym and numbers, allocated chronologically, are used to identify the source but maintain confidentiality.