What is Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA)?
Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) is a qualitative research methodology that explores how individuals make sense of their experiences.
Said another way, IPA is an experiential methodology that focuses on how people make sense of what happens to them. This makes it particularly useful in fields such as psychology, sociology, and healthcare where understanding an individual’s lived experience is the ultimate goal.
The article covers IPA's use, limitations, history, and an introductory guide on how to conduct it.
What is Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA)?
IPA is an inductive research method that begins with specific examples and uses them to develop broader theories. IPA researchers collect data (e.g. via interviews) and analyze it to uncover themes and meanings, helping them understand how individuals make sense of their experiences.
IPA is grounded in phenomenology. This branch of philosophy focuses on understanding how individuals experience the world and how we go about making sense of those experiences.
So, acting as a kind of lightning rod, “IPA researchers focus on the lived experiences of individuals and how they make sense of them within the context of their personal and social worlds, with a particular emphasis on personal sense-making.” (Smith & Nizza, 2021)
However, IPA is also guided by hermeneutics, a theory that acknowledges the subjectivity of interpretation. This means IPA researchers seek to relay intimate details of people’s experiences but also acknowledge that their own experiences and biases may impact their interpretations.
The research method goes beyond just summarizing what people say. It tries to discern what the experience is like from that person's own unique perspective. The personal meanings attached to those experiences, and how they impact a person’s social world, are what IPA studies.
[Related readings: Phenomenological Research Design]
What Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) is NOT?
While IPA focuses on the lived experiences of individuals, it is not concerned with the more mundane aspects of everyday life. Instead, IPA explores transformative or emotionally charged experiences that can often leave a lasting impact – “a mark” – on the individual's life.
Say you drive down the same street dozens of times each week. The experience of that drive is usually unremarkable. Still an experience, but not markedly different from one day to the next.
Then, one day you witness a cyclist get hit by a driver on that drive. The accident is quite traumatic. As a result of the accident, you totally avoid driving down that street in the future.
IPA researchers are not concerned with the experience of driving home each day. Instead, it examines the personal sense-making process following the jolting experience of the crash.
For instance, if someone avoids driving down a specific street after witnessing a cyclist get hit by a car, IPA researchers would be interested in exploring the personal meaning behind this change in behavior. They would conduct interviews with you and other individuals who have gone through similar experiences to study how different people react to such events.
The Main Challenge of Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA)
IPA researchers often struggle to maintain objectivity when examining the personal and emotional experiences of others. It is hard to capture the essence of another person’s experience without introducing our own biases.
This challenge is common in qualitative research due to its inherently subjective nature. However, it is more pronounced in IPA as the researcher aims to capture and describe how individuals think about internal experiences, delving deep into their subjective understanding.
Studying these experiences can be particularly challenging for a couple of reasons:
Researchers are trying to describe participants’ experience of an experience, which often relies on abstract concepts like emotions and feelings.
Researchers need to acknowledge and account for their own feelings, opinions, and biases, which are likely present when dealing with sensitive issues or traumatic events.
The analysis process is an iterative process of reading and re-reading data. It is a meticulous process that requires ample time and patience from the researcher.
It can be difficult to find enough participants to meet the goals of your study.
Establishing a strong rapport with participants is vital in IPA research, especially when delving into emotionally charged experiences. Participants need to feel comfortable enough to share intimate details, which adds more time to the overall research process.
As a reminder, IPA researchers acknowledge that they cannot completely remove themselves from their own experiences and biases. This is something you should be aware of and account for in your write-up, which we cover in the following sections.
History of Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA)
IPA was created by Jonathan Smith, Michael Larkin, and Paul Flowers in the 1990s. [1] They developed this method as a way to study the complexity of people's experiences. It was born out of a lack of structured approaches to phenomenological studies at the time.
Like phenomenology, IPA stresses the idea of peeling back the onion of how individuals process their subjective experiences. Essentially, IPA is the structured approach qualitative researchers use to transform people’s lived experiences into what researchers call "phenomena."
A phenomenon refers to a particular aspect of an individual's subjective experience that is being studied. This could be an emotion, thought, behavior, or other experience that is of interest to the researcher. The term phenomenology itself comes from the Greek word "phainomenon," which basically means "appearance" or "manifestation."
The groups of researchers created IPA as a way to study how individuals interpret and understand these phenomena, rather than just looking at the objective facts of what happened.
When to Use Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA)?
IPA is particularly useful in areas like psychology, sociology, and healthcare where researchers seek to understand the inner workings of an individual’s thought process.
By analyzing how individuals interpret their own experiences, IPA can provide valuable insights for researchers in these fields. It can also help researchers and practitioners better understand and address the needs of individuals.
How IPA is used in these fields:
Psychology: IPA has been used to explore a range of psychological phenomena, such as coping with chronic illness, experiences of trauma, and the impact of disability on identity.
Sociology: IPA has been used to explore the ways in which individuals construct their social identities and how these identities are shaped by broader cultural and social contexts.
Healthcare: IPA has been used to explore the experiences of patients and healthcare professionals, with a particular focus on understanding how individuals make sense of illness and healthcare interactions.
By understanding individual experiences, researchers can gain insights into sensitive issues like mental health, identity, and major sociological issues.
However, it's crucial to avoid over-generalizing people's experiences to represent entire groups or communities. Instead, researchers should focus on identifying common threads that link individuals' experiences together.
IPA researchers actively study:
Major life changes, such as becoming a parent or moving to a new country.
Health-related experiences, like receiving a medical diagnosis or living with a chronic illness.
Mental health issues, such as living with depression or recovering from psychosis.
Emotional experiences, like feelings of wonder or anger.
Professional experiences, such as being a therapist or healthcare worker.
Issues of identity, such as being a musician or being homeless.
The objective of IPA is to get as close as possible to the lived experience of participants in similar situations. From there, researchers try to describe these experiences in rich detail to identify common themes that link one individual's reaction to another.
How to Collect Data in Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA)?
IPA researchers have several options when it comes to data collection methods. Some of the most common methods include:
Conversations with participants
Analysis of personal text (participant diary)
Focus groups
Whichever method you choose, try to always remain focused on the research issues and avoid influencing the participant's responses. It also helps to establish a good rapport with participants so that they feel comfortable enough not to hold information back or alter their responses.
Key Concepts in Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA)
It is important to understand what underpins this research method. Here are some key terms that help contextualize the who, what, where, why, when, and how of IPA:
Phenomenology: IPA is grounded in the philosophical tradition of phenomenology. As a reminder, this is a philosophy that emphasizes the importance of understanding subjective experience and how individuals make sense of their world.
Interpretation: IPA is an interpretive methodology, which means that researchers aim to understand the meanings that individuals attach to experiences. Because you want to extract as much detail as possible from how people describe their experiences, IPA usually involves a small group of individuals who have shared a particular experience. You don’t just read transcriptions line-by-line. You also read between the lines.
Inductive analysis: As you explore between the lines or below the “surface” of the data, IPA is an inductive research approach. Another way to say this is that data guide the analysis. Unlike deductive approaches, researchers do not start with predetermined categories or concepts. Instead, you create them through iterative (and intricate) readings of the data.
Hermeneutics: Hermeneutics is the theory and practice of interpreting texts, considering context, language, culture, and the interpreter's own perspective. It guides IPA researchers to interpret and analyze qualitative data in a rigorous way. It also encourages reflexivity and interpretation, leading to a deeper understanding of human experiences and their meanings.
Bracketing: Bracketing is the reflexive process that researchers use to reflect on their own assumptions and biases when interpreting the data. It helps them set aside personal biases and focus on understanding the perspectives of the participants. By practicing bracketing, researchers can delve into the meanings individuals attach to their experiences.
Idiographic approach: Idiographic research is an approach in psychology that focuses on the individual case or person rather than trying to generalize findings to larger populations. Whereas idiographic research focuses on individual cases, IPA involves selecting a small group of people who have shared a particular experience. Both approaches prioritize individual experiences more than over-generalizations. IPA is a specific application of the broader idiographic approach.
An Introductory Guide to IPA Research
IPA research has a dual focus. First, it focuses on the unique experiences of individual participants, finding idiographic themes that emerge from each transcript. From there, you look for overall patterns of meaning across participants, identifying “superordinate themes” that connect them. [2] It may help to think of these as intrapersonal and interpersonal themes.
Keep in mind IPA is an iterative process of meaning-making. You want to read and then re-read each transcript. You want to code, group, and then code again. The idea is to exhaust each transcript by fleshing out as much detail as possible from each line of your data.
There is no rigidly defined process to conduct IPA. However, we want to provide a general overview of the typical steps researchers follow:
Interviewing: The researcher asks open-ended questions and encourages the participant to share their experiences and thoughts related to the research topic. Formats can include one-to-one interviews, focus groups, and handing out participants' diaries – or all three.
Transcription: The first step in IPA research is to transcribe the interviews in a detailed and accurate manner. If you use other methods of data collection, just make sure you have textual data ready for the subsequent steps that follow.
Reading & re-reading: The researcher reads through the transcripts several times, each time getting a better sense of the overall themes and meanings that emerge. Bracketing should begin at this stage so you can reflexively engage with your own biases or preconceptions that arise throughout the remaining process.
Initial coding: The researcher begins to identify initial codes that emerge from the data. You can code by hand or use coding software like Delve, which streamlines the process. At this stage, you gather general ideas and continue to bracket yourself. You code transcripts line-by-line and try to assign a unique theme or code to each sentence that focuses on the discussed phenomenon (Larking, Watts, & Clifton, 2006).
Find Emergent themes: The researcher groups these initial codes or themes into larger themes or categories. These emergent themes are the first order of themes discussed above. Following a similar framework to thematic analysis, this is where you start to iteratively refine and group the codes within each transcript.
Repeat coding for each participant’s transcript: Repeat steps 4 and 5 for each transcript. As you go through each transcript, you can use analytical memos to note any superordinate themes that might connect one participant’s experience to another’s. With Delve, organizing memos is easy and organized. You can also quickly retrieve specific memos, codes, or data by searching for a word or phrase using the global search function.
Look for superordinate themes: Compare and contrast themes that you are finding across cases, and begin to create superordinate themes from them.
ℹ️ You look for emergent themes within each transcript in steps 4 and 5. Now, you look for superordinate themes across all of the transcripts. Just keep in mind you still need to avoid over-generalizing one person's experience to represent the entire cohort.Interpretation: The goal is to flesh out and emphasize the unique characteristics of each individual participant. Then, you aim to present them as objectively as possible. Acknowledging IPA’s hermeneutic underpinnings, researchers strive for self-reflection and awareness of their preconceptions when interpreting the data. This awareness fosters an open-minded approach, leading to a deeper understanding of participants' experiences.
Writing up: Finally, the researcher writes up their findings. Use verbatim quotes from participants to illustrate the key themes and findings. The superordinate themes provide an organizing framework for the analysis and the emergent themes are what researchers discuss in detail in the write-up. Results should explain the bracketing process and notes.
In the end, IPA has two main focuses: it pays attention to the specific characteristics of individual participants (the idiographic focus of finding emergent themes in each transcript), as well as patterns of meaning that emerge across participants (the superordinate themes).
Pros & Cons of IPA
Pros
IPA generates rich and detailed data that provides a deep understanding of individuals' experiences.
IPA is a flexible methodology that can be adapted to a range of fields, research questions and contexts.
The idiographic approach of IPA allows for a deep understanding of the unique experiences of each participant, which can be particularly valuable in fields such as healthcare where understanding individual experiences is essential.
The emphasis on interpretation in IPA allows researchers to gain insight into the meanings that individuals attach to their experiences.
Cons
IPA is a subjective methodology, which means that the interpretations of the researcher may be influenced by their own biases and preconceptions.
Conducting IPA research can be time-consuming, as it involves analyzing detailed transcripts, conducting in-depth interviews, and iterative readings and rounds of coding.
IPA often involves working with small sample sizes. Smaller sample sizes can limit the generalizability of the findings.
IPA does not have a widely-accepted approach to data analysis, which may make it difficult to compare findings across different studies.
Wrapping Up
IPA is a research process of examining how individuals make sense of an experience. Rooted in phenomenology, it focuses on the meanings attached to those subjective experiences.
While IPA generates rich and detailed data, it also has some limitations. This includes its subjectivity, time-consuming nature, small sample sizes, and lack of standardization.
Despite its limitations, IPA offers a systematic way to understand the subjective experiences of individuals, particularly in fields such as psychology, sociology, and healthcare.
The Best Tool for Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis
Simplify your IPA research using Delve CAQDAS. Our user-friendly, cloud-based software streamlines data collection, analysis, and organization. It provides a single place to transcribe interviews, code data, and identify important themes.
Delve also promotes reflexivity and iterative data interpretation in IPA research. Bracketing themselves with the analytical memo feature, researchers are able to foster a deeper understanding of participants' experiences and meanings.
References
Smith, Jonathan & Flowers, Paul & Larkin, Michael. (2009). Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis: Theory, Method and Research.
Answers to frequently asked questions about thematic analysis. University of Auckland, 2019. University of Auckland. https://cdn.auckland.ac.nz/assets/psych/about/our-research/documents/Answers to frequently asked questions about thematic analysis April 2019.pdf
Smith, Johnathan & Nizza, I. E. (2022). Essentials of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000259-000
Larkin, M., Watts, S., & Clifton, E. (2006). Giving voice and making sense in interpretative phenomenological analysis. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 102–120. https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp062oa
Cite This Article
Delve, Ho, L., & Limpaecher, A. (2023c, June 08). What is Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA)? https://delvetool.com/blog/interpretive-phenomenological-analysis