IPA

IPA

1. Goals

   • Aims to gain insights into how a given person, in a given context, makes sense of a given phenomenon
   • Understand how people experience and make sense of the things that happen to them in their lives.
   • Inherently very subjective -> but that is the aim; to understand the non-directly accessible things in someone head,
     • Memories
     • Beliefs
     • Attitudes
     • Expieriences
   • Phenomenological Reduction
     • Every life event carries some significance
       • What is it like?
       • What meanings were ascribed
       • How has it influenced further opinions?
       • How has it influenced further life choices and events
       • How does one feel when they think about the experience
     • Wish to evaluate phenomena and experience -> reducing to its pure essence
     • Need to consider one's natural attitudes and remove from analysis
   • To understand someone's 'take' on something
   • Separating the phenomenon and the manner of experience

2. Terms

   • Phenomenology
     • Research and understanding human experience
     • Clearly subjective, considering the emotive, profound, meaningful experiences in life
   • Interpretation / Hermeneutics
     • Interpreting the further meaning that can be gleaned about experience of the event and (un)intentional motivations of the subject
       • Paying attention to the content in what is said
       • But also paying attention to underlying, less apparent motivations/considerations/feelings that can be inferred from the context -> e.g. what is taken as a given in the explanation?
   • Lived Experience
     • The what's it like of experiencing a phenomenon
     • The subjects PERSPECTIVE of the event
       • <- this stuff
   • Natural Attitude
     • All the thinking and acting that goes on without one thinking about it -> the subconscious quirks in thought and behaviour
       • Everything we experience in life is QUALIFIED by our FILTER of understanding / perspective
     • Including BIASES, PREFERENCES AND PREJUDICES
     • We all have familiar ways of thinking but they are particular to ourselves and hence subjective and cloud the true analysis of the other's experience
     • Need to identify and address these, so one can understand one's attitudes and DETECT when they are seeping into / pervading our analysis
     • Opposite of Phenomenological attitude -> what we're trying to achieve -> attempt to suspend immediate biased judgement of the world and take a more objective observation of what is observed and said
   • Analysis
     • All findings are highly subjective -> nuanced and specific to individual but that is what is meant investigated; the single experience of a single person
     • Common coding practice
       • Read, re-read, add comments, produce summaries, link associations
       • Note emerging themes -> the converging meanings and associations
       • List sub-themes chronologically -> identify links and cluster themes, identify over-riding themes
       • Produce a table of THEMES that CAPTURE THE SUBJECT'S LIVED EXPERIENCE
   • Phenomenon
     • The actual event / life setting being discussed
       • E.g. living with a disability, a traumatic event, being a carer for a dependet

3. Data Collection Methods

4. Researcher Considerations

   • Reflective Questions
     • Why am I conducting this study?
     • What is my relationship to the topic?
     • How might I be (incorrectly) influencing the research and analysis?
       • Through loaded questions
       • Adding bias to interpretation
     • How might the outside world influence the analysis?
   • Natural Attitudes / Bias
   • Empathy
     • Ensure that subject is not distressed, other than that, try to prevent ones own emotions from adding biasing analysis, adding in information / filling in with own feelings
     • While interviewing pay attention to subject's body language