What does IPA mean in research?

Interpretative phenomenological analysis
Abstract. Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) is a qualitative approach which aims to provide detailed examinations of personal lived experience.

Is IPA a research design?

IPA is a qualitative research approach. Qualitative research explores and understands the meanings people assign to their experiences [4,5]. Qualitative inquiries seek to shed light on meanings that are less perceptible. They also seek to investigate complexities of our social world.

Why is IPA good for qualitative research?

Therefore, utilizing the IPA approach in a qualitative research study reiterates the fact that its main objective and essence are to explore the ‘lived experiences’ of the research participants and allow them to narrate the research findings through their ‘lived experiences’.

Is IPA a phenomenology?

IPA is phenomenological in that it wishes to explore an individual’s personal perception or account of an event or state as opposed to attempting to produce an objective record of the event or state itself.

Why is IPA good psychology?

IPA encourages an open-ended dialogue between the researcher and the participants and may, therefore, lead us to see things in a new light.

What is the difference between IPA and thematic analysis?

IPA has a dual focus on the unique characteristics of individual participants (the idiographic focus mentioned above) and on patterning of meaning across participants. In contrast, TA focuses mainly on patterning of meaning across participants (this is not to say it can’t capture difference and divergence in data).

Is IPA a theoretical framework?

IPA’s emphasis on sense-making by both participant and researcher means that it can be described as having cognition as a central analytic concern, and this suggests an interesting theoretical alliance with the cognitive paradigm that is dominant in contemporary psychology.

Is IPA a type of thematic analysis?

In addition, there appears to be a general misapprehension that IPA is simply a form of thematic analysis with little emphasis on interpretation and is therefore, dare we say it, the easy option (see Braun & Clarke, 2006, for an excellent overview of thematic analysis).

Is IPA an epistemology?

IPA draws on each of these theoretical approaches to inform its distinctive epistemological framework and research methodology. (Husserl, 1927, para. 2, quoted in Smith et al., 2009, p. 12-13).

What are themes in IPA?

In #IPA, a theme is not a just a ‘topic’ – its more than just a ‘thing that people talked about’. A topic is a thing that people talked about – i.e it’s an object of concern. [ 1/16] 4.

How many themes does IPA have?

In terms of procedures for theme development, there are two levels of theme development in IPA and one level in TA. In IPA, these are referred to as ’emergent’ and ‘superordinate’ themes.

Is IPA inductive or deductive?

In its entirety, IPA is inductive in nature, with no pre-existing hypothesis, ‘IPA aims to capture and explore the meanings that participants assign to their experiences’ (Reid et al., 2005, p. 20).