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By Qual Academy partner Elly Phillips
As I’ve become more involved in the IPA academic community, I’ve had the opportunity to read, review and provide feedback on analysis from a range of sources. The most common observation I find myself making is, in essence, that “this isn’t really IPA”. It’s hard feedback to give, particularly when it might result in a journal rejection or a failing grade. I always want to help researchers, particularly students or first time IPAers, find the tools, resources and confidence to develop their work (hence one reason for founding Qual Academy!).
Here are three key areas to address to ensure better alignment with the principles and practices used in IPA.
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1. Increasing analytic depth
This is the biggest issue: when there isn’t actually enough (or any) IPA in a paper. What I mean by that is the work is lacking the analytic depth and detail that IPA requires. Most commonly, it’s an analysis that is largely a series of quotes with perhaps some restatement of what participants said in the analysts’ words.
First, the quality of the analysis write up reflects the exploratory noting, in which you have really examined the data in detail (see previous post for more on that). Trying to write a ‘good’ analysis without care and attention to noting is like trying to run a marathon with no training. Look back at your noting and honestly assess that first. If your notes are top level, tend to code entire paragraphs or multiple sentences and are single word/top level ideas (like ‘stress’ or ‘emotion’) then you need to loop back and develop that first. It provides the foundation for ‘depth and detail’ in your analysis.
What does ‘analysis’ mean, then?
A ‘good’ IPA analysis explores participants' language and sense-making by pulling out relevant parts of the presented quotes and saying something about them. Some examples include:
Metaphor: A classic example is the ‘Linda’ passage that Jonathan Smith has referred to in a few papers (e.g., Smith, 2004), where he draws the reader’s attention to the phrase ‘being cut down’ and how that indicates Linda’s feeling of ‘flimsiness’ in the context of her pain.
Pronouns: When I did work with focus group data (e.g., Phillips et al., 2016), I noticed how participants variously used ‘I’, ‘we’ or ‘you’ in their accounts and that each was linked with discussions of specific topics. We used that as a way ‘into’ participants’ data, to understand what was important to them.
Striking language: Often, striking language is a useful point to observe a participant’s sense-making. For example, Conroy and de Visser (2015) in their paper on student non-drinkers, noted phrases such as ‘we kept sane’ and the ‘tainted self’. Both give reason to pause and think about participants’ framing.
"Quotes should not be left to speak for themselves but require further analysis.... to explore their significance"
-Nizza et al. (2021, p. 375)
When I’m reading papers with an under-developed analysis, I can often see opportunities to say something more about the language and ideas in a quote. I wonder if those less confident or experienced with IPA, are uncertain about how far they can go in what they say, or how to support their analytic claims. And that’s understandable. It’s hard, especially when you’re getting started!
2. Aligning with IPA appropriate concepts
Over the last few decades, qualitative research has become more established and the conceptual and theoretical background for each approach has developed. It’s important to ensure the concepts you’re introducing in your IPA paper apply to IPA. The (fairly) recent guidelines from the American Psychological Association (Levitt et al., 2018) highlight the importance of sensitivity to the specific qualitative approach being used.
If you’re doing IPA, you must be familiar with the concepts that are used and accepted and the arguments about them. Some examples of IPA-inappropriate concepts that spring to mind are saturation, member checking and generic ‘qualitative’ sample size recommendations.
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To pick one example, the idea of ‘member checking’ (where participants play some kind of role in reviewing parts of the data or developing analysis), is problematic in IPA due to the interpretative element involved in the analysis. As researchers using IPA, we are making sense of participants making sense of their experience. The analysis reflects the lens through which we’ve looked at the data (e.g., our research question and discipline-specific concepts) and asking participants’ opinions on that is like offering someone else our spectacles and expecting they’ll see what we do.
You are often better off keeping things simple and avoiding incorporating concepts if you don’t have time and space (or the energy!) to thoroughly investigate how they fit with IPA, and do some background reading to understand the debates.
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3. Knowing what you're aiming to achieve (and what IPA can do)
The final point is less ‘this isn’t IPA’ and is more ‘IPA can’t do that’. One example is making causal claims about the data (this shows that x causes y). Another is suggesting that because participants describe or experience a particular thing, intervening to change that will improve outcomes. As an example, perhaps participants described feeling that a medical practitioner didn’t listen to them. A superficial recommendation would be that ‘practitioners don’t listen to patients and listening to patients would improve…..’. What would be a better aim or observation is to understand how participants perceived ‘listening’. What do practitioners do to help participants feel listened to? We can’t actually know whether a person did or didn’t do a thing (maybe practitioners are listening, and we can’t know that it has anything to do with outcomes).
Moving ahead
First, if you have had this kind of feedback or have these concerns, you’re not alone! Qualitative research of any kind is a skill that requires time, practice, confidence and feedback to develop.
Find IPA-specific support: These days, it’s vital to get support from someone with experience using and publishing (ideally more than once!) using a specific methodology. If you’re a supervisor being asked to help students with IPA and you haven’t published, consider one of our supervision workshops (if there are none on offer, indicate your interest via our contact form).
Use IPA networks: The IPA discussion group is a good starting point for this. You can ask questions and search the extensive archive of previous posts. Academics sometimes offer virtual or in-person group meetings, or you might be able to set up something with others at a similar stage of research. Qual Academy also facilitates Research Roundtables for this purpose.
Narrow your focus: It’s easy to get overwhelmed with the amount of material to read and things to pay attention to. If you have one area to improve, start with your analysis. The paper by Nizza et al. (2021) with examples of ‘good’ analysis and explanation of what you’re aiming for is my top recommendation. If you can, have that paper open alongside your own writing and use it as a guide and reference to model your own work on.
References
Conroy, D., & de Visser, R. (2014). Being a non-drinking student: An interpretative phenomenological analysis. Psychology & Health, 29(5), 536–551. https://doi.org/10.1080/08870446.2013.866673
Levitt, H. M., Bamberg, M., Creswell, J. W., Frost, D. M., Josselson, R., & Suárez-Orozco, C. (2018). Journal article reporting standards for qualitative primary, qualitative meta-analytic, and mixed methods research in psychology: The APA Publications and Communications Board task force report. American Psychologist, 73(1), 26–46. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000151
Nizza, I. E., Farr, J., & Smith, J. A. (2021). Achieving excellence in interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA): Four markers of high quality. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 18(3), 369–386. https://doi.org/10.1080/14780887.2020.1854404
Phillips, E., Montague, J., & Archer, S. (2016). Worlds within worlds: A strategy for using interpretative phenomenological analysis with focus groups. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 13(4), 289–302. https://doi.org/10.1080/14780887.2016.1205692
Smith, J. A. (2004). Reflecting on the development of interpretative phenomenological analysis and its contribution to qualitative research in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 1(1), 39–54. https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088704qp004oa
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