Searching the IPA literature

Second, when we’re seeking research on a specific topic, particularly if you’re conducting research for a doctorate, the chances of anyone else having in-depth knowledge of your subject area are low, so any recommendations may not pick up key work. Also, there might not be any (IPA) research (yet) on your topic….

If you ask and come away empty-handed, it’s helpful to know some tricks and tips to search the literature more effectively. There are several dimensions to the question:

• Finding recommendations that are reliable about IPA

• Reading papers using the new terminology

• Tracking down work that relates to yours

With that in mind, onward with some strategies you can use!

Use lists of recommended papers

Good starting points are the reference lists in Smith et al. (2022) and Nizza et al. (2021). Both talk about ‘good’ work, and you can be confident that recommendations here are good ones! Jonathan Smith has older papers (e.g., 2011) reviewing the development of IPA and highlighting papers using good practice, so another good starting point. These are obviously not going to newer terminology, but what constitutes ‘good’ IPA is not going to change - the results themselves are what count, not the steps used to get there. 

There is also a list of references on Jonathan Smith’s website at Birkbeck, with topical sub-sections. It doesn’t seem to have been updated for a while, but in terms of reading good-quality research, it’s helpful as another starting point.

I strongly recommend this approach for methodology papers. IPA is popular, and many people have written about it and critiqued it; however, not everything written about IPA is accurate. I think there’s a confusing message in academia where students are encouraged to ‘read widely’ and find ‘new’ sources without having the knowledge to recognise the limitations and weaknesses in them. There can be hidden gems out there, but stick to recommendations while you’re learning the ropes.

Stick to names you can be confident in

Familiarise yourself with key names - that might be people conducting IPA and in your topic area. The sources above will help you get started - whose names do you see coming up frequently, and what have they published recently? Check their work (perhaps via Google Scholar, where you can see all their publications and organise by publication date). You can also see who those people frequently collaborate with and build a ‘web’ of contacts and work out from there. 

You might also check (and join if you aren’t a member!) the IPA discussion group, and you’ll find some more ‘names’ (regular and knowledgeable posters), and you might want to follow up their work. 

I’d be wary of people who have published only one or two papers using IPA. Poor quality IPA research still makes it through peer review, and just because it’s published doesn’t mean it’s good. As you become more confident (from reading the ‘good’ sources), you will be better placed to make those evaluations. 

Think laterally

If there’s nothing obvious on your specific topic, you might be able to find research that uses IPA on a topic that’s related in some key dimensions. Think more broadly about your topic. As an example, if you’re studying a specific disease or condition, what are the key dimensions of it (e.g., is it chronic or acute, are there certain types of treatment, is it visible or invisible) and what other conditions share those dimensions? You might seek out research done with different populations or research sharing a similar subject-specific factor of interest (e.g., barriers, stress and coping). 

Keep looking

Keep a list of the terms you search AND what you find, and keep an eye open for new search terms. You might notice some keyword in your reading that opens up some new literature, and, of course, new work is published all the time. If you find a good set of search terms, set up an alert (I happen to like using Google Scholar for this - I just find it user-friendly). 

Uncertainty is hard, but you might well find useful material later on, and it’s unlikely to cause a huge crisis if you missed something (and you probably didn’t miss anything obvious if you spent some time on this part). 

References

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

Smith, J. A. (2011). Evaluating the contribution of interpretative phenomenological analysis. Health Psychology Review, 5(1), 9–27. https://doi.org/10.1080/17437199.2010.510659

Smith, J. A., Flowers, P., & Larkin, M. (2022). Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis: Theory, Method and Research (2nd ed.). SAGE.