Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis: Theory, Method and Research

By Jonathan A. Smith, P. Flowers, M. Larkin. QMiP bulletin, 2009

8,864 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) is an increasingly popular approach to qualitative inquiry. This handy text covers its theoretical foundations and provides a detailed guide to conducting IPA research. Extended worked examples from the authors' own studies in health, sexuality, psychological distress and identity illustrate the breadth and depth of IPA research. Each of the chapters also offers a guide to other good exemplars of IPA research in the designated area. The final section of the book considers how IPA connects with other contemporary qualitative approaches like discourse and narrative analysis and how it addresses issues to do with validity. The book is written in an accessible style and will be extremely useful to students and researchers in psychology and related disciplines in the health and social sciences.

Subfields: Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4c97d9b9eb7c158e682844b394b42924af3c5b3f

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Citations in the corpus

• Identifying Sexual Grooming Themes Used by Internet Sex Offenders (2013, methodology): “This is as opposed to, for example, interview data, where analysis is based on the participant’s recollections of behaviors and events and hence become the researcher’s interpretation of the participant’s post-hoc interpretation of events (the ‘‘double-hermeneutic,’’ Smith et al. 2009).”
• Engaging Phenomenological Analysis (2014, background): “For more interpretive phenomenological approaches see, for instance, Dahlberg et al. (2008), Pollio et al. (1997), Smith et al. (2009), and van Manen (1990).”
• The Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA): A Guide to a Good Qualitative Research Approach (2017, methodology): “The first thing the researcher wants to do in an interview session is to follow the advice that Smith et al. (2009) suggested; they suggested that The most important thing at the beginning of the interview is to establish a rapport with the participant.”
• Qualitative Research Methods in Psychology (2012, methodology): “When we wish to explore the 'being-in-the-world' psychology of experience, the idiographic case-study approach proposed by methods such as IPA can be especially helpful (Smith et al., 2009).”
• Contagious Effects of Customer Misbehavior in Access-Based Services (2016, methodology): “We then conducted a content analysis that followed a phenomenological approach (Smith, Flowers, and Larkin 2009).”
• Educators’ emotions involved in the transition to online teaching in higher education (2020, methodology): “The interactive analytical process proceeded in accordance with established guidelines (Smith et al., 2009).”
• Characterizing Value as an Experience (2012, methodology): “…phenomenological approach, the intersubjective nature of value in the experience acknowledges service customers’ individual and collective relational engagement with the world and how they seek to make sense of this both at an individual and at a collective level (Smith, Flowers, and Larkin 2009).”
• Challenges Facing Asian International Graduate Students in the US: Pedagogical Considerations in Higher Education. (2014, methodology): “Additionally, an interpretative phenomenological study, as described by Smith, Flowers, and Larkin (2009, 2010), allows an emerging framework to develop through the analysis of the participants’ responses.”
• Investigating modes of being in the world: an introduction to Phenomenologically grounded qualitative research (2021, background): “Both Amedeo Giorgi (2010) and Max van Manen (2017) have questioned the philosophical foundations of Jonathan Smith’s Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), one of the most popular phenomenological approaches to qualitative research today.”
• Lifelines (2015, background): “…phenomenological underpinnings of IPA, which were reflected in the dynamic relationship between the comparison of individual life stories and Donati’s relational sociology; the latter provided a theoretical framework through which to refract the “second-order analysis” (Smith et al., 2009, p. 166).”
• One size fits all? What counts as quality practice in (reflexive) thematic analysis? (2020, neutral): “…(usually just) one facet; themes, in contrast, are like multi-faceted crystals – they capture multiple observations or facets (occasionally, rich, complex and multifaceted codes might be ‘promoted’ to themes [Charmaz 2006], a process called ‘subsumption’ in IPA [Smith, Flowers, and Larkin 2009]).”