Developing an Interpretative Phenomenological Approach to Focus Group Data

By M. Palmer, M. Larkin, R. D. de Visser, G. Fadden. 2010

397 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) is an approach to qualitative research that is now well-established in British psychology. This approach is concerned with understanding people's experiences of the world and of themselves. The aims of IPA studies have been met most frequently through the use of one-on-one interviews. Relatively few studies have used focus group discussions as the basis for IPA studies, but focus groups may provide rich experiential data. In this article, we describe a process for integrating focus group data into an IPA study. We developed this during a study of the experiences of carers of people with mental health problems. Here we outline the various steps of our analytic process and discuss how these might be employed and adapted by other researchers wishing to apply IPA's concern with personal experience to the analysis of focus group data.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, General Health Professions, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6a71e024d260bf63577e79a0bfc5451e38b035ec

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Clinical Psychology

1. Jonathan A. Smith
2. B. Love
3. A. Vetere
4. P. Davis
5. M. Osborn

In General Health Professions

1. Jonathan A. Smith
2. M. Osborn
3. B. Love
4. A. Vetere
5. P. Davis
6. D. Fletcher
7. Jacquelyn Allen-Collinson
8. Sarah Mercer

In Sociology and Political Science

1. B. Love
2. A. Vetere
3. P. Davis
4. Jonathan A. Smith
5. M. Osborn

Citations in the corpus

• Interpretative phenomenological analysis (2008, background): “02_SMITH_IPA_2E_CH_02.indd 32 13/11/2021 2:49:18 PM The TheoreTical foundaTions of iPa 33 A key text on hermeneutics is by Palmer (1969).”
• Qualitative research methods in mental health and psychotherapy: A guide for students and practitioners (2011, neutral): “Other forms of data that can sometimes be used for IPA include written accounts (Smith, 1999) and focus groups (Palmer et al., 2010).”
• Should Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) be Used With Focus Groups? Navigating the Bumpy Road of “Iterative Loops,” Idiographic Journeys, and “Phenomenological Bridges” (2020, methodology): “Such criticisms have centered on the difficulty of extrapolating the idiographic accounts, which are more embedded within the shared experience of a focus group setting (Palmer et al., 2010) and that the collective group voice dominates the individual’s account (Tomkins & Eatough, 2010).”