Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis: A Contemporary Qualitative Approach

Abstract

Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) is a contemporary qualitative research method grounded in phenomenology, hermeneutics, and idiography. Philosophical principles and rigorous methodology make this approach well suited for research in counselor education and supervision. In this primer, the authors introduce counselor educators, counseling students, and counseling researchers to IPA theory and methodology and discuss considerations for implementation in counseling research.

Healthcare professionals providing care coordination to people living with multimorbidity: An interpretative phenomenological analysis

“…The concept of saturation is not straightforward in studies using an IPA approach as capturing the entirety of the meaning of a phenomenon for a certain number of participants can be considered impossible (Brocki & Wearden, 2006; van Manen, Higgins, & van der Riet, 2016; Miller, Chan, & Farmer, 2018; Saunders et al, 2018). We used an incremental approach to saturation and decided that after interviewing ten care coordinators, further data collection from that group of participants was not required (Saunders et al, 2018).…”

Counselor Education and Supervision: 2018 Annual Review

“…Richards, Dykeman, and Bender (2018) presented a content analysis of dissertation topics and methodology in the counseling field. Others provided guidance for interpretative phenomenological analysis (R. M. Miller, Chan, & Farmer, 2018) and a mixed-methods study regarding credible phenomenological research (Flynn & Korcuska, 2018). Finally, Lambie, Mullen, Swank, and Blount (2018) presented additional evidence for validity of the Counseling Competencies Scale, whereas Jorgensen and Schweinle (2018) presented the Research Identity Scale.…”

Teaching Interpreted Counseling Practice: A Step Toward Multicultural Competence

“…We used IPA (Smith, 1996;Smith et al, 2009) for this study. IPA is strongly established in health psychology and is increasingly present in the counseling literature, particularly in counselor training (i.e., Miller et al, 2018) and cultural considerations in counseling (i.e., McCullough et al, 2017). IPA is rooted in phenomenology and considered an integrative approach containing positions that overlap with multiple paradigms (Smith, 1996).…”