Close, case-by-case study of how a few individuals make sense of a significant experience.
- +Fits Phenomenological Epistemology, Interpretivist Epistemology
- –Tension with Positivist Epistemology, Post-structuralist Epistemology
Key thinkers: Jonathan Smith, Paul Flowers, Michael Larkin
The longer story
IPA—Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis—examines how people make sense of their experiences. It's phenomenological (concerned with lived experience), hermeneutic (acknowledging interpretation is circular), and idiographic (focusing on particular cases before generalising). Small samples, deep analysis of individual accounts, attention to how people construct meaning around significant experiences. If you want to understand what it's like to go through something—creative practice, illness, life transitions—IPA gives you rigorous procedures for getting at the texture of experience.