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1. INTRODUCTION = 19
veloping a higher sensitivity to others. Consequently, recovery is a journey
that involves a process from social exclusion to social inclusion. It also in¬
volves a more collectivist outlook and a desire to see changes in mental health
services and society in general. A more collaborative approach, more extensive
choice of treatment, alternatives to the medical model and to apply a person,
rather than a symptom-oriented approach is needed (Chadwick, 1997;
Forchuk, Jewell, Tweedell, & Steinnagel, 2003; Pitt et al., 2007; Waite, Knight,
& Lee, 2015).
1.2. INTERPRETATIVE PHENOMENOLOGICAL ANALYSIS
Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) is a recently developed and
rapidly growing qualitative research approach. It is originated from health
psychology but increasingly used by those working in the human, social and
health sciences (Smith, Flowers, & Larkin, 2009). It has become one of the
best known qualitative methods in psychology ever since the first IPA study
was published in 1996 (Smith, 1996) in the United Kingdom (Smith et al.,
2009), the developers of the method are also scientists from the United King¬
dom: Jonathan A. Smith, Paul Flowers, Michael Larkin and Mike Osborn. The
number of qualitative psychological studies has been growing in the last years
(Willig & Stainton Rogers, 2008) and IPA is one of the most often used quali¬
tative methods (Smith, 2004, 2011). IPA examines how people make sense of
their significant life experience in its own terms. An IPA research tries not to
fix experience in predefined or abstract categories it instead follows the lead
of the philosopher Edmund Husserl to go “back to things themselves”. IPA is
committed to examine experience in its complexity and to uncover what
happens when a lived experience takes on a particular significance for people
(Smith et al., 2009).
This chapter is offering a brief overview of the theoretical foundations of
IPA, its place between other qualitative methods, research areas where IPA is
often used and a concise description of the IPA research design.
1.2.1. Theoretical foundations
The primary goal of IPA is to investigate how individuals make sense of their
experiences. People are considered to be “self-interpreting beings” (Taylor,
1985) because they are engaged in interpreting people, objects and events of
their life. In order to unfold these processes of interpretation, the approach
of IPA is engaged in the fundamental principles of phenomenology, herme¬
neutics and idiography (Pietkiewicz & Smith, 2014; Smith et al., 2009).