Oldal 23 [23]
1. INTRODUCTION = 21
understand how the experience is understood from the perspective of par¬
ticular people in a particular context. Subseguently, IPA is working with small
and homogenous sample size. Due to the analysis is based upon a detailed
case exploration the researcher could make specific statements about the study
participants. At the same time, IPA does not eschew generalizations but pres¬
ents a different way of establishing those generalizations (Smith et al., 2009).
The idiographic inguiry is unusual even among gualitative methods. By uti¬
lizing IPA, the researcher could study group of individuals by moving between
essential themes of the analysis and present examples from the individual
narratives (Pietkiewicz & Smith, 2014).
1.2.2. The relationship between IPA and other qualitative approaches
The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research in Psychology presents 13 qualita¬
tive psychological methods, and IPA is one of them (Willig & Stainton Rogers,
2008). IPA has been developed as a qualitative psychological research method
in the border of phenomenology, hermeneutics and idiography. Therefore
many common points emerge with other qualitative approaches. Hereby, I
would like to present the most important ones to place the approach of IPA
among other, “older” and perhaps better known qualitative psychological
approaches.
The interpretive phenomenology (IP) should be mentioned here, as one
of the closest relatives to IPA. The method of IP was developed by Amadeo
Giorgi (Giorgi & Giorgi, 2008), that is based on the theoretical work of Husserl
and emphasizes recognition and description of the psychological essence of
a phenomenon. While IP is committed to the pure, “Husserlian” description
of the phenomenon, IPA draws on a range of phenomenological positions
and strongly related to hermeneutic phenomenology (which was represented
by Heidegger and Gadamer). Thus, applying the method of IP requires a
comprehensive knowledge of phenomenology, IPA is feasible even if the re¬
searcher does not possess in-depth philosophical knowledge (Eatough &
Smith, 2008).
The chapter of the Sage Handbook that presents the method of IPA
(Eatough & Smith, 2008) places IPA between social constructionism, dis¬
cursive psychology, and narrative psychology. According to the authors, IPA
has a connection to social constructionism’s claim that sociocultural pro¬
cesses are essential to how people experience and understand their lives.
Language is also an essential part of the individual making-sense process,
and the sense of self emerges from intersubjective communication. Never¬
theless, IPA’s features of social constructionism owe more to symbolic inter¬
actionism than to discursive and linguistic constructions of discursive