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1.INTRODUCTION = 23
were published until 2011) was about illness experience (Figure 2). This is not
surprising because illness is a significant field in health psychology (where
IPA was developed) and the experience of illness is an essential part of people’s
life living with the condition (e.g., Arroll & Senior, 2008). A significant part
of IPA studies was published about psychological distress (e.g., Howes, Benton,
& Edwards, 2005), and described the phenomenon itself, the experience of
recovery from distress, the professionals’ understanding and the institutional
and cultural context (Smith et al., 2009). Since IPA is a suitable method for a
sensitive research topic, IPA has also been widely adopted in studying sex and
sexuality (e.g., Coyle & Rafalin, 2001). IPA’s particular feature is that identity
could be examined fruitfully, that is why many studies examining life transi¬
tion and identity (e.g., migration (Timotijevic & Breakwell, 2000), homeless¬
ness (Riggs & Coyle, 2002) utilized IPA (Smith et al., 2009).
Patient's illness experience* 69
Psychological distress? 45
Carers’ experience 30
Client’s experience of therapy 18
Reproduction 18
Genetics 15
Health professionals’ experience 14
Dementia 14
Occupational psychology 14
Sex/sexuality 13
Gender 11
Eating disorders 10
Therapists" experience 9
Learning disabilities 7
Sport/exercise 7
Religion/spirituality 5
IT 5
Education 4
Addiction 4
Alcohol 4
Alternative therapy 3
Music 3
2. Figure Research topics where IPA is often used,
based on the figure of Smith (2011, p. 13.)
The review of Smith (2011) did not explicitly underline the importance of IPA
studies on recovery from addiction (maybe because the significant part of
these studies were published after 2011), maybe because research inquiry of
recovery from addiction is in the border of many basic research areas where
IPA is used: health psychology, addiction, identity, recovery. The first influ¬
ential IPA study about addiction and recovery was published by Larkin and
Griffiths (2002) which argued that subjective accounts could have a value in
the psychological understanding of addiction, in which identity has an es¬
sential role. Also, the authors aimed to explore IPA’s suitability as an approach
to the analysis of observational data.