Oldal 46 [46]
44 = USING INTERPRETATIVE PHENOMENOLOGICAL ANALYSIS
pants’ accounts, little is known about the subjective interpretation of SC use
by the people themselves who used SCs. The aim of this study was to examine
personal interpretations of experiences derived from the use of SCs. Meshack
et al. (2013) suggests that qualitative research offers an excellent opportunity
to uncover subjective aspects of personal motives and social norms in con¬
nection with drug consumption. Therefore, the aim of our study was to assess
the experiences of SC use and analyze subjective interpretation of experiences
of people who had problematic SC use, by means of interpretative phenom¬
enological analysis (IPA), a qualitative research tool that works with a per¬
son-centered approach (Smith et al., 2009).
3.2. METHODS
Participants
The current study was conducted in two Hungarian drug rehabilitation cent¬
ers that work with a recovery approach and require abstinence. The partici¬
pants attended the treatment voluntarily. Based on the methodology of IPA,
a purposive sample was recruited (Smith et al., 2009) among the treatment
participants. According to the methodology of IPA, the idiographic inquiry
(Smith et al., 2009) requires a homogenous and small sample. According to
Smith et al. (2009), the recommended sample size for an IPA study is three
to six interviewees. Therefore, the current study involved six male patients
(aged 20- 27 years) who were self-identified SC users. No female users were
available. Before the analysis, they had been using SCs for at least 2-6 years,
and at the time of the study they had been abstinent for at least 1 month. It
was assumed that SCs were the dominant components of the substance that
they smoked. The study focused on a particular subgroup of the SC user
population: people who had problematic SC use and entered treatment. Due
to their abstinence, the effects of the drug did not influence participants’
responses, and they could describe their experiences also from an outsider’s
perspective. Additionally, by using IPA, the researcher could examine pro¬
cesses: how experiences could change over time (Smith et al., 2009) and over
the addiction process, as many previous IPA studies explored experiences of
people who used drugs in recovery (Hill & Leeming, 2014; Larkin & Griffiths,
2002; Shinebourne & Smith, 2009).
The participation in this study was voluntary, and we use pseudonyms for
the participants to protect their identity. Information about their sociodemo¬
graphic characteristics are presented in Table 1. The Institutional Review
Board at Eötvös Loránd University approved all study protocols.