Oldal 90 [90]
88 = USING INTERPRETATIVE PHENOMENOLOGICAL ANALYSIS
recovering helpers’ identity change) before planning design of an IPA study
we should possess information about how identity works and the process of
identity change during recovery. Therefore, one of the limitations of using an
IPA method that it works with a narrow focus, so the results will not neces¬
sarily give much new information about the research topic, but nuances, pat¬
terns, processes of experience and aspects of identity change could be
discovered fruitfully.
As it was presented earlier another limitation of IPA that it works with the
homogenous sample, so the results are not generalizable, but this may not an
aim of an IPA study (Smith et al., 2009). IPA is developed to examine phe¬
nomenon, especially personal experiences about what general truth cannot
be declared. That is why a further limitation of IPA that the researcher could
not declare e.g. what is it the experience of recovery from addiction (except
if her/himself is a recovering addict), the researcher is only able to tell what
recovery from addiction for them is, who were asked in the interview. How¬
ever, as it appeared in the included studies common patterns of experiences
could emerge across separate IPA studies that were conducted in the same
topic (e.g., results of many previous IPA studies about recovering from ad¬
diction are could be put together). To collect the patterns of experiences that
can be seen across related areas and to examine how this could contribute to
a shift in how topics are seen in the mainstream is one of the future aims to
develop the IPA method (Eatough & Smith, 2008).
During many qualitative studies also in IPA semi-structured interviews
should be conducted which has limitations too. In semi-structured interviews
the researcher is taking a significant role in determining what is said (by
flexibly following the preconstructed questions and topics), that could limit
the participants account. However, if the interviewer allows the participant
a strong say where the interview goes, it could jeopardize the phenomeno¬
logical endeavor (Eatough & Smith, 2008).
A further limitation could be that during IPA data analysis the researcher
uses “double hermeneutics” and sometimes it is challenging to find a proper
way of doing this. The level of interpretation should be descriptive, emphatic
and critical, it should probe the accounts in ways which participants might
be unable to do themselves at the same time (Eatough & Smith, 2008), espe¬
cially when participants could not tell coherent narratives about their expe¬
riences as it was in Study 2 and Study 3. In this case, the researcher still should
stick strictly to reliability and validity of qualitative research by using previous
research results of related topics (e.g., combine experiences of synthetic can¬
nabinoid users with the experiences of psychoactive substance users).