ABSTRACT
Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) is a qualitative approach concerned with examining personal lived experience. It was developed in the 1990s to complement the quantitative experimental paradigm of mainstream psychology. An explicit part of the impetus for articulating IPA, however, was also to show continuity with an important but neglected tradition within the disciplines concerned with the examination of personal experience and personal accounts (James, 1890; Allport, 1951). A complete guide to IPA is available, covering its theoretical underpinnings and methodological practice and providing worked examples (see Smith, Flowers, & Larkin, 2009).
