I am working my way toward the interview assignment for the qualitative course and started to work on the consent form today.
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I just read an article called: "A critical evaluation of the use of interpretive phenomenological analysis {IPA} in health psychology" (Brocki & Wearden, 2006, Psychology and Health, 21{1}, 87-108) that was provided on the IPA listserv earlier this week.
This is a nice article that does not just review but assesses how IPA was used in various studies. Although I always try to avoid secondary sources in citations, reviews like this are a good sources for primary sources. Reading this article has provided me with enough information to make some decisions about whether or not I think the various primary sources will be helpful. Since I am about to conduct a phenomenological interview for QRGP 6301, and I hope to employ IPA for my dissertation research, I started to make some notes as I read this article. One of the things I made a note about is the ways the relationship between applied research and theory manifests itself, especially in qualitative inquiry when compared to quantitative or statistical methods. The idea of not doing an extremely detailed review of literature in order to minimize preconceptions during collection/analysis comes up in qualitative inquiry; I think this would be considered somewhere between careless and improper in quantitative research. Theory itself is a concept that I find confusing at times. Theory in health behaviors to refer to specific models such as Bandura's social cognitive theory (SCT). When you speak of your theoretical approach in qualitative inquiry, you may refer to IPA, phenomenology (and hopefully, if this, you also provide more about which or whose approach to phenomenology you are using), grounded theory (I think this one also requires clarification), ethnography, autoethnography, narrative, oral history, etc. Researchers may add to description this as they analyze (e.g., the data from this case study approach was analyzed using grounded theory as described by Corbin & Strauss), although it seems that they more often talk about the mechanics of analysis (e.g., constant comparison, line-by-line) than the overall theory. People talk about 'grand theory' - which I think both SCT and IPA are examples of although IPA may just be a subset of the grand theory of phenomenology. Who grants the 'grand' to the 'grand' theories? Additionally, Saldana ("The coding manual for qualitative researchers", 2nd ed., 2013, Sage) provides 32 different ways to approach the coding process. Where do these fit in as far as theory goes? For myself, I think I am beginning to look, as I start to write my dissertation proposal, at the intersection between SCT and IPA. Frequent use of these initialisms in the dissertation document probably ensures that no one will ever really understand what I am talking about! This came to me as I described some of the elements of SCT (from Bandura's "Social foundations of thought and action," 1986, McGraw Hill) right after talking about the double hermenutic that characterizes IPA. In fact, the reason I really like SCT is the primary role given to cognition - and in IPA or standard phenomenology, meaning is everything. |
AuthorI am Sheryl L. Chatfield, Ph.D, C.T.R.S. I am a member of the faculty in the College of Public Health at Kent State University. I also Co-coordinate the Graduate Certificate in Qualitative Research and I am a member of the Design Innovation Team at Kent State. Archives
February 2024
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