How to Choose an IPA Analysis Strategy for Your Study (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Let's go through the strategies that you can choose from in terms of analyzing your qualitative data using IPA. So there are three main strategies that you can use, right? The first one is the, we call it the classic strategies, the original strategies, call it individualized strategy. So the individualized strategy is where you go through each of the transcripts, develop initial themes for them, and then develop main themes for each of the transcripts, right? The essence of doing that is to really understand each participant experience before you think about what is the overall experience across participants, right? The second one is called collective strategy. Think about it as you are using some of the principles behind thematic analysis, right? So you're going to go through all the transcripts, identify themes, right? After identifying themes for all the transcripts, then you move on to the next stage where you categorize the initial themes to develop superordinating or the main themes, right? So if you know how to do thematic analysis, this strategy is very similar to systematic analysis. The third strategy that you could use is called sequential accumulative strategy. So this is where you first start with one transcript, go through and develop initial themes, and then after that, you have to categorize the themes to develop superordinate themes. Then you go to the second transcript. As you are going to the second transcript, you are going to use the already developed themes or initial themes and superordinate themes. As you are going through, you may make a little bit of adjustment to the existing themes that you have developed based on the transcript. So as you are going through subsequent transcript, you are making adjustment to the initial themes and the overall themes that you are developing. It's called sequential because you want to finish the first transcript before you go to the next transcript, before you go to the next transcript. It's accumulative because you continue to make an adjustment to the themes as you are going through the transcript, right? So these are the three strategies that you could use. And let's go through each of them, and then you can decide which one is good for you. Each of them has its own strengths and weaknesses. The most important thing is to be aware of the strengths and weaknesses so that you choose the one that will be effective based on the data that you have and based on the data analysis software that you want to use. So which one do you want to choose? So let's start with the individualized one. If you are new to IPA, this one will be the best, right? Because this is the original way that you have to analyze your data using IPA. So if you have three to six transcripts, if you don't have a lot of transcripts, this strategy will be good, right? Because you start with the first transcript, you complete the first transcript, develop initial themes, and then overall themes, which is the super-ordinary themes for each of the transcripts. This one is good if you want to really understand each individual experience before you think about what are the experiences across the cases that you have. So this one is very useful. The only limitation here is labor-intensive. It takes time and resources to do it because you have to go through each individual transcript, develop initial themes, and also the main themes before you think about going to the next one and after that you can compare and then come up with overall themes. It takes time, right? But if you want to gain the skill of analyzing data using IPA, this original strategy is the best. So let's think about a second strategy. So the second one is quite similar to thematic analysis because what you are doing is that you are going through the data to develop initial themes and after that you come back and categorize all the themes to have the overarching themes or we call it super-ordinary themes. If you have six or more participants or you have a lot of transcripts to work on, this strategy will be the best. But the only limitation is that you may have difficulty understanding individual experience first before you think about overall experience. But the results of the collective strategy will be similar to the result of the individualized. So this one is useful if you are using software to analyze your data, right? And if you have a large data. The last one that we want to talk about, if you have between four to eight transcripts, then this one will be very helpful for you because what we're doing is that you are continuously updating the initial themes and super-ordinary themes as you go through the transcript, right? It's quite similar to using granite theory approach because you make adjustment to the initial themes as you see new evidence that you have, right? Using the subsequent evidence in the data to confirm the themes or make an adjustment to the themes, right? That's why it's called sequential accumulative, making adjustment to the themes as you continue to go through the data. And for this presentation, I'm going to limit myself to individualized strategy and also collective strategy. If you know these two, you can also figure out the third strategy, which is the sequential accumulative strategy. Make sure you subscribe to my channel. It goes a long way to help in making good videos for you and your colleagues. Thank you for your time.