Anil Behal

Deploying IPA to Research Novel Phenomena Anil Behal

"Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis" (IPA) is a novel phenomenological approach to data analysis and interpretation using a hermeneutic lens. It rests on three theoretical pillars, 1) phenomenology, 2) hermeneutics, and 3) idiography. Using a turnkey process of thematic analysis, IPA attempts to go deep into the direct lived experience of participants as they make sense of a phenomenon. The researcher shares a paradoxically bilateral relationship with the participant, and all knowledge obtained is a product of co-creation. Doctoral students often find IPA to be a bit challenging, given the convoluted nature of phenomenology as a research endeavor. The entire process of interpretation is subjective and fraught with conflicting perspectives and contradictions. Making sense of what can at first appear to be disparate data, takes a novel approach and keen insight on the part of the researcher. Against the backdrop of a novel phenomenon such as "Negative Capability," the author delineates the entire process of IPA as deployed in an actual research study. Negative capability is an aesthetic construct that was coined by the English romantic poet John Keats in 1817, and suggests a peculiar disposition to stay in mysteries, doubts, and uncertainties without the irritable reaching after fact and reason.