Interpretative phenomenological analysis

Interpretative phenomenological analysis is a big fancy term that we use to help understand people's experiences and feelings about things that happen in their lives. It's like when you have a really fun day at the park and you want to tell your friend all about it, but you also want to make sure they know exactly how you felt during every part of the day. That's what interpretative phenomenological analysis does: it helps us understand people's experiences and emotions.

Here's how it works: First, we talk to people and ask them about a certain experience they had. It could be something like a trip they took or an important event in their life. Then, we listen really carefully to what they say and try to understand how they felt during each part of the experience. We write down everything they say and organize it into categories.

Next, we use our own experiences and feelings to try to understand why the person felt the way they did. For example, if someone tells us they felt really happy during a certain part of their trip, we try to think about a time when we felt that same kind of happiness and use it to understand their experience better.

Finally, we take all of the information we gathered and write a report that explains the person's experience in detail. We use quotes from what they said to help explain their feelings, and we try to make our report easy for other people to understand.

Think of interpretative phenomenological analysis like telling a story about someone's experience and feelings. We listen carefully, categorize what was said, use our own experiences to understand it, and then write a report that tells the story in a way that everyone can understand.