From bad through good to excellent Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) studies – presenting set of criteria to evaluate IPA papers and to provide high-quality future research

Abstract

Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) is a recently developed qualitative approach, not only in psychology but also in pedagogy. It turns out that not all IPA studies meet the indicated criteria of acceptability developed by Jonathan A. Smith (2011). The aim of this article is to present a set of criteria to evaluate IPA papers and to provide high-quality future research. The article is divided into three parts: first, I am going to focus on indicating limitations of pedagogical research in which IPA was used, later I shall go on to give examples of good practice. In the last section, I have correlated particular stages of research with the criteria of validity to show what makes IPA study excellent. I also formulate two main requisites for making high-quality IPA study.