The analysis of transcripts was a long and analytical process however it proved to be the most stimulating and creative part of the research process overall. As Smith et al. (2009) have suggested, the analytic focus of IPA involves the already discussed ‘double hermeneutic’ principle in which the researcher is trying to make sense of the participant trying to make sense of her experience. My own interpretations and sense-making processes were therefore introduced to participants’ experiences and my own lived experiences of being-with the participants. The analytic process included both interrogation and empathy as suggested by Smith and Eatough (2006) and this meant that I was simultaneously involved in a process of attempting to empathically make sense of participants’ experiences and their understanding of them and also keeping some distance and adopting a reflective and questioning stance in order to allow further revelations. Moreover, the intersubjective focus of this project encouraged a consideration of the intersubjective dynamics
between the participants and myself as the researcher, which was taken into account throughout the analysis and interpretation of data. Even though I have considered the relationships between participants and myself as an opportunity to emphasise important features of the research topic itself, these have not been presented in the paper as explicitly as I would have wished and this subject will be reflected in the methodological consideration of the discussion chapter.
4.4.1 Transcription
I have personally transcribed all interviews, which was an extremely time- consuming, and at times exhausting procedure. However, it also proved to be a very constructive process, which allowed a dynamic reconnection with not only the interview and connection with participants’ narratives and lived experiences but also with my own experiences during the interviews. I created a specific transcript format (Appendix VIII) that felt more comfortable, with margins that provided the space for the introduction of descriptive, linguistic and conceptual commentaries and space for the emerging themes. The transcription of each interview was initiated a day after I conducted it (and lasted on average between 2-3 days), as I wanted to capture participants’ lived experience as chronologically close to the interview date I could. This allowed a stronger cognitive and emotional proximity to their narratives and also preserved as much of my reflexive process as possible. In my reflexive diary, I dedicated a specific part to recording my personal processes during the transcription of each interview. What I noticed was that during the transcription process I was sometimes finding it difficult to listen and transcribe my own voice and I was becoming at times self-critical especially in moments when I felt that I had lost opportunities for assisting participants to further elaborate on their own experiences by moving on to something that felt more important to myself. These particular moments were noted and taken into consideration during the analysis of each transcript as they assisted the development of themes.
4.4.2 The steps of data analysis
Smith et al. (2009) made it clear that their recommended steps of analysis do not provide a definite account, with the current literature on analysis not endorsing a definite routine for engaging with the data. However, since it was the first time I was conducting an IPA, I felt that the sufficiently clear steps of analysis Smith et al. (2009) recommended, provided the space for an analytical and reflective engagement with the data, which allowed me to find my way through the process. It is important to specify that I have adopted an ideographic approach, therefore commencing the analysis with a detailed exploration of the first interview transcript before moving to the next one. This assisted the process of becoming as intimate as possible with a participant’s experience while each reading provided new understandings. In the remaining part of this section, I present the steps of data analysis that I undertook for each participant’s transcript, informed by Smith et al. (2009)’s recommendations.
Exploration of the first interview transcript
Firstly, I carefully listened to the interview while having reference to my reflexive diary, which included notes taken after the completion of the actual interview and notes taken during the transcription. This ensured appropriate bracketing and allowed an explicit consideration of personal biases and assumptions before I immersed myself in the data and started developing themes. It is also important to mention that after the completion of each interview and before transcription, I listened to the interview several times in order to deeply engage with not only the participant’s meaning-making processes and lived experiences but also my own meaning-making processes alongside the participant’s. This also provided a more embodied engagement with the data. What followed was reading and re-reading the transcript several times in order to detect anything that seemed to be thought provoking or noteworthy. The process of reading and re-reading elicited the first commentary notes which encompassed descriptive comments. I situated these on the right margin of the transcript (describing the content of participant’s narrative). The left margins of the transcript included two separate columns with space for linguistic
commentary (focusing on participant’s way of communicating experience) and conceptual commentary (an overall interrogative and conceptual engagement with participant’s narrative). This process was repeated again and again until I felt comfortable enough with the comments’ clearness and comprehensibility. I then gradually started identifying themes (noted in the first left column of the transcript) that came to the fore through the consideration of all commentaries that appeared to provide access to the phenomena under investigation.
Linking the emerging themes
Since the previous process produced numerous themes, on a separate piece of paper I noted all of them and started looking for possible connections amongst them with this process shaping sub-ordinate and super-ordinate themes. Because this process meant that I was working away from the original transcript, sub-ordinate and super-ordinate themes were then double-checked with the original transcript to ensure their consistency with the actual data and the final produced themes were then organised into a table. The interpretative process of producing and listing themes included a consideration of my personal way of making sense of the participant alongside what the participant actually shared. Some of the specific techniques Smith et al. (2009) have suggested for looking for patterns and connections across themes were considered and included abstraction (putting like with like and developing a new name for the cluster), subsumption (emerging themes becoming super-ordinate themes by attracting other associated themes), polarisation (exploring transcripts for oppositional relationships), contextualisation (identifying the contextual or narrative elements within an analysis), numeration (considering how frequently a theme is supported), and function (themes are explored for their function within the transcript). It should be noted that ‘Appendix IX’ includes a full analysis of the first interview transcript.
Moving on to the remaining transcripts
The previous procedures were employed for all remaining participants and a list of final themes for each participant was then developed. The previously suggested methods in looking for patterns among themes within individual transcripts were also taken into consideration for exploring the connectivity of themes between participants. Each table of themes which was developed for each participant was considered in relation to all other transcripts in order to explore in detail which themes from one transcript was connected to other themes and other transcripts. This complex procedure involved some rearrangement and renaming of themes in order to construct higher order concepts that transcripts shared. I was finally able to produce a table of master themes which I felt provided a comprehensive summary of their experience by mirroring their experience as a whole. A master table with major themes and subthemes for the entire sample is presented as Table 2 in the ‘Results’ chapter, while a table with relevant excerpts from participants’ transcripts corresponding to each major theme and its subthemes is presented in Appendix X.