Multiperspectival designs and processes in interpretative phenomenological analysis research

Figures & data

Table 1. Emerging Taxonomy of Multiple Perspectives of IPA.

Design type	Distinctive feature	Example	Metaphor
Directly related groups	When subsamples are immersed in the same experience, but are likely to have different views of it.	Rostill-Brookes et al. (2011) — process of foster placement breakdown is the topic, and interviews are conducted with young people in foster care, with social workers, and with foster carers. What they have in common is a shared experience of “fragmentation” — of things falling apart without anyone being entirely sure who is responsible for holding them together.	“All surfing the same wave”
Indirectly related groups	When people are linked by some underlying quality of two which bridges between otherwise distinctive phenomena.	In Larkin and Griffiths (2004), participants are interviewed who are involved in recreational drug use or in dangerous sports. Both activities share some features, particularly the juxtaposition of short-term rewards with uncertain levels of risk.	“Sharing the breeze”
Families, teams and other cohorts	When people are involved in a system or group, and have shared an experience.	In Dancyger et al. (2010), the perspectives of different family members are brought together to illustrate the complexities of decision-making about genetic testing for hereditary cancers. In this study, the effect of the multiperspectival design is cross-cutting — it shows how the family itself can constitute a coherent unit of study. Thus, some families adopt a shared narrative which supports testing, and others do the reverse.	“Tangled in the same web”
Dyads	When the research is concerned with shared and distinctive features of an experience which is important to two people (e.g., doctor and patient; service-user and carer; siblings; couples)	Dyadic work can be conducted and written up with the focus on the pair as a pair (see, e.g., de Visser & McDonald’s 2007 study of jealousy in heterosexual swinging couples). It can also be written up at group level, if there are ethical issues arising from the presentation of the data at dyadic level (e.g., see Larkin, Clifton & De Visser’s 2009 study of the meaning of consent for patients and psychiatrists).	“Two sides to every coin”

Table 2. Analytic strategies for thematic development from complex data.

Identify consensus overlap or conceptual overlap	In some cases, participants with different perspectives will still explicitly express the same concerns, and make similar experiential claims. This sort of explicit consensus is the easiest kind of convergence to identify, but it is worth considering it carefully are there conditions or contexts in which participants take up other stances? Sometimes the overlap between the meanings made by participants speaking from different perspectives will be implicit, and the analyst may be able to suggest a concept which underpins the participants’ concerns, such as “fragmentation” in Rostill et al.
Identify conflict of perspectives	Sometimes there will be a clear disagreement between the different perspectival samples. In these cases, theme titles can capture this conflict, and the analysis can explore the variations in experience, and the contexts from which they emerge.
Identify reciprocity of concepts	In other cases, participants may express concerns which complement each other very well. For example, the nurses in Thompson et al. (in press) express their frustration at not having the time to deliver more one-to-one work with their patients; the patients in the other part of this study (Fenton et al., 2014) talk about how important their fleeting experiences of one-to-one contact are for their recovery.
Identify paths of meaning	Sometimes we notice shared experiences with divergent meanings, or shared meanings attributed to different experiences, as in the different interpretations of the consultation offered by patients and physicians in Borg Xuereb et al. (2015). This can be a useful and important way of exploring some of the analytic work developed under the above points.
Identify “lines of argument” (after Noblit & Hare 1988).	This involves “storying” the most important dimensions drawn from the preceding strategies to provide an analytic narrative to the audience which captures the structural and/or procedural aspects of the system which has been studied.

Dancyger, C, Smith, JA, Jacobs, C, Wallace, M & Michie, S 2010, ‘Comparing family members’ motivations and attitudes towards genetic testing for hereditary breast and ovarian cancer: a qualitative analysis’, European Journal of Human Genetics, vol. 18, pp. 1289–95.

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Thompson, J. Boden, Z.V.R., Newton, E.K., Fenton, K., Hickman, G. & Larkin, M. (in press). The experiences of inpatient nursing staff caring for young people with early psychosis. Journal of Research in Nursing.

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Borg Xuereb, C, Shaw, RL & Lane, D 2015, ‘Patients’ and physicians’ experiences of atrial fibrillation consultations and anticoagulation decision-making: a multi-perspective IPA design’, Psychology & Health, doi:10.1080/08870446.2015.1116534

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Noblit, GW & Hare, RD 1988, Meta-ethnography: synthesizing qualitative studies, Sage, Newbury Park, CA.

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