Qualitative Methods: Ipa and Dp

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Qualitative Methodologies: IPA and DP The study of psychology has grown and evolved through the decades, influenced by the social, economic and political forces of the day, it considers the context in which each discipline evolves, shaping its past, present and future (Schultz & Schultz, 2004). Many approaches to psychology find their roots in philosophy; indeed the philosophical foundations from the 19th century onwards included positivism, materialism and empiricism, with empiricism, the pursuit of knowledge through observation and experimentation, playing the major role well into the twentieth century. It was at this time that researchers started to question the ‘scientific method’, starting a debate about the type of knowledge psychologists could and should aim for in their research (Coyle, 2007a). Further informed by feminism in the 1960’s and 1970’s, which challenged the way male power had operated in psychology, a new branch of philosophy concerned with the theory of knowledge introduced new epistemologies to address how knowledge is acquired and the methodologies from which it is obtained (Willig, 2001). Qualitative researchers employ different research methodologies from quite different epistemological positions aiming to understand how people make sense of the world and how they experience events. This paper will focus on two of these methods, Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis and Discursive Psychology, describing their histories, epistemological positions, goals and methodology. The analytical methods of each discipline will then be critically evaluated, using 2 published research papers by Wilde & Murray (2009) and Guise, McKinlay, & Widdicombe (2010) with a commentary on the limitations of each of the research methods in turn. Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) has a relatively short history. Founded by Jonathan Smith
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