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Introduction

This paper offers a discussion of interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) in the context of library and information science (LIS) research and provides an in-depth discussion of issues in applying the method by means of two recent examples of IPA research. Since most of the IPA research to date is in health psychology, it can be a challenge to envision the usefulness of the method for LIS and how it can be implemented. The detailed discussion of the application of the method to explore various experiences of LIS professionals can serve as a model for future LIS researchers.

IPA originated with a paper by Jonathan Smith (1996) from Birkbeck University of London. Developed as a way to provide an in-depth, experiential perspective to quantitative experimental psychological studies, IPA has subsequently received greatest attention from psychology and health psychology researchers in the UK. IPA is a growing method with more studies being published every year (Smith, 2011, p. 12). The UK is still the hub of activity for the method, being the home of the annual conference and monthly workshops, as well as the major web site (www.ipa.bbk.ac.uk). However, the method is spreading from its origins in the UK to researchers in other countries (Smith, 2011, p. 12).

In addition to its geographic spread, the method is increasingly being used in fields outside psychology and health psychology. Smith (2011) provided some evidence of the spread of IPA to other fields (p. 13) although his study is limited by his use of only Web of Science, Medline and PsycInfo as sources of data. His study does provide evidence of the growing use of the method and expansion into new disciplines. He stated “one challenge for the IPA community is to get high-quality papers accepted in non-psychology journals so that the examples of work are available to a wider audience” (p. 23).

The aim of this paper is provide an overview and introduction to IPA method for the LIS community. LIS community as a term used in this paper covers a broad range of professionals who provide data, documents, information, and knowledge, as well as the underlying technologies, products and services to their “customers,” that is information seekers and users. We will refer to them as...

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