Exploring analytical trustworthiness and the process of reaching consensus in interpretative phenomenological analysis: lost in transcription

Typically authors explain how they conduct interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), but fail to explain how they ensured that their analytical process was trustworthy. For example, a minority mention that they ‘reached consensus’ after having engaged in a shared analysis of the data, but do not explain how they did so. In this article, we report on our experience of engaging in a shared analysis and aim to stimulate discussion about the process of ensuring the trustworthiness of one’s data when employing IPA. Our key recommendation is that all researchers involved in analysis should listen to the audio recordings; failure to do so increases the potential for researchers to superimpose their own presuppositions or interpretative bias onto the data. We also suggest that audio recordings should be kept for a longer duration in case secondary analysis is required. We finish our article with a series of tips developed from our experience of shared analysis.