IPA has an idiographic focus, which means that instead of producing generalization findings, it aims to offer insights into how a given person, in a given context, makes sense of a given situation.
IPA has its theoretical origins in phenomenology and hermeneutics, and many of its key ideas are inspired by the work of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
In either case, participants are invited to take part precisely because they can offer the researcher some meaningful insight into the topic of the study; this is called purposive sampling [i.e. it is not randomised].
More advanced IPA study designs may draw together samples that offer multiple perspectives on a shared experience (husbands and wives, for example, or psychiatrists and patients); or they may collect accounts over a period of time, to develop a longitudinal analysis.
One might use the findings of a study on the meaning of sexual intimacy to gay men in close relationships, for example, to re-examine the adequacy of theories which attempt to predict and explain safe sex practices.
A degree of transparency (contextual detail about the sample, a clear account of the process, adequate commentary on the data, key points illustrated by verbatim quotes) is also crucial to estimating the plausibility and transferability of an IPA study.
Due to an increased interest in the constructed nature of certain aspects of illness (how people perceive bodily and mental symptoms), IPA has been particularly recommended for its uses in the field of health psychology.
[6] However, while this subject-centered approach to experiencing illness is congruent with an increase in patient-centered research, IPA may have been historically most employed in health psychology due to the fact that many of its initial supporters operated careers in this field.