Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) developed by Jonathan Smith in the mid-1990s seeks to gain first-person accounts of specific thoughts, experiences and feelings (Smith et al., 2010). It is a relatively recent qualitative approach developed within psychology but now being used widely by researchers in a variety of disciplines relating to the applied health and social sciences. There are two main aims when adopting IPA as a research method. Firstly, the researcher has to give full attention to the concerns expressed by the participants in order to obtain an insider’s perspective of the phenomenon under study. Then, the accounts provided by the participants will be interpreted by the researcher to gain an understanding of what it
