I am not sure what you mean by "N = 1" but if you are just studying yourself, then that would fall into the category of auto ethnography. If you are interviewing multiple people, I suggest you look at Smith et al.'s book, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis Theory, Method and Research to learn more about IPA, and especially the interviewing techniques that it involves.

I tried to use IPA in a similar way when examining financial discussion board participants, and it didn't quite fit and had to scratch that for a theory that ended up working extremely well. It sounds to me like that since you are interested in identity, culture, and organization, you may want to look into Weick's social psychological concept of organizing and sensemaking.

Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations (Vol. 3). Sage.

Weick, K. E., Sutcliffe, K. M., & Obstfeld, D. (2005). Organizing and the process of sensemaking. Organization science, 16(4), 409-421.

Weick, K. E., & Browning, L. D. (1986). Argument and narration in organizational communication. Journal of Management, 12(2), 243-259.

This is the result of the research I did using sensemaking that worked out very well.: Article Stockholders in Cyberspace: Weick’s Sensemaking Online

I hope this helps.

I'm not sure where Uchendu E. Chigbu wants you to "dig deeper" because Braun and Clarke (2006) is by far the most widely known source on Thematic Analysis, with over 45,000 citations in Google Scholar.

Thanks to all for the replies. @David, N=1 means there is just one interviewee (and it's not me). It is a Social Psychology study so theories need to come from that area, even though there is obvious crossover with OrgPsych.

Any other thoughts most welcome.

I believe that versions of phenomenology would accept having just one person as the total source of the data, but I'm not sure how well that would fit with IPA.

David L Morgan I think it fits well as IPA is about exploring (a) lived experience. The voice of one is considered valid (and important) data in its own right, unless I've greatly misunderstood it?

I think that you should develop some reflexions about three aspects. You can read them below, and I add some questions in order to help you.

- RESEARCH OBJECT: the word "experience" is too vague. All methods of qualitative research explore an aspect of human experience, so I suggest to focus on emotions, processes, themes and to be very clear and precise in doing this. In particular, you can consider "identity" as the experience that you want to comprehend. It would be better to study some literature about it because you can consider identity as a process or you can go deeply in aspects related to values or culture and so on...

- METHOD: you can chose only after a clear definition of the object. However, for IPA I agree with who suggested Smith et al.'s book.

- SAMPLE NUMEROSITY: N=1 is a very small sample. I usually read ethnographies with such a very low numerosity. You should consider what is suggested for each method and you should follow the saturation criterion. Your data need to be redundant across different units of analysis.

Ilaria Vergine - thank you. If you have any particular recommendations about reading around 'identity' in Social Psychology, I'd be grateful to hear them.

I appreciate your response and time in answering my query.

Britton Niles