Im writing begining to work on a piece of research that will ask about people's experince with psycedelic drugs and the steps taken to ensure positive exeprince/ minimise harm.
I want to conduct interviews asking questions about participants psycedelic experinces with an aim to find commonalities in thier experinces that could be used to inform safety protocols in the clinical use of psycedelics (psycedelic assisted therapy etc)
Because my research question focuses on peoples experince of a phenomena, i was assuming i needed to use IPA, but because i want to identify patterns across all (roughly five or so) participants whould it make more sense to use thematic analysis.
I've had a look at braun and clarke and to me that seems to indicate thematic analysis would be better suited
Almost all qualitative research emphasizes some aspect of personal "experience." The difference is that phenomenological research, including IPA, takes a philosophical approach to experience as its central topic.
Given that your goal of developing a safety protocol is more practical, I would definitely recommend thematic analysis rather than IPA. You should also look at Braun and Clarke's recent book (2022), rather than just relying on their older articles. In doing so, you my find that some form of content analysis is more appropriate than what B & C now call "reflexive thematic analysis."
One more thing to think about its whether your overall project is similar to a mixed method design called "exploratory sequential analysis," which is represented as qual --> QUAN. In this design, the creation of a quantitative tool is the ultimate goal, and the initial qualitative research serves as an input to that goal.
You didn't mention your design, It sounds either Narrative or Descriptive. Thematic analysis yes would be best but have you looked into the three forms of thematic analysis by Percy, Kostere, and Kostere (2015) or most current?
Inductive thematic analysis (ITA) is a widely used method for analyzing qualitative data, particularly in research that focuses on understanding the experiences of participants. ITA allows you to identify patterns and themes that emerge from the data, and can be used to identify commonalities across participants.
Thematic analysis allows you to identify key themes that are recurrent throughout the data, and you can use it to identify patterns and commonalities across the participants. Thematic analysis is also flexible and can be used to analyze both quantitative and qualitative data.
Braun and Clarke's (2006) guide on thematic analysis might be a good resource for you to consult as you develop your research design.
Dinesh Kumar Braun and Clarke's approach to thematic analysis has evolved quite a bit since their original 2006 article. That is why I recommended their 2022 book instead.
Also their recent YouTube videos are useful for explaining their reflexive version of TA and how it varies from codebook (more positivist)versions.
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