Methodological Framework

To explore how graduate students understand and experience the phenomenon of success within their graduate program, we used an interpretive phenomenological approach, guided by Smith et al. (2009). Interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) is couched in a constructivist epistemology and, as such, seeks to capture how participants make sense of their worlds. As opposed to pure phenomenology, IPA seeks to understand participants’ interpretation of a phenomenon in the context of their political, social, and cultural contexts. Thus, given our research questions, phenomenology and IPA were the most appropriate methodological tools. Before participants were contacted, a detailed research plan was approved by the Institutional Review Board at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (IRB-20-05870-XP).