Enough on their plates: Using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis to understand the experience of vegan families in a non-vegan world

I propose to build on the findings of my MSc to understand the factors involved in deciding to raise children as vegan within the dominant discourses of child-rearing and health, and how future generations could be influenced. The following research questions will be addressed:
1. What are the factors involved in parents making the decision to raise their children as vegans?
2. How do parents and children experience being vegan as a family?
3. What are the challenges vegan families face, especially as children grow older and social pressures and self-agency become more pronounced?
4. How are dominant discourses in child-rearing and health evolving?

IPA was used for my original study as its grounding in hermeneutics enabled distinct accounts of my participants' experience, within which their personal meaning was embedded (Eatough & Smith, 2008). IPA serves as an exceptional tool in examining the interactions of individuals, not only through their experiences with day-to-day life but also in how they engage with the practices of other people (Yancher, 2015). The use of IPA is most appropriate for this study in gaining a detailed understanding of the complex decisions vegan parents make in the contested area of child-rearing. Being led by what is meaningful to the subject, IPA is one of the few methodologies able to unpack the meaning and experience of vegan parenting in detail at a number of levels. That is, decision-making is contextualised by personal beliefs, access to resources, and wider social discourse. Within this, available sources of information and personal beliefs direct parents' choices for their children.

Given the variability of personal experience according to the power relations of discourse (Arribas-Ayllon & Walkerdine, 2008) it will be imperative to examine how meaning for vegan parents is socially constructed. I will therefore apply a dual focus to the methodology of this study; IPA will be used to understand the person-centred experiences of vegan parents and Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (FDA) will be employed to examine the messages exchanged through wider social interactions. The use of IPA and FDA will enable a comprehensive understanding of the lived experience of vegan parents within dominant social institutions, and how these may be changing.

The dual focus of this project aligns strongly with the aims of the ESRC in employing innovative methods. IPA has already proven to be a valuable method in advancing health research (Smith et al., 2009), and embedding the findings from the IPA element of this study within the interrogation of discourse will produce rich and unique data. The research will be conducted at and supported by Birkbeck, University of London where IPA was developed by Professor Jonathan Smith (Birkbeck). The department remains the key centre in the UK for IPA through its ongoing conceptual and methodological development, to which this project could add considerable value