Narrative Research

Narrative Research

1. A narrative is a recounting of events, and when this recounting is organised into a sequence – a sequence of logic, meaning, time, and so forth – it makes up a story

   • Uses narrative methodology to explore, uncover, and understand individual and social reality. Can focus on particular facets of a life-world or on a particular topic, issue, or theme

2. Two postmodern genres of narrative research

   • Autoethnography focuses on a single researcher’s personal narrative, while collaborative autoethnography or collective biography focus on several researchers’ written memories about a set of their experiences
     • Interpretive research proceeds from the understanding that our knowledge of reality is subjectively and inter-subjectively constituted. It is also flexible and fluid because existing knowledge may be adapted and (re)negotiated when interacting with a myriad of factors – for instance, new discoveries and insights, different social settings and relationships as well as different languages and other social institutions, cultures, or systems of belief

3. some researchers will not choose to work with entire lifestories or extensive oral histories, but with facets of participants’ lifestories. Even more generally, some may want to use a narrative approach to research particular topics/themes across several, even many, participants. The research products will vary depending on the depth and breadth of the work, as well as the end goal or purpose of the research

   • design must follow purpose to generate comprehensive, layered, nuanced understandings of human experience and meaning-in-context. To accomplish this, the narrative researcher attempts to enter the lifeworld of the participant
     • the essential elements of stories
       • : (1) how a narrative is structured into a story; (2) what function the story serves; (3) what the story contains in terms of contents or substance; and (4) how the story is told or performed
     • the everyday
       • a chorus of individual voices and a collage of everyday details’
     • memory
       • Not only what we remember but the way we remember are influenced by social circumstances and coconstructed worldviews, as well as by our personal needs and perspectives’
     • intersubjectivity
       • Intersubjectivity is a fundamental facet and process in qualitative, narrative research. Even our most personal accounts and memories transcend our subjective experience of them. Inevitably, they are collective and therefore intersubjective, linking in some way to others and our wider social worlds

4. PRACTICAL ELEMENTS OF NARRATIVE DESIGN

   • A Personal Ethos
   • Selecting Participants
   • Collecting Data
   • Analysis
   • Reflections on Quality and Truth

5. The researcher’s self, with its fantasies, biases, and horizons of understanding, is the primary tool of inquiry. Therefore, self-knowledge and self-reflection become necessary to the project to tease out what aspects of what is ‘observed’ derive from the researcher, what from the object of observation (the participant), and what from the interaction between them. A full understanding of this is, of course, only an ideal, but an ethical stance in narrative research requires that such an exploration be undertaken as completely as possible

6. SOME ADVANTAGES AND CONSTRAINTS OF NARRATIVE DESIGNS

   • ADVANTAGES: Stories and storytelling are deeply ingrained, intuitive spaces for interacting, so they feel more natural for participants than datadriven, question–response formats. A narrative approach, therefore, works well for a range of different participants and socio-cultural contexts. It is also versatile in terms of its applicability for different research purposes and products
   • CONSTRAINTS: The role of the narrative researcher is to gain access to the lifeworld of the participant and attempt to enter it. This requires a relationship of trust between the researcher and participant. Trust takes time to develop.