characteristics of narrative research design

Designing Narrative Research

by Janet Salmons, PhD Sage Research Methods Community Manager

What is Narrative Research?

We think of narratives as stories, words in context. Just as stories sometimes involve images, artifacts, and other elements, narrative research can involve multiple forms of data. It might seem that this type of study would fall into the domain of qualitative researchers. However, as illustrated by the collection of open-access examples listed below, narratives can be used in qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods research. Pinnegar and Daynes (2012) note that what narrative researchers hold in common is the study of stories or narratives or descriptions of a series of events. They point out:

These researchers usually embrace the assumption that the story is one if not the fundamental unit that accounts for human experience. But what counts as stories, the kinds of stories they choose to study, or the methods they use for study vary.

The SAGE Encyclopedia of Social Science Research Methods explains narrative research as:

Narrative analysis in the human sciences refers to a family of approaches to diverse kinds of texts that have in common a storied form. As nations and governments construct preferred narratives about history, so do social movements, organizations, scientists, other professionals, ethnic/racial groups, and individuals in stories of experience. What makes such diverse texts “narrative” is sequence and consequence: Events are selected, organized, connected, and evaluated as meaningful for a particular audience. Storytellers interpret the world and experience in it; they sometimes create moral tales—how the world should be. Narratives represent storied ways of knowing and communicating (Hinchman & Hinchman, 1997). I focus here on oral narratives of personal experience.

Research interest in narrative emerged from several contemporary movements: the “narrative turn” in the human sciences away from positivist modes of inquiry and the master narratives of theory; the “memoir boom” in literature and popular culture; identity politics in U.S., European, and transnational movements—emancipation efforts of people of color, women, gays and lesbians, and other marginalized groups; and the burgeoning therapeutic culture—exploration of personal life in therapies of various kinds. “Embedded in the lives of the ordinary, the marginalized, and the muted, personal narrative responds to the disintegration of master narratives as people make sense of experience, claim identities, and ‘get a life’ by telling and writing their stories” (Langellier, 2001, p. 700).

Among investigators, there is considerable variation in definitions of personal narrative, often linked to discipline. In social history and anthropology, narrative can refer to an entire life story, woven from the threads of interviews, observation, and documents. In sociolinguistics and other fields, the concept of narrative is restricted, referring to brief, topically specific stories organized around characters, setting, and plot (e.g., Labovian narratives in answer to a single interview question). In another tradition (common in psychology and sociology), personal narrative encompasses long sections of talk—extended accounts of lives in context that develop over the course of single or multiple interviews. Investigators' definitions of narrative lead to different methods of analysis, but all require them to construct texts for further analysis, that is, select and organize documents, compose field notes, and/or choose sections of interview transcripts for close inspection. Narratives do not speak for themselves or have unanalyzed merit; they require interpretation when used as data in social research.

Narrative inquiry embraces narrative as both the method and phenomena of study. Through the attention to methods for analyzing and understanding stories lived and told, it can be connected and placed under the label of qualitative research methodology. Narrative inquiry begins in experience as expressed in lived and told stories. The method and the inquiry always have experiential starting points that are informed by and intertwined with theoretical literature that informs either the methodology or an understanding of the experiences with which the inquirer began (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). In essence, narrative inquiry involves the reconstruction of a person's experience in relationship both to the other and to a social milieu (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000).

Clandinin, D. J. (2007). Handbook of narrative inquiry: Mapping a methodology . SAGE Publications, Inc., https://doi.org/10.4135/9781452226552

Lewis-Beck, M. S., Bryman, A., & Futing Liao, T. (Eds.) (2004). The SAGE encyclopedia of social science research methods . (Vols. 1-0). Sage Publications, Inc., https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412950589

Like many research approaches, narrative research is taking new directions in the digital age. Many historical narratives are being digitized and made freely available through libraries and archives. New stories are emerging, whether being told directly to a researcher or shared online in discussion groups or social media. Use these open access articles to learn about qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches for studying narrative sources.

Qualitative Methods for Narrative Research

Fontaine, C. M., Baker, A. C., Zaghloul, T. H., & Carlson, M. (2020). Clinical Data Mining With the Listening Guide: An Approach to Narrative Big Qual. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 19 , 1609406920951746. https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406920951746

Abstract. We developed a novel approach to narrative Big Qual research that combines Carol Gilligan and Lyn Mikel Brown’s Listening Guide with Irwin Epstein’s clinical data mining. We adapted the voice-based research methodology of the Listening Guide for use with a corpus of clinical case notes drawn from an integrated data system (IDS) of a social service intervention serving families in an immigrant enclave. This methodological innovation was inspired by the insight that the Listening Guide can be used to trace and name the layering of meaning within any narrative, whether that narrative reflects the experience of an individual person or, as in this case, the community and everyday life of a social service intervention. Critically, this approach pivots on theorizing the subject as the collective of the intervention itself, as narrated by case managers, who can be understood as narrating subjects within the cultural, figured world of the intervention. In the context of a larger process and outcome evaluation, marrying these two approaches provided context, texture, and depth to supplement existing data sources like self-report survey data and participant observation, and offered a glimpse inside the “black box” of the intervention. We adapted the Guide through three readings of the clinical case notes: once for stanza structure, once inspired by the I-Poem technique but modified for these third-person narratives, and once with an eye to the contrapuntal voices of the inner and outer worlds of the intervention. As a methodological innovation this approach represents an advance in Big Qual and a promising approach to conducting narrative research on large qualitative data sets within mixed methods studies.

Guthrie, K. (2022). (Re)fractional narrative inquiry: A methodological adaptation for exploring stories. Methodological Innovations , 15 (1), 3-15. https://doi.org/10.1177/20597991221077902

Abstract. Narrative inquiry is relational inquiry in which inquirers come alongside the living, telling, re-living, and re-telling of stories. In this article, I present how I adapted narrative inquiry to explore parent perspectives of their gifted adolescent daughters’ experiences of belonging. At the time, I was conducting this study as part of my doctoral dissertation work and as a novice researcher, I struggled with (1) gaining access by a school district to interview adolescent students, (2) believing I could relationally come alongside adolescents as an outsider, and (3) questioning their developmental ability to think reflectively about their stories of belonging. Ultimately, I had to rethink my narrative inquiry approach. Here in this article, I share how I re-conceptualized my methodological approach as (re)fractional narrative inquiry to better understand gifted girls’ experiences from the perspectives of those who have relationally lived alongside them. I also present the context and methods of the study, provide a sample of co-negotiated narratives, discuss justifications of my inquiry, and conclude with reflections and evaluations of my adaptations.

Harris, L. M. (2022). Towards enriched narrative political ecologies. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space , 5 (2), 835-860. https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486211010677

Abstract. Work on narrative, story, and storytelling has been on the rise across the humanities and social sciences. Building on significant work on these themes from Indigenous, Black, and Feminist scholarship, and other varied traditions, this piece explores and elaborates the potential regarding the elicitation, sharing, and analysis of stories for nature-society studies. Specifically, the piece examines core contributions along these lines to date, as well as the methodological, analytical, political, and transformative potential of story and storytelling to enrich, broaden, and deepen work in nature-society, political ecology, and environmental justice. All told, focus on story and storytelling, offers a number of relevant and rich openings to understand and engage complex, unequal, and dynamic socio-natures. While these elements have been present in nature-society work from some traditions and lines of inquiry, the time is ripe to broaden and deepen these engagements to more fully imagine, and respond to, key nature-society challenges.

Li, B. (2022). Navigating Through the Narrative Montages: Including Voices of Older Adults With Dementia Through Collaborative Narrative Inquiry. International Journal of Qualitative Methods , 21 , 16094069221083368. https://doi.org/10.1177/16094069221083368

Abstract. Having the opportunity to express oneself is an important right to every human being. However, narratives of older adults with moderate to severe dementia are constantly ignored for their incoherence and inaccuracy. In most studies, their narratives were solely collected to measure their cognitive function, rendering their lived stories untold, unheard and undocumented. To include voices of older adults with moderate to severe dementia in research and liberate them from the patient identity, this article proposes collaborative narrative inquiry as a method to explore the meaning-making mechanisms and selfhood construction processes embedded in their incoherent narratives. Integrating narrative inquiry and collaborative analysis, collaborative narrative inquiry aims to collect, construct and deconstruct narratives of participants through an iterative and reflective way, in collaboration with caregivers. This method requires a paradigm shift from generating one essential truth of people’s lived experience to co-creating plural lived truths situated in different temporal, social and cultural backgrounds. Facilitating the proliferation of identities beyond the patient identity among older adults with moderate to severe dementia, collaborative narrative inquiry generates counter narratives against a single disease narrative. It de-marginalizes this group by inviting their voices back into the society, and destigmatises them by creating a new way to engage with them.

Moen, T. (2006). Reflections on the Narrative Research Approach. International Journal of Qualitative Methods , 5 (4), 56-69. https://doi.org/10.1177/160940690600500405

Abstract. In her reflections on the narrative research approach, the author starts by placing narrative research within the framework of sociocultural theory, where the challenge for the researcher is to examine and understand how human actions are related to the social context in which they occur and how and where they occur through growth. The author argues that the narrative as a unit of analysis provides the means for doing this. She then presents some of the basic premises of narrative research before she reflects on the process of narrative inquiry and addresses the issue of the “true” narrative. Throughout the article, the author refers to educational research and in the concluding section argues that the results of narrative research can be used as thought-provoking tools within the field of teacher education.

Qualitative Methods for Narrative Research Over Time

Bruce, A., Beuthin, R., Sheilds, L., Molzahn, A., & Schick-Makaroff, K. (2016). Narrative Research Evolving: Evolving Through Narrative Research. International Journal of Qualitative Methods , 15 (1), 1609406916659292. https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406916659292

Abstract. Narrative research methodology is evolving, and we contend that the notion of emergent design is vital if narrative inquiry (NI) is to continue flourishing in generating new knowledge. We situate the discussion within the narrative turn in qualitative research while drawing on experiences of conducting a longitudinal narrative study. The philosophical tensions encountered are described, as our understanding and application of narrative approaches evolved. We outline challenges in data collection and analysis in response to what we were learning and identify institutional barriers within ethics review processes that potentially impede emergent approaches. We conclude that researchers using NI can, and must, pursue unanticipated methodological changes when in the midst of conducting the inquiry. Understanding the benefits and institutional barriers to emergent aspects of design is discussed in this ever-maturing approach to qualitative research.

Mueller, R. A. (2019). Episodic Narrative Interview: Capturing Stories of Experience With a Methods Fusion. International Journal of Qualitative Methods , 18 , 1609406919866044. https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406919866044

Abstract. Episodic narrative interview is an innovative, phenomenon-driven research method that was developed by integrating elements from several qualitative approaches in a methods fusion. Episodic narrative interview draws on critically oriented theoretical foundations and principles of experience-centered narrative and includes features from narrative inquiry, semistructured interview, and episodic interview. The purpose of episodic narrative interview is to better understand a phenomenon by generating individual stories of experience about that phenomenon. As such, an episodic narrative interview participant provides nested narrative accounts of their experiences with a social phenomenon, within the context of a bounded situation or episode. In this article, the author details the foundations of the episodic narrative interview approach and describes how the method is designed and implemented. The significance of episodic narrative interview is also explored, especially in terms of the ways in which it produces tightly focused, phenomenon-centered narratives that are reflective of particular bounded circumstances.

Quinn, K. (2021). Taking Live Methods slowly: inhabiting the social world through dwelling, doodling and describing . Qualitative Research. https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941211012222

Abstract. This article contributes to literatures on sociological live method by advocating for ‘playing’ with the concept of slow methods. Slow methods include a reflexive disposition towards the unfolding of social life in ordinary spaces (dwelling), the use of drawing as an embodied tool for understanding this unfolding (doodling) and the combination of these approaches into writing which deliberately seeks to evoke the liveness of the social world (describing). It draws on an ethnography of a joint-use public-academic library and several scenes selected from its fieldwork. I make three arguments: first, I argue for analogue methods to compliment digitally focussed live methods. Second, I explore the value of slow methods for being drawn into a scene and drawn to see its micro-happenings, particularly in spaces where the social world unfolds in mundane and uneven ways. Third, I argue the approach allows ‘shy researchers’ to engage attentively and reflexively in the field.

Mixed Methods or Multimodal Narrative Research

Doran, P., Burden, S., & Shryane, N. (2022). Integration of Narratives Into Mixed Methods Research: An Example From a Study on the Value of Social Support to Older People With Cancer. Journal of Mixed Methods Research , 16 (4), 418-437. https://doi.org/10.1177/15586898211056747

Abstract. While many advances have been made mixing other methodologies with mixed methods research (MMR), there are few examples of narrative MMR or detailed procedures for integrating the narrative approach into mixed methods studies. This article contributes to the MMR field an example of integrating narratives in MMR by applying a methodological approach that is shaped by stories. The example integrated findings from cancer narratives with survey data to explore emotional support and quality of life of older people living with cancer. Integration was achieved by, firstly, following a thread through the research phases, and secondly, by using joint displays to align findings. The narrative MMR methodology presented is a tool for putting stories at the center of the research process.

Gencel Bek, M., & Prieto Blanco, P. (2020). (Be)Longing through visual narrative: Mediation of (dis)affect and formation of politics through photographs and narratives of migration at DiasporaTürk. International Journal of Cultural Studies , 23 (5), 709-727. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877920923356

Abstract. Our article explores how diasporic journeys and identities are remembered and represented through the visual narratives of DiasporaTürk, a Turkish diasporic media presence consisting of a Twitter account, an Instagram page, and two books. These engagements revive past (dis)affects and highlight the contemporary relevance of nostalgia, sorrow and victimization as key themes in the migration experience of ‘guest-workers’ from Turkey. The evidentiary force of the index, inhabiting fictional characters while looking like factual and archival material, seems thus to both acknowledge and validate migrated ‘guest-workers’, who, as subaltern groups, have otherwise received little praise or recognition in Turkey or ‘host’ countries. At the same time, while converging past and present (dis)affects associated with Turkish migration, DiasporaTürk contributes to reaffirming the reduction and homogenization of official/normative collective memories of migration via concrete visibilities/presences and invisibilities/absences.

Nasheeda, A., Abdullah, H. B., Krauss, S. E., & Ahmed, N. B. (2019). Transforming Transcripts Into Stories: A Multimethod Approach to Narrative Analysis . International Journal of Qualitative Methods. https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406919856797

Abstract. Stories are essential realities from our past and present. As the primary sources of data in narrative research, interview transcripts play an essential role in giving meaning to the personal stories of research participants. The pragmatic narratives found in transcripts represent human experience as it unfolds. Analyzing the narratives found in interview transcripts thus moves beyond providing descriptions and thematic developments as found in most qualitative studies. Crafting stories from interview transcripts involves a complex set of analytic processes. Building on the first author's personal experience in working on a doctoral thesis employing narrative inquiry, this article presents a multimethod restorying framework to narrative analysis. A step-by-step progression within the framework includes choosing interview participants, transcribing interviews, familiarizing oneself with the transcripts (elements of holistic-content reading), chronologically plotting (elements of the story), use of follow-up interviews as a way to collaborate (an important procedure in narrative inquiry), and developing the story through structural analysis. It is hoped that this article will encourage other researchers embarking on narrative analysis to become creative in presenting participants’ lived experiences through meaningful, collaborative strategies. This article demonstrates the fluidity of narrative analysis and emphasizes that there is no single procedure to be followed in attempting to create stories from interview transcripts.

Saint Arnault, D., & Sinko, L. (2021). Comparative Ethnographic Narrative Analysis Method: Comparing Culture in Narratives. Global Qualitative Nursing Research , 8 , 23333936211020722. https://doi.org/10.1177/23333936211020722

Abstract. Narrative data analysis aims to understand the stories’ content, structure, or function. However narrative data can also be used to examine how context influences self-concepts, relationship dynamics, and meaning-making. This methodological paper explores the potential of narrative analysis to discover and compare the processes by which culture shapes selfhood and meaning making. We describe the development of the Comparative Ethnographic Narrative Analysis Method as an analytic procedure to systematically compare narrators’ experiences, meaning making, decisions, and actions across cultures. This analytic strategy seeks to discover shared themes, examine culturally distinct themes, and illuminate meta-level cultural beliefs and values that link shared themes. We emphasize the need for a shared research question, comparable samples, shared non-biased instruments, and high-fidelity training if one uses this qualitative method for cross-cultural research. Finally, specific issues, trouble-shooting practices, and implications are discussed.

Sherry, K., Dabula, X., Duncan, E. M., & Reid, S. (2020). Decolonizing Qualitative Research With Rural People With Disabilities: Lessons From a Cross-Cultural Health Systems Study. International Journal of Qualitative Methods , 19 , 1609406920932734. https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406920932734

Abstract. Decolonization of research is nowhere more pressing than in post-apartheid South Africa, where cross-cultural encounters characterize every aspect of society. The health system plays a critical role in realizing the rights of marginalized populations, particularly rural communities and people with disabilities. However, cultural divides between service users and health care workers render health care provision unexpectedly complex. Such divides likewise obscure the meanings embedded in qualitative data, rendering research interpretations challenging. A study of the engagement between rural isiXhosa-speaking people with disabilities and primary health care workers was conducted by the first author, a White English-speaking female health care worker, in partnership with the second author, a Xhosa male research implementer. Ethnographic and narrative methods were used to create an embedded case study of 11 households of people with disabilities. Lessons on conducting ethical and culturally congruent research with this population are presented, important limitations in the qualitative paradigm raised, and alternative stances explored.

Simmonds, S., Roux, C., & Avest, I. t. (2015). Blurring the Boundaries between Photovoice and Narrative Inquiry: A Narrative-Photovoice Methodology for Gender-Based Research. International Journal of Qualitative Methods , 14 (3), 33-49. https://doi.org/10.1177/160940691501400303

Abstract. Photovoice provides alternative ways of doing research with schoolgirls, who are vulnerable and often under-acknowledged research participants. It is particularly valuable in dealing with sensitive topics such as gender-based violence, poverty and HIV/AIDS and other chronic illnesses. Photovoice is thus widely employed in disciplines such as health, education, economics, sociology, anthropology, and geography. Up until now, however, it has been predominantly underpinned by participatory action research and other community-based participatory related methodologies. This article explores the possibility of blurring the boundaries between photovoice and narrative inquiry to create a narrative-photovoice methodology for gender-based research. In this study, South African schoolgirls participate as coresearchers employing narrative-photovoice and reflect on the value and limitations of this methodology for making meaning of gender (in)equity in their everyday lives. The main findings are categorized into the following themes: (a) superstition and suspicion: a gatekeeper to gaining access, (b) embracing creativity, (c) moving beyond the abstract, (d) digital versus disposable camera, (e) and having fun while learning. In the conclusion, the authors reflect on the participants' experiences of doing narrative-photovoice and highlight particular considerations for using this methodology.

Sonday, A., Ramugondo, E., & Kathard, H. (2020). Case Study and Narrative Inquiry as Merged Methodologies: A Critical Narrative Perspective. International Journal of Qualitative Methods , 19 , 1609406920937880. https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406920937880

Abstract. Case study and narrative inquiry as merged methodological frameworks can make a vital contribution that seeks to understand processes that may explain current realities within professions and broader society. This article offers an explanation of how a critical perspective on case study and narrative inquiry as an embedded methodology unearthed the interplay between structure and agency within storied lives. This case narrative emerged out of a doctoral thesis in occupational therapy, a single instrumental case describing a process of professional role transition within school-level specialized education in the Western Cape, South Africa. This case served as an exemplar in demonstrating how case study recognized the multiple layers to the context within which the process of professional role transition unfolded. The embedded narrative inquiry served to clarify emerging professional identities for occupational therapists within school-level specialized education in postapartheid South Africa.

Quantitative Methods for Narrative Research

Fage-Butler, A., Ledderer, L., & Nielsen, K. H. (2022). Public trust and mistrust of climate science: A meta-narrative review. Public Understanding of Science , 31 (7), 832-846. https://doi.org/10.1177/09636625221110028

Abstract. This systematic meta-narrative literature review aims to explore the narratives of trust evident in literature on public (mis)trust relating to climate science published up until May 2021, and to present the main findings from these papers. We identified six narratives of trust: attitudinal trust, cognitive trust, affective trust, contingencies of trust, contextual trust and communicated trust. The papers’ main findings spanned theoretical conclusions on the importance of positionality to trust and morality to trustworthiness, to qualitative findings that the scientific community was mainly trusted, to quantitative findings that explored how trust functioned as an independent, dependent or mediating variable. This literature review sheds important light on the interrelationship between climate science and publics, highlights areas for further research, and in its characterisation of trust narratives provides a language for conceptualising trust that can further interdisciplinary engagement.

László, J., Csertő, I., Fülöp, É., Ferenczhalmy, R., Hargitai, R., Lendvai, P., Péley, B., Pólya, T., Szalai, K., Vincze, O., & Ehmann, B. (2013). Narrative Language as an Expression of Individual and Group Identity: The Narrative Categorical Content Analysis. SAGE Open , 3 (2), 2158244013492084. https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244013492084

Abstract. Scientific Narrative Psychology integrates quantitative methodologies into the study of identity. Its methodology, Narrative Categorical Analysis, and its toolkit, NarrCat, were both originally developed by the Hungarian Narrative Psychology Group. NarrCat is for machine-made transformation of sentences in self-narratives into psychologically relevant, statistically processable narrative categories. The main body of this flexible and comprehensive system is formed by Psycho-Thematic modules, such as Agency, Evaluation, Emotion, Cognition, Spatiality, and Temporality. The Relational Modules include Social References, Semantic Role Labeling (SRL), and Negation. Certain elements can be combined into Hypermodules, such as Psychological Perspective and Spatio-Temporal Perspective, which allow for even more complex, higher level exploration of composite psychological processes. Using up-to-date developments of corpus linguistics and Natural Language Processing (NLP), a unique feature of NarrCat is its capacity of SRL. The structure of NarrCat, as well as the empirical results in group identity research, is discussed.

Books from Sage Publishing

Doing Narrative Research Second Edition by Molly Andrews, Corinne Squire, Maria Tamboukou (2013)

Using Narrative in Research by Christine Bold (2011)

Handbook of Narrative Inquiry : Mapping a Methodology by D. Jean Clandinin (2006)

Narrative Inquiry : A Dynamic Approach by Colette Daiute (2013)

Biographical Research Methods by Marta J. Eichsteller and Howard H. Davis (2022)

Quantitative Narrative Analysis by Roberto Franzosi (2009)

Understanding Narrative Inquiry : The Crafting and Analysis of Stories as Research by Jeong-Hee Kim (2015)

Discourse and Narrative Methods : Theoretical Departures, Analytical Strategies and Situated Writings by Mona Livholts, Maria Tamboukou (2015)

Narrative as Topic and Method in Social Research by Donileen R. Loseke (2021)

More Sage Research Methods Community posts about narratives and stories in research

What are narrative methods ? In this post find a description, and a collection of books and open-access exemplars that use qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches.

Find posts and open-access articles about storytelling in the data collection stage, and in communication about research that reaches diverse readers.

This collection of open-access SAGE journal articles show a variety of creative and participatory methods used when studying youth.

Stories can reveal otherwise hidden truths. Read about ways that storytelling can enhance research.

Learn about using qualitative data visualization in visual storytelling.

Theorizing Through Literature Reviews: The Miner-Prospector Continuum

Sample selection in systematic literature reviews.

OPINION article

Methods for conducting and publishing narrative research with undergraduates.

• 1 Psychology Department, Hamilton College, Clinton, NY, United States
• 2 Department of Psychological Sciences and Institute for Autism Research, Canisius College, Buffalo, NY, United States

Introduction

Narrative research systematically codes individual differences in the ways in which participants story crucial events in their lives to understand the extent to which they create meaning and purpose ( McAdams, 2008 ). These narrative descriptions of life events address a diverse array of topics, such as personality ( McAdams and Guo, 2015 ), development ( Fivush et al., 2006 ), clinical applications ( Banks and Salmon, 2013 ), well-being ( Adler et al., 2016 ), gender ( Grysman et al., 2016 ), and older adult memory decline ( Levine et al., 2002 ).

Narrative research is an ideal way to involve undergraduate students as contributors to broader projects and often as co-authors. In narrative or mixed method research, undergraduates have the opportunity to think critically about methodology during study construction and implementation, and then by engaging with questions of construct validity when exploring how different methods yield complementary data on one topic. In narrative research in psychology, students collect data, as in many traditional psychology laboratories, but they collect either typed or spoken narratives and then extensively code narratives before quantitative data analysis can occur. Narrative research thus provides a unique opportunity to blend the psychological realities captured by qualitative data with the rigors of quantitative methods.

Narrative researchers start by establishing the construct of interest, deciding when coding narratives for this construct is the most effective form of measurement, rather than a questionnaire or some other form of assessment. A coding manual is developed or adopted, and all coders study the manual, practice implementing it, and discuss the process and any disagreements until the team is confident that all coders are implementing the rules in a similar way. A reliability set is then initiated, such that coders assess a group of narratives from the data of interest independently, compare their codes, and conduct reliability statistics (e.g., Intraclass coefficient, Cohen's kappa). When a predetermined threshold of agreement has been reached and a sufficient percentage of the narrative data has been coded, the two raters are deemed sufficiently similar, disagreements are resolved (by conversation or vote), and one coder completes the remainder of the narrative data. Readers are directed to Syed and Nelson (2015) and to Adler et al. (2017) for further details regarding this process, as these papers provide greater depth regarding best practices coding.

Narrative Coding in an Undergraduate Laboratory: Common Challenges and Best Practices

When are students co-authors.

Narrative coding requires heavy investment of time and energy from the student, but time and energy are not the only qualities that matter when deciding on authorship. Because students are often shielded from hypotheses for the duration of coding in order to maintain objectivity and to not bias them in their coding decisions, researchers may be in a bind when data finally arrive; they want to move toward writing but students are not yet sufficiently knowledgeable to act as co-authors. Kosslyn (2002) outlines six criteria for establishing authorship (see also Fine and Kurdek, 1993 ), and includes a scoring system for the idea, design, implementation (i.e., creation of materials), conducting the experiment, data analysis, and writing. A student who puts countless hours into narrative coding has still only contributed to conducting the experiment or data analysis. If the goal is including students as authors, researchers should consider these many stages as entry points into the research process. After coding has completed, students should read background literature while data are analyzed and be included in the writing process, as detailed below (see “the route to publishing”). In addition, explicit conversations with students about their roles and expectations in a project are always advised.

Roadblocks to Student Education

One concern of a researcher managing a narrative lab is communicating the goals and methods of the interrater process to student research assistants, who have likely never encountered a process like this before. Adding to this challenge is the fact that often researchers shield undergraduates from the study's hypotheses to reduce bias and maintain their objectivity, which can serve as a roadblock both for students' education and involvement in the project and for their ability to make decisions in borderline cases. Clearly communicating the goals and methods involved in a coding project are essential, as is planning for the time needed to orient students to the hypotheses after coding if they are to be included in the later steps of data analysis and writing. In the following two sections, we expand on challenges that arise in this vein and how we have addressed them.

Interpersonal Dynamics

A critical challenge in the interrater process addresses students' experience of power relationships, self-esteem, and internalization of the coding process. In the early stages, students often disagree on how to code a given narrative. Especially when the professor mediates these early disagreements, students might feel intimidated by a professor who sides with one student more consistently than another. Furthermore, disagreeing with a fellow student may be perceived as putting them down; students often hedge explanations with statements like “I was on the fence between those two,” and “you're probably right.” These interpersonal concerns must be addressed early in the coding process, with the goal of translating a theoretical construct into guidelines for making difficult decisions with idiosyncratic data. In the course of this process, students make the most progress by explaining their assumptions and decision process, to help identify points of divergence. Rules-of-thumb that are established in this process will be essential for future cases, increasing agreement but also creating a shared sense of coding goals so that it can be implemented consistently in new circumstances. Thus, interpersonal concerns and intimidation undermine the interrater process by introducing motivations for picking a particular code, ultimately creating a bias in the name of saving face and achieving agreement rather than leading toward agreement because of a shared representation of micro-level decisions that support the coding system.

Clearly communicating the goal of the interrater process is key to establishing a productive coding environment, mitigating the pitfalls described above. One of us (AG) begins coding meetings by discussing the goals of the interrater process, emphasizing that disagreeing ultimately helps us clarify assumptions and prevents future disagreements. If the professor agrees with one person more than another, it is not a sign of favoritism or greater intelligence. Given the novelty of the coding task and undergraduate students' developmental stage, students sometimes need reassurance emphasizing that some people are better at some coding systems than others, or even that some are better coders, and that these skills should not be connected to overall worth.

The next set of challenges pertains to students' own life settings. Depending on the structure of research opportunities in a given department, students work limited hours per week on a project, are commonly only available during the academic semester, and are often pulled by competing commitments. Researchers should establish a framework to help students stay focused on the coding project and complete a meaningful unit of coding before various vacations, semesters abroad, or leaving the laboratory to pursue other interests. This paper discusses best practices that help circumvent these pitfalls, but we recommend designing projects with them in mind. Some coding systems are better suited to semester-long commitments of 3 h per week whereas others need larger time commitments, such as from students completing summer research. It is helpful to identify RAs' long-term plans across semesters, knowing who is going abroad, who expects to stay in the lab, and assigning projects accordingly.

Building a robust collaborative environment can shape an invested team who will be engaged in the sustained efforts needed for successful narrative research. In one of our labs (JLS), general lab meetings are conducted to discuss coding protocols and do collaborative practice. Then an experienced coder is paired with a new lab member. The experienced coder codes while walking the new coder through the decision process for a week's worth of assigned coding. The new coder practices on a standard set of practice narratives under the supervision of the experienced coder, discussing the process throughout. The new coder's work is checked for agreement with published codes and years of other practice coders. The new coder then codes new narratives under the supervision of the experienced coder for 2 weeks or until comfortable coding independently. The most experienced and conscientious junior applies for an internal grant each year to be the lab manager during senior year. This lab manager assigns weekly coding and assists with practical concerns. Coding challenges are discussed at weekly lab meetings. More experienced coders also lead weekly “discrepancy meetings” where two or three trained coders review discrepancies in a coded data set and come to a consensus rating. Such meetings give the students further learning and leadership opportunities. These meetings are done in small teams to accommodate the students' differing schedules and help build understanding of the constructs and a good dynamic in the team.

The Route to Publishing With Undergraduates in Narrative Psychology

When coding has successfully been completed, researchers then have the opportunity to publish their work with undergraduates. When talented students are involved on projects, the transition to writing completes their research experience. A timeline should be established and a process clearly identified: who is the lead author? Is that person writing the whole manuscript and the second author editing or are different sections being written? We have considered all these approaches depending on the abilities and circumstances of the undergraduate. In one example Grysman and Denney (2017) , AG sent successive sections to the student for editing throughout the writing process. In another, because of the student's ability in quantitative analysis and figure creation ( Grysman and Dimakis, 2018 ), the undergraduate took the lead on results, and edited the researcher's writing for the introduction and discussion. In a third (Meisels and Grysman, submitted), the undergraduate more centrally designed the study as an honors thesis, and is writing up the manuscript while the researcher edits and writes the heavier statistics and methodological pieces. In another example, Lodi-Smith et al. (2009) archival open-ended responses were available to code for new constructs, allowing for a shorter project time frame than collecting new narrative data. The undergraduate student's three-semester honors thesis provided the time, scope, and opportunity to code and analyze archival narratives of personality change during college. As narrative labs often have a rich pool of archival data from which new studies can emerge, they can be a rich source of novel data for undergraduate projects.

In sum, there isn't one model of how to yield publishable work, but once the core of a narrative lab has been established, the researcher can flexibly include undergraduates in the writing process to differing degrees. As in other programs of research, students have the opportunity to learn best practices in data collection and analysis in projects they are not actively coding. Because of the need to keep coders blind to study hypotheses it is often helpful to maintain multiple projects in different points of development. Students can gain experience across the research process helping collect new data, coding existing narratives, and analyzing and writing up the coding of previous cohorts of students.

Most importantly, narrative research gives students an opportunity to learn about individuals beyond what they learn in the systematic research process and outcomes of their research. The majority of undergraduate research assistants are not going on to careers as psychologists conducting academic research on narrative identity. Many undergraduate psychology students will work in clinical/counseling settings, in social work, or in related mental health fields. The skills learned in a narrative research lab can generalize far beyond the specific goals of the research team. By reading individual narratives, students and faculty have the opportunity to learn about the lived life, hearing the reality in how people story trauma, success, challenges, and change. They can begin to see subtlety and nuance beyond their own experience and come to appreciate the importance of asking questions and learning from the answers.

Author Contributions

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct and intellectual contribution to the work, and approved it for publication.

Funding for this article is supported by an internal grant from Hamilton College.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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Keywords: narrative research, autobiographical memory, undergraduate, content coding, publishing with undergraduates

Citation: Grysman A and Lodi-Smith J (2019) Methods for Conducting and Publishing Narrative Research With Undergraduates. Front. Psychol . 9:2771. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02771

Received: 20 November 2018; Accepted: 24 December 2018; Published: 17 January 2019.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2019 Grysman and Lodi-Smith. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Azriel Grysman, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Narrative Inquiry

• First Online: 29 September 2022

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• Robert E. White   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8045-164X 3 &
• Karyn Cooper 4  

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Perhaps it may seem a bit unusual to begin a chapter on narrative inquiry that opens with a discussion of hermeneutics. However, hermeneutics is at the very heart of this volume and, indeed, any text that seeks to interpret, process and understand a specific topic. As an example, let us make use of a text, a storybook, a work of fiction, if you will. Let us use John Steinbeck’s beautiful novella, The Pearl. This is the story of Kino, a pearl diver, and the book is an exploration of human nature.

The term narrative inquiry has expanded into many different areas. Our lives are lived out in terms of narrative. Michael Connelly, OISE, University of Toronto

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Storying schools: Issues around attempts to create a sense of feel and place in narrative research writing

University of Sheffield

Sykes, P. (2005). Storying schools: Issues around attempts to create a sense of feel and place in narrative research writing, Qualitative Research, 5 (1) , 79-94.

Narrative research writing often seeks to create a sense of feel and place. The aim is to convince an audience that the researcher has ‘ been there ’ and that they could have been there too. This article presents a story about a visit to a secondary special school for boys judged to have emotional and behavioural difficulties, and then goes on to discuss issues around ‘ othering ’ experienced by the author when writing it. The problems of first visits and the way in which personal identities influence perceptions of research settings are considered with reference to othering. The article concludes with the suggestion that, when the intention has been to work ‘ against Othering, for social justice ’ (Fine, 1994: 81), maybe one has to recognize that some concerns can probably not be relieved, and to ‘ simply attempt to do the best [I] can ’ (Smith and Deemer, 2000: 891).

I’d never been in a sports car before. Low and green and shining, pulling up for me in front of the tube 1 station on a cold, wet Friday morning in December. It was the anniversary of my father’s death and here I was, feeling excitement as I snucked into the seat. What a contrast with that morning in the hospital, 11 years ago, holding Dad’s hand and waiting.

Jon accelerated down the high street, past the sari shops, the Asian grocers fronted with vegetable stalls, the Divali 2 lights on the lampposts. He drove fast, changing gear quickly, well over the speed limit. We turned into a council estate with speed bumps to fly over, traffic calming islands to weave round. He drives like this partly, I think, to get maximum exhilaration, partly to get back to school as soon as possible. He doesn’t want to be away, doesn’t want to miss the action or to fail to deal with something that’s his responsibility. He wants to get me there, to hear what I think. ‘The police are coming in sometime this morning to get the security video of the incident I told you about when Zohab 3 and his mates made the death threats to me and I’ll probably need to have a word with them, but apart from that I’m doing nothing particular. What I thought was you’ll just be around, talk with Harry, meet the kids, hang out. I do want you to see what it’s like here ‘cus I think it’ll help when you’re reading my stuff. At least you’ll have a bit of a sense of the place and what I do that’ll give you some sort of context to put it in. Is that OK?’ ‘It’s fine.’

And I’m enjoying the ride, the closeness to the road, the sense of being in touch. ‘That’s our field.’ To my right I see a green space: the size of three football pitches or so. We turn in a gate, down a hill. Pink blossom out on the trees lining the drive, ‘I arranged that because you were coming. Welcome to Osbourne.’

I can sense he feels proprietorial and proud. I see a two-storey, seventies building. Flat roofs, big windows, coloured panels. Obviously a school. The grounds are neat, close cut grass, tidy borders. And those blossom trees. In December.

We go in through the lobby to the office window/reception hatch where I have to sign in for security purposes. Banter with the secretaries who call him Jonty. He tells them I’m from the university, that I’m his research supervisor, and that I’ve come to see the place that he’s writing about for his dissertation. They say I must have my hands full.

The corridor where we are is bright, clean and carpeted. There’s no graffiti on the walls, no scuffmarks on the skirting board, no litter on the floor. And it is very, very quiet. I comment on the quietness and Jon tells me it’s not normally like this but today nearly half of the students are out, on work experience and college placements, and that some of the ‘big players’ incurred short term exclusions the previous day.

‘Let me take you to meet the kids.’ We turn into a corridor with classrooms off to either side, work displayed on the walls. A man comes out of a room.

‘This is Pat.’ I’m introduced to Harry, the principal. He’s a big man, like Jon, but he’s taller. They joke, slagging each other off, showing me their relationship. Harry tells Jon that while he was getting me the police rang to say that they’d just arrested Zohab, then says, ‘You aren’t going to like this but Peter’s coming in later to check you’re ok about the threats. The LEA’s worried about you. They want to look after us so we have to let them.’ He turns to me, ‘See you later. What have you got on your face?’ I get rid of the dirty smudge, feeling foolish, wondering how long I’d been walking around like that, wondering why Jon hadn’t said anything.

Jon takes a bunch of keys out of his pocket and starts to open the door. I’m shocked and my words stop him. ‘Why is it locked? What if there’s a fire?’ ‘The doors only lock on the corridor side, they work from inside the room. We’d have a problem if kids could get out of their class and then into others because the one kid absconding could set the whole school off in seconds.’

It’s suddenly noisy. ‘You fucking cunt. You bastard. Your mother is a whore, she’s a whore. Fuck you.’ ‘Don’t you say that about my mother. Your mother’s a cunt. Fuck her.’ There are two big boys, about 15 years old, I’d say, sitting either side of a hessian-covered room divider. They’re shouting at each other and banging about, but they’re still paying some attention to the workbooks on the tables in front of them. Each boy is sitting with a middle-aged adult, who in both cases is telling them to attend to their work, to take no notice of what’s been said and to stop shouting. In the middle of all this, Jon simply introduces me as Dr. Sikes, his teacher. I hold out my hand to every individual in the room and both boys stop their invective to take it and say hello. One asks me if it’s really true that I’m Jon’s teacher; the other, if he’s a good student. I say yes. Then they go back to their cursing. Jon has some words to the effect that winding each other up is not a good idea, and it’s quieter as we go out and cross the corridor to a classroom where three boys of 13 or so are sitting round a table with two young women. They’re all cutting out snowflake shapes from white paper. Gratuitously I ask if they’re making Christmas decorations and a fresh-faced child holds up a mile of paper chains they’d made the previous day. His pride and delight remind me of my son when he used to show me things he’d made with his nanny while I was at work. It’s calm, relaxed and purposeful in that room. Easy, like it can be when kids are doing art or craftwork that they enjoy, in the company of teachers they like and trust.

It’s not quite so comfortable in the next room. There, four lads are playing a word game with two adults – except one of the boys, Darren, who has headphones on, is listening to music and is emphatically distancing himself from everything and everyone else. Jon asks him to take the headphones off. The boy deliberately turns his back on him. Jon puts his hand on the boy’s shoulder and has a quiet word. ‘It’s time for pizza’, says one of the other kids and everyone gets up. As he slouches towards the door, Darren removes his ‘phones. Then, suddenly, the bangs start. The walls of the corridor are being thumped, hard, so that they shake. There seem to be lots of youth out there, lots of shouting, fucking this and fucking that. I confess I swear but I have never heard cussing like this. ‘They get pizza now if they’ve been ok. Come along and have some.’ A kid bumps into Jon, ‘Watch where you’re fucking going Jonty’, ‘Language, Sam’, ‘Sorry’.

The dining hall is in another building. Outside the door stand Jon and Harry. Each boy has to pass by them and something is said to everyone. There’s lots of hugging too. I’ve never seen so much physical contact in a school, not even in a nursery. It’s odd, remarkable, to see these males, lads and teachers, touching each other so much and so naturally. In a mainstream school I’m sure this would provoke homophobic accusation and abuse. Here, it’s what they do.

After pizza Jon takes me to see the workshops and the music room. On our way, the Learning Mentor has a word about a lad who is sounding off and getting upset because he wants to go in the music room and he thinks that the member of staff who has to accompany him there isn’t going to. Suddenly the boy himself appears. He’s clearly very wound up and angry. He strides round the hall area we’re in, bashing the walls and the doors, swearing and badmouthing the teacher he believes has let him down. Three or four kids come to their classroom doors, peer through the glass, then go back to whatever they were doing. I’m not sure what to do, where to go. This is outside my experience and truth to tell I’m apprehensive. Jon has started talking to the boy, telling him the teacher will be along shortly, that the music session will happen if he calms down. The boy walks round and round the area, faster and faster, banging away all the time. Jon speaks more, asking him to be reasonable, to remember positive things and suddenly it’s all over as the lad says, ‘I need a drink’, and goes over to the drinking fountain and drinks deeply. He returns calm and ok, then, quick as a wink shins up above the door and sits in the heating pipes, waiting for his teacher. Jon tells me later that this is a major advance, that a couple of months ago the anger would have continued to increase until he finally blew totally out of control. Going to the drinking fountain was probably the kid’s way of disrupting or diffusing the situation without losing face and could have been a strategy he’d been taught in the anger management sessions that were part of his programme.

We go into the woodwork room. I’m suddenly very conscious of the hammers, chisels and saws. A boy is standing at a bench rhythmically stabbing away with a bradawl. Each time it goes further in until the handle hits the wood and he can’t get it out. ‘Fuck it. Stupid fucking thing.’ ‘What if somebody loses their temper in here?’ I quietly ask the teacher, a man who’s recently moved here from a mainstream school, ‘Isn’t it risky to have these tools out?’ He shrugs, ‘It’s risky anywhere.’ There’s a knock at the door. Jon’s needed to deal with a flare up in a PE lesson. That’s what he spends all of his time doing, fire-fighting he calls it, calming kids down, managing behaviour, very occasionally restraining. I hear the shouting, the kicking and banging. This one takes a long time to defuse and by the time some understanding is reached it’s lunchtime. Back to the dining hall and the hugs and the words to each boy before they go in.

Ross, a large lad with complicated braces on his teeth, is teased for never smiling. He stands close to Jon; I think he’s seeking contact. ‘Look, there’s a policeman going into school. What’s he here for?’ Police visits could be bad news for most of the boys and Ross, I’m told, does and deals drugs big time. ‘He’s not a policeman, he’s come to see to the photocopier.’ ‘He’s a policeman. Look at his boots.’ The man is, of course, the copper who has come to pick up the security video. All the school knows about the threats and that there’s a warrant out for the kids who made them. Jon goes off to talk to him.

While he’s away, an obviously pregnant teacher comes and tells Harry that David who is now in the dining room has pushed her. He’s brought out and confronted with what he’s done. There’s some bravado but he ends up saying sorry and verbally, at least, acknowledging that he was in the wrong.

‘Come in and eat, the food’s really good here.’ And it is. Ravioli, salad, ice cream, fresh fruit. Jon told me that they care about the food they serve because, as is so often the case these days, many of the kids live on junk. Everything is fresh and as far as possible they ensure that there are no additives or colourings because these can aggravate hyperactivity. As well as lunch and pizza, Harry and Jon come into school at 6.30 and make sure that breakfast is available for those who turn up. Without this there are those who would have nothing to eat in the morning and the number of kids who do not attend school until pizza is served at break time would probably increase.

I sit down next to a tall boy who sprawls round his chair and over the table. The staff sit around the room, some together, others with kids. There’s a general and wide-ranging conversation going on that everyone seems free to participate in. The boy next to me shouts his contributions rather than speaks them. He appears to be getting excited and gets louder and louder. Suddenly there’s a startling bang as a boy behind me knocks the table nearly right over. It teeters on two legs then crashes down, rocking back and forth a few times. All is momentarily silent and then: ‘Hey Sally, hey Sally! Sally’s got fuck me shoes on. Show us your shoes Sal.’ Sally, who is about 25 and attractive and who teaches drama here and in Wandsworth Prison, laughs and gives back banter. It all seems well meant and harmless, a comment on the style of her footwear rather than anything else. Jon and Harry appear to think so too: at least they say nothing to stop it. In many schools, I know that such talk would be regarded as grounds for suspension. 4

‘Time to get back.’ Harry signals the end of lunch and kids and staff slope off to lessons. The afternoon session is short: school ends at 2.30. Some don’t even make it that far and, in any case, if they’ve done good they’re often allowed to go early. Given the past attendance record of many of the boys, it’s an event to have them come in at all.

It’s time for me to hear the story of the school. We go to Harry’s room, a large office, dominated by a picture of Cassius Clay before he was Mohammed Ali, triumphant having beaten Sonny Liston. Harry opens a drawer in his desk and invites me to look inside. There are a number of knives, razor blades fixed to various makeshift handles, a length of bicycle chain, a sharpened screw driver, and a couple of chisels. ‘Look at this. These were all confiscated during my first few weeks here. I keep them to remind me not to get too cocky. Keep them in mind while I’m talking.’ The story goes like this: in January 2001, Osbourne, a residential special school for 11–16-year-old boys with severe emotional and behavioural difficulties (EBD), was put into ‘Special Measures’ 5 following an Ofsted 6 Inspection. What the Inspectors had found and reported made such lurid reading that journalists on the tabloids seeking post-Christmas readers seized the opportunity for sensationalist headlines of the ‘Is this the worst school in England?’ variety. The Ofsted report was immediately removed from the DfES 7 web site as it soon began to register an unprecedented number of hits. Those who managed to get there before it was withdrawn learnt of incidents of boys gang-raping other boys on the school premises, of a hanging, of numerous woundings with weapons, of staff who were demoralized or complacent or incapable, of drug taking, of a school population where the majority of pupils had criminal records, and of an all pervasive macho, violent culture. This was an institution where the kids were in control and the teachers, through inexperience, fear, indifference or various reasons of invested interest, were making little or no mark.

Faced with this damning report, the LEA 8 had decided to close down the school, sack most of the staff, and then re-open it in September 2002 minus the residential unit, under a new name, and with a new regime. Harry was moved from another school in order to lead this renaissance and Jon was appointed vice-principal.

When he got the job at Osbourne, Jon was in the second year of a professional doctoral (EdD) programme and at the point where he was required to design a research project to be carried out over two years and to be reported in a thesis of around 50,000 words. Thinking about the time, effort, energy and commitment his new job was likely to demand, he decided to undertake an autoethnographic study of his first year in post to be entitled Restarting the ‘ Worst ’ School in the Country , and I became his supervisor.

Autoethnography is, essentially, reflexive ‘ethnographic writing which locates the self as central (and in so doing) gives analytical purchase to the autobiographical’ (Coffey, 1999: 126). Autoethnographers put themselves into their text while also locating these texts in the literatures and traditions of the social sciences (see Ellis and Bochner, 2000; Lather and Smithies, 1997; Richardson, 2000). Jon felt that such research could be helpful to him in that it would encourage him to reflect critically and systematically on his work and, thereby, could potentially lead him to insights and understandings capable of informing his professional activities. In addition, it might even serve as a cathartic outlet for the tensions and stresses he was likely to face. One term into the research he found that it had lived up to its promise.

And one term after the start of the new school year, Harry and Jon felt that they were beginning to get somewhere.

In essence, their shared vision is to create a caring environment with a culture that provides certainty, constancy and security for boys who have ‘severe and complex needs’ (DfES, 2004), and who for various reasons do not behave in a way that mainstream schools, as they are presently organized and resourced, are able to accommodate. Many of the boys have learning difficulties; some have mental, emotional and psychological disorders, others are hyperactive and/or have attention deficit conditions ‘managed’ by drugs like Ritalin. Most of them come from socially disadvantaged backgrounds, some have been involved in child prostitution, a few have parents who themselves have learning difficulties and a large number have grown up with criminal activity – thieving, prostitution, violence, drug taking – as the norm. All are a potential threat to themselves and usually to other people. Their futures are not promising and, at the time of the Ofsted report, 80 percent of those on roll were involved with the youth justice system with a further 12 percent serving or awaiting custodial sentences.

These kids are a complex amalgam of power and vulnerability. In their immediate lives they have power, which they do use, to hurt and damage people and property. Within the wider world though, they are relatively powerless and most even lack the personal characteristics needed to be a ‘successful’ thug and criminal. As children, too, they are incredibly vulnerable, and a number of them are known to have been, or are suspected of being, exploited and abused sexually, physically and emotionally by their parents and/or other adults who should be caring for and protecting them. In some cases this vulnerability is heightened by the adoption, perhaps as a survival strategy, of a hard man persona that is manifested through their demeanour, their clothes, the music they make it known they listen to, and their language. Many parents who teach see their own children in the students they encounter (see Sikes, 1997). For staff at Osbourne who are also parents, this experience is particularly poignant.

Jon talks of ‘cutting off the balls and drawing the teeth’ of the monstrous culture that had come to characterize Osbourne before he and Harry arrived. Their mission is to show their students an alternate way of being to that which they have either been socialized into or have come to adopt (and a scary thing for any parent to know is that a couple of these boys do come from stable, prosperous, middle-class homes) and which was being reinforced in the school before Ofsted. For themselves, and for their students, this involves the acknowledgement of different types of personal and social power and vulnerability. It means listening to and hearing what the boys have to say about themselves, their lives, their relationships, their aspirations. It means providing unconditional love and a clear framework of ways of behaving based on respect for self and for other people. For many of the boys this is a novelty and they are having an experience that they haven’t had before, either at home or in schools they have attended. Hence the touching – an obvious demonstration that ‘I care about you’; hence the demand that kids – and staff – reflect on and acknowledge the impact of their actions on other people and themselves; hence the importance given to respect for self and others; hence the emphasis on corporate responsibility and the well-being of all people belonging to the school.

They think that it’s beginning to work. Kids have said things that indicate that they like coming to school and attendance levels are certainly up. When a teacher’s purse was stolen, Ross showed Jon where it had been dumped – in a dog shit bin! – because he ‘wanted to help these people and I like the school’. Louis cried and apologized for repeatedly pushing Jon against a door, winding him and lifting him off his feet with each push; and, after Zohab made his threats against Jon (threats the police took seriously knowing the crowd he hung round with), a number of the kids came up afterwards to ask if Jon was OK.

But it isn’t all success of course: Wayne, who stole the purse, and Zohab, who said he would kill Jon and get his family, are both pupils of the school. Truancy remains a problem. And, desperate and dreadful though the action is for boys who have nowhere else to go but prison, two permanent exclusions have been made. Nevertheless, Harry and Jon do seem to have begun to make a difference – and an interim report by LEA inspectors suggests that coming out of ‘Special Measures’ now seems a certainty, although not for another year.

‘So what do you think of us then? What’s your impression of Osbourne?’ asked Harry. ‘Nobody told me there were schools quite like this. If I hadn’t been here I couldn’t have imagined it.’ ‘I know what you mean,’ said Jon. ‘When I was at college and even when I was doing my Master’s in Inclusion, I never came across anything in the academic literature that even began to describe what it can be like here. The most you get is something along the lines of “working in these institutions is demanding and requires resilience”. There’s nothing that I’ve seen that gives any sense of the feel of places like Osbourne and there ought to be accounts that do that rather than the stuff there is that either demonizes special schools per se, or focuses on the psychology of individuals, or presents a distanced and sanitized and so called objective picture. And I think there should be stories because, while everybody’s got an idea of what ordinary schools are like, by and large most teachers don’t have a clue about special schools because they’ve never been in one. They might have had a hand in directing kids to them but they’ve never been there themselves. It’s as if we don’t exist or we do exist but we’re beyond the pale. It shouldn’t be like this, especially since inclusion is so high on the agenda at the minute and particularly since we’re always working towards getting our kids back into mainstream where that’s feasible. It’s so one sided. You do stories, Pat, why don’t you write one?’ ‘I’ll think about it,’ I said.

Over the next few weeks I frequently found myself thinking about Osbourne: about the lives and experiences of the students I’d met, about the work and aims of Jon, Harry and their colleagues, about the ethos, culture and day-to-day happenings of the school. Although I had had some idea of what Osbourne was like from reading Jon’s work, my visit had disturbed me, confronting and disrupting some of my understandings of, and knowledges about, schools. Inevitably too, perhaps, it had led me to difficult questions around the notion and practice of ‘inclusion’.

I had begun to wonder whether the way to begin to make sense of my experiences and perceptions was to follow Jon’s suggestion to write a story, since, like many other people, I find that writing can help order and give meaning to the things that happen to me (see Polkinghorne, 1988 ; Richardson, 1997: 26–9). I had also taken Jon’s point that EBD schools and their work, their students and staff have, generally, been neglected as a focus for sociological study (although see Molinari, 2003, and Phtiaka, 1996, for ethnographic descriptions of EBD schools and pupil referral units respectively 9 ), and that the storied accounts there are have tended to focus on individuals (e.g. Clough, 2002). There would seem to be a gap, so, when I was asked to give a presentation at a conference, I decided to kill a number of birds with one stone and tell a story about my visit to Osbourne. 10 It was that story which started this present article. I will now move on to reflect on worries around narrative re-presentation that I experienced having written it, under the headings of:

Creating a sense of ‘feel’ and ‘place’,

‘Othering’,

First encounters, and

My place in all this.

Creating a sense of ‘feel’ and ‘place’

When I sat down to write, I was especially concerned to create a sense of feel and place because that was what Jon had said was missing in the literature. Since I was drawing, primarily, on my perceptions and experiences of Osbourne during the very few hours of the day that I was there, this was very specifically located and contextualized snap-shot type writing, and I had no desire to suggest that it was possible to extrapolate from my words to make definitive generalizations about other EBD schools. I was, however, interested in knowing whether I had been successful in evoking and communicating a picture that people familiar with special schools of this kind could recognize. In seeking such people’s opinions on the story, I wasn’t checking for ‘verisimilitude’ (Bruner, 1986), not least because the concept is fundamentally problematic (see Goodson and Sikes, 2001: 50): I simply wanted to know how effective my writing had been. And I wanted to have some confidence that people coming to the paper who had no previous experience of EBD schools would not get an exaggerated or erroneous narrative. The first people I showed the paper to all had experience of working in EBD institutions.

‘It took me back. That’s just like it was – especially the dining room. That could have happened in my school. You really evoked the atmosphere.’ (Maureen – verbal communication)

‘It brought back some (lots!!) of painful/funny/embarrassing/scary memories from my stint in an EBD school. . . For me it was an accurate representation: police visit, swearing and all: my nickname was ‘cockeyed cunt’ and the kids (mostly) liked me!!’ (Andrew – written communication)

‘Oh yes, you’d done the business there. You could almost smell the place. And I have to tell you that as I was reading it I remembered names that I hadn’t thought of for years. I had a kid who could have been that one making the chains. Angelic, beautiful looking lad. Could be sweet and gentle and caring and like a lamb but he would snap over nothing it would seem and there was no controlling him. I wonder what happened to him.’ (Doreen – verbal communication)

‘Day on day it was like that. Firefighting outbreaks, that’s what the guy said and that’s how it was. The changes in atmosphere, the ever so tough but ever so vulnerable youngsters. I couldn’t do it any more. I burnt out and your bloody paper was too close to the bone.’ (Richard – verbal communication)

‘You got it. That was it. Absolutely spot on. I actually showed that paper to my mum and dad and said ‘Read this. This is where I work.’ They said they’d never realized just what it was like but that, if it was like that, they understood some things about me better – whatever that was supposed to mean.’ (Jon Clark – written communication)

These comments suggested that I had done what I’d set out to do. I’d conjured up, I’d fabricated (MacLure, 2003: 80–104) a ‘persuasive’ (Barone, 1995: 64–5) account that conveyed a realistic impression, a ‘feel’ of an EBD school. Through my writing, through the discourse, the words and constructions I’d used, I felt that I’d managed to meet Clifford Geertz’s (1988) challenge to convince an audience that I’d ‘been there’ and that they could have been there too. Initially I was quite satisfied by my literary and textual achievement, but then reading through the paper and considering how I was going to present it at the conference, I began to worry about what Maggie MacLure describes as ‘the pervasive concern in contemporary research’ (2003: 3): namely, the concern of ‘othering’ the people I had written about (see Fine, 1994, for a discussion of ‘othering’, but essentially here I am using it to mean creating a distance and imputing negative difference between me/us and others/them). Ironically, my worries were grounded in my ‘achievement’, in the ‘realism’ of my writing and, specifically, in the accounts I had given of the boys, of their behaviour and of the things they’d said.

I was very conscious that, compared with everyday life in most mainstream secondary comprehensives, what I’d seen and heard and re-presented was extreme, even though by Jon and Harry’s reckoning the day I spent in Osbourne was considered to have been a ‘quiet one’ with nothing exceptional or out of the ordinary occurring and no ‘great story’ (Fine et al., 2000: 117) to report. I hadn’t exaggerated anything but I was, nevertheless, conscious that what I had written could – and probably did – make Osbourne, its students and its staff seem distinct and different in a negative sense, from other schools, teachers and pupils. I certainly didn’t want to do this. Conversely, in fact, I wanted to share how my experience of being at Osbourne had brought home to me the way in which, as Mark Neumann puts it, the tension over ‘othering’ is confounded ‘when we acknowledge how much ‘out there’ looks like ‘in here’ (1996: 182). But I began to question if I should have written such a piece at all. Or having written it and got it out of my system as it were, perhaps I should leave it there, not put it out into the public domain, and quickly do something else to meet my conference commitment. But then one of the reasons why I’d written the story was exactly because life in EBD schools has tended to be ignored, marginalized, hidden away and not described (maybe partly because of the difficulties involved in writing about and re-presenting it!). If I didn’t go ahead with the piece, I would be failing Jon and the other people who said there was a need for greater awareness, not least in the interests of any movement towards inclusion, be that in conceptual or practical terms (see Slee, 2001).

I wondered whether an explicitly fictionalized approach (see, for example, Banks and Banks, 1998; Clough, 2002; Sparkes, 1995) might not be better because of the anonymizing and distancing effect it could have. On reflection though, I came to the opinion that, in this case, and for me personally, fictionalizing would have been deceptive because I only had limited observations and knowledge on which to base a story; anything else would have been imagination. It seemed more authentic and entirely appropriate to try and tell it as it was for me, re-presented and crafted of course, and with names changed, but without invention. A fictionalized story would, I felt, have made me even more open to charges of ‘othering’ and even demonizing, given the sort of situation I was writing about (see Roorbach, 2001: 5–6, on invention and intention).

First Encounters

Then there was the issue around the fact that this was my first encounter with Osbourne. One’s first visit to anywhere is, almost by definition, strange. We don’t know who or what we will see or what will happen next. In order to make sense of novel experiences we tend to compare them with what we know and, in a way, we almost inevitably ‘other’ just through this process of comparison. Knowing this, I was conscious of its potential influence on what I wrote and this was largely why I showed the story to Jon and experienced EBD teachers before I did anything else with it. Their comments did a lot to reassure me.

They also put my mind at rest around concerns that I had to do with the snap-shot nature of the piece. These focused on the way in which I was very much an ‘outsider’ to Osbourne, albeit one who knew some of the context and background from Jon. My story was primarily intended to raise awareness which could then be followed up. The much longer story that Jon will tell through his autoethnography will be written with insider knowledge and involvement, and will take an in-depth and long-term look at relationships and developments at the school. Our purposes are different: his thrust is analytical, mine is descriptive, and I believe that, given the paucity of research of this kind in this field, this is an appropriate aim.

My Place in all This

Writing about the way in which qualitative research has tended to reproduce ‘a colonizing discourse of the “Other”’, Michelle Fine has stressed the importance of examining ‘the hyphen at which Self-Other join in the politics of everyday life, that is, the hyphen that both separates and merges personal identities with our inventions of Others’ (1994: 70). In a similar vein, MacLure remarks, the concern over ‘othering’ that researchers may feel ‘is intimately connected with anxiety about the space between self and other, researcher and researched, and the desire to dissolve, or at least ethically regulate it’ (2003: 3).

Researchers’ personal identities and the perspectives, understandings and knowledges, the beliefs and values that go with them shape all aspects of the research process (see Sikes and Goodson, 2003). I went to Osbourne with all of my identities (obviously!). Although there is not space in this article to interrogate the hyphens between my identities and my limited perceptions and experiences of the boys and staff of Osbourne, I suspect those which had the most influence upon what I subsequently wrote were my identities as Jon’s doctoral supervisor, as a researcher who favours auto/biographical and narrative approaches, as an academic with a commitment to social justice, as the mother of a girl and a boy in mainstream schools, as a school governor, as a lecturer who has been involved in initial and in-service teacher education, as a sociologist, and as the director of a professional doctoral programme that has a substantial number of students with jobs in the field of special education. As Denzin reminds us, ‘writing is not an innocent practice (and) in the social sciences there is only interpretation’ (2000: 898): in noting this I am making yet another plea for researchers to acknowledging their place in what they do for and the way in which stories tell us as much about their authors as they do about their subjects.

David Silverman writes:

All we sociologists have are stories. Some come from other people, some from us. What matters is to understand how and where the stories are produced, what sort of stories they are, and how we can put them to intelligent use in theorizing about social life. (1998: 111)

And we also need to think about how the stories that come from us (be ‘we’ sociologists, educational researchers, psychologists, anthropologists, or whatever) and which we use in various ways to make sense of social life, impact upon the people and the institutions they are about. As was noted earlier, when the tabloid press picked up on Ofsted’s report on Osbourne and translated its official language into lurid journalese, considerable interest was provoked. People wanted to know the gory details and, while it is clearly impossible to know what exactly aroused curiosity, prurience and voyeurism provoked by the monstrous, freak show style presentation of the school is likely to have motivated some readers to seek out the full account on the internet. It does seem that, because EBD schools and other institutions, such as prisons, mental hospitals and boarding schools, are outside of most people’s day-to-day experience, they are more at risk of having highly-coloured myths developed and told about them. Conscious of this, I wanted my story to tell what an EBD school could be like in order to counter tales based in and on ignorance. At the same time, I didn’t want to fuel such accounts through my story or to ‘other’ the students, staff and the institution generally. Since I am not convinced by arguments that stories used in social science should, essentially, be left to speak for themselves (e.g. Clough, 2002), I had no intention for mine to stand alone without any commentary or contextual description or discussion. Thus, in my conference presentation, I did explicitly address my concerns in relation to my particular story and also offer an explanation of how and where and why it had been produced, thus stating my intent and providing a context.

The field of special education is one full of controversy and disagreement with various debates about the social construction of disability and special need and around the ideologies, theories and the practice of inclusion going on in the UK, Europe, the Antipodes, North America and elsewhere (see Slee, 2001, for an overview). With regard to students who are considered to have emotional and behavioural difficulties, the controversy is particularly acute with considerable argument around the way in which EBD can be used as a convenient diagnosis for young people whose behaviour is ‘simply’ challenging.

Although in recent years and in the UK, more attention has been given to the way in which institutional structures and systems may cause or aggravate troublesome behaviour, ‘there resolutely continues a powerful subtext that the real causes of difficult behaviour lie in deficit and deviance in the child’ (Thomas and Loxley, 2001: 46–7). This is not the place, and I am not the person, to advance this discussion except insofar as, in talking and writing about Osbourne, I did want to do something, in however limited a manner, to alert more people to a hidden area of schooling. I am not so naïve as to believe that awareness leads to change in attitude or practice, but I do think that ignorance certainly does not.

However grandiose it might sound, in telling this story and in sharing my difficulties, my intention has been, to borrow from Michelle Fine, to work ‘against Othering, for social justice (1994: 81, original emphases), to recognize that some of my concerns can probably not be relieved, and to ‘simply attempt to do the best [I] can’ (Smith and Deemer, 2000: 891).

The ‘tube’ is the popular name for the underground train system in London.

Divali is the Hindu festival of light. In parts of the UK where there are substantial Hindu populations, it has become common for joint Divali/Christmas decorations to be put up in the streets between October and January.

All names, with the exception of Pat Sikes and Jon Clark, have been changed.

In an ethnographic study of a pupil referral unit, Vivien Molinari (2003) observes that the swearing that characterized student to student and student to teacher conversation would have resulted in suspension in all other schools in the borough.

Schools which are inspected by the Office For Standards in Education (Ofsted) and deemed to be failing according to specific criteria are placed in ‘Special Measures’, required to produce a timetabled plan of action for improvement, closely monitored for two years and reinspected. If they fail to achieve an acceptable standard, they can be closed.

Ofsted – the Office For Standards in Education – is the non-ministerial government department, headed by Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Schools which has responsibility for inspecting schools.

DfES – the Department for Education and Skills.

LEA – Local Education Authority

See also Thomas and Loxley (2001) for a discussion of the problematic nature and status of EBD as a concept and category for educational provision.

The conference was the Second International Conference on Discourse, Power and Resistance, University of Plymouth, April 2003, and the paper I gave, in collaboration with Jon Clark, was entitled ‘Nobody Told Me There Were Schools Like These’.

Acknowledgements

I’d like to thank HT, Jon Clark, Andrew Loxley, Maureen Parker, Hazel Lawson, Jerome Satterthwaite and reviewers of an earlier draft for their constructive and critical comments.

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Pat Sikes is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Sheffield where her main teaching and writing concern is with research methods. Throughout her career, Pat’s chief interest has been in using life history and narrative approaches to study aspects of teachers’ lives and careers. Her recent publications include articles in Teachers and Training: Theory and Practice 10(1) and Gender and Education 15(4), as well as a book co-authored with I. Goodson, Life History in Educational Settings: Learning From Lives (Open University Press, 2001).

Address: School of Education, University of Sheffield, 388 Glossop Road, Sheffield S10 2JA, UK. [email: [email protected] ]

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White, R.E., Cooper, K. (2022). Narrative Inquiry. In: Qualitative Research in the Post-Modern Era. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85124-8_4

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• Section 2: Home
• Developing the Quantitative Research Design
• Qualitative Descriptive Design
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• Qualitative Narrative Inquiry Research

What is a Qualitative Narrative Inquiry Design?

Tips for using narrative inquiry in an applied manuscript, summary of the elements of a qualitative narrative inquiry design, sampling and data collection, resource videos.

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Narrative inquiry is relatively new among the qualitative research designs compared to qualitative case study, phenomenology, ethnography, and grounded theory. What distinguishes narrative inquiry is it beings with the biographical aspect of C. Wright Mills’ trilogy of ‘biography, history, and society’(O’Tolle, 2018). The primary purpose for a narrative inquiry study is participants provide the researcher with their life experiences through thick rich stories. Narrative inquiry was first used by Connelly and Calandinin as a research design to explore the perceptions and personal stories of teachers (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990). As the seminal authors, Connelly & Clandinin (1990), posited:

Although narrative inquiry has a long intellectual history both in and out of education, it is increasingly used in studies of educational experience. One theory in educational research holds that humans are storytelling organisms who, individually and socially, lead storied lives. Thus, the study of narrative is the study of the ways humans experience the world. This general concept is refined into the view that education and educational research is the construction and reconstruction of personal and social stories; learners, teachers, and researchers are storytellers and characters in their own and other's stories. In this paper we briefly survey forms of narrative inquiry in educational studies and outline certain criteria, methods, and writing forms, which we describe in terms of beginning the story, living the story, and selecting stories to construct and reconstruct narrative plots. 

Attribution: Reprint Policy for Educational Researcher: No written or oral permission is necessary to reproduce a tale, a figure, or an excerpt fewer that 500 words from this journal, or to make photocopies for classroom use. Copyright (1990) by the American Educational Research Association; reproduced with permission from the publisher. 

• Example Qualitative Narrative Inquiry Design

First, the applied doctoral manuscript narrative inquiry researcher should recognize that they are earning a practical/professional based doctorate (Doctor of Education), rather than a research doctorate such as a Ph.D. Unlike a traditional Ph.D. dissertation oral defense where the candidates focus is on theory and research, the NU School of Education applied doctoral candidate presents their finding and contributions to practice to their doctoral committee as a conceptual professional conference level presentation that centers on how their study may resolve a complex problem or issue in the profession. When working on the applied doctoral manuscript keep the focus on the professional and practical benefits that could arise from your study. If the Applied Doctoral Experience (ADE) student is unsure as to whether the topic fits within the requirements of the applied doctoral program (and their specialization, if declared) they should reach out to their research course professor or dissertation chair for guidance. This is known as alignment to the topic and program, and is critical in producing a successful manuscript. Also, most applied doctoral students doing an educational narrative inquiry study will want to use a study site to recruit their participants. For example, the study may involve teachers or college faculty that the researcher will want to interview in order to obtain their stories. Permission may be need from not only the NU Institutional Review Board (IRB), but also the study site. For example, conducting interviews on campus, procuring private school district or college email lists, obtaining archival documents, etc. 

The popularity of narrative inquiry in education is increasing as a circular and pedagogical strategy that lends itself to the practical application of research (Kim, 2016). Keep in mind that by and large practical and professional benefits that arise from a narrative inquiry study revolve around exploring the lived experiences of educators, education administrators, students, and parents or guardians. According to Dunne (2003), 

Research into teaching is best served by narrative modes of inquiry since to understand the teacher’s practice (on his or her own part or on the part of an observer) is to find an illuminating story (or stories) to tell of what they have been involved with their student” (p. 367).

• Temporality – the time of the experiences and how the experiences could influence the future;
• Sociality – cultural and personal influences of the experiences; and;
• Spatiality – the environmental surroundings during the experiences and their influence on the experiences. 

From Haydon and van der Riet (2017)

• Narrative researchers collect stories from individuals retelling of their life experiences to a particular phenomenon. 
• Narrative stories may explore personal characteristics or identities of individuals and how they view themselves in a personal or larger context.
• Chronology is often important in narrative studies, as it allows participants to recall specific places, situations, or changes within their life history.

Sampling and Sample Size

• Purposive sampling is the most often used in narrative inquiry studies. Participants must meet a form of requirement that fits the purpose, problem, and objective of the study
• There is no rule for the sample size for narrative inquiry study. For a dissertation the normal sample size is between 6-10 participants. The reason for this is sampling should be terminated when no new information is forthcoming, which is a common strategy in qualitative studies known as sampling to the point of redundancy.

Data Collection (Methodology)

• Participant and researcher collaborate through the research process to ensure the story told and the story align.
• Extensive “time in the field” (can use Zoom) is spent with participant(s) to gather stories through multiple types of information including, field notes, observations, photos, artifacts, etc.
• Field Test is strongly recommended. The purpose of a field study is to have a panel of experts in the profession of the study review the research protocol and interview questions to ensure they align to the purpose statement and research questions.
• Member Checking is recommended. The trustworthiness of results is the bedrock of high-quality qualitative research. Member checking, also known as participant or respondent validation, is a technique for exploring the credibility of results. Data or results are returned to participants to check for accuracy and resonance with their experiences. Member checking is often mentioned as one in a list of validation techniques (Birt, et al., 2016).

Narrative Data Collection Essentials

• Restorying is the process of gathering stories, analyzing themes for key elements (e.g., time, place, plot, and environment) and then rewriting the stories to place them within a chronological sequence (Ollerenshaw & Creswell, 2002).
• Narrative thinking is critical in a narrative inquiry study. According to Kim (2016), the premise of narrative thinking comprises of three components, the storyteller’s narrative schema, his or her prior knowledge and experience, and cognitive strategies-yields a story that facilitates an understanding of the others and oneself in relation to others.

Instrumentation

• In qualitative research the researcher is the primary instrument.
• In-depth, semi-structured interviews are the norm. Because of the rigor that is required for a narrative inquiry study, it is recommended that two interviews with the same participant be conducted. The primary interview and a follow-up interview to address any additional questions that may arise from the interview transcriptions and/or member checking.

Birt, L., Scott, S., Cavers, D., Campbell, C., & Walter, F. (2016). Member checking: A tool to enhance trustworthiness or merely a nod to validation? Qualitative Health Research, 26 (13), 1802-1811. http://dx.doi.org./10.1177/1049732316654870

Cline, J. M. (2020). Collaborative learning for students with learning disabilities in inclusive classrooms: A qualitative narrative inquiry study (Order No. 28263106). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (2503473076). 

Connelly, F. M., & Clandinin, D. J. (1990). Stories of Experience and Narrative Inquiry. Educational Researcher, 19 (5), 2–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/03323315.2018.1465839

Dunne, J. (2003). Arguing for teaching as a practice: A reply to Alasdair Macintyre. Journal of Philosophy of Education . https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9752.00331 

Haydon, G., & der Riet, P. van. (2017). Narrative inquiry: A relational research methodology suitable to explore narratives of health and illness. Nordic Journal of Nursing Research , 37(2), 85–89. https://doi.org/10.1177/2057158516675217

Kim, J. H. (2016). Understanding Narrative Inquiry: The crafting and analysis of stories as research. Sage Publications. 

Kim J. H. (2017). Jeong-Hee Kim discusses narrative methods [Video]. SAGE Research Methods Video https://www-doi-org.proxy1.ncu.edu/10.4135/9781473985179

O’ Toole, J. (2018). Institutional storytelling and personal narratives: reflecting on the value of narrative inquiry. Institutional Educational Studies, 37 (2), 175-189. https://doi.org/10.1080/03323315.2018.1465839

Ollerenshaw, J. A., & Creswell, J. W. (2002). Narrative research: A comparison of two restorying data analysis approaches. Qualitative Inquiry, 8 (3), 329–347. 

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2 One Design for Narrative Study

• Published: January 2011
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This chapter considers narrative inquiry in relation to the case study design, identifying its purposes, defining features, and significance. It considers ways in which to define a case and to select a sample. It provides an illustration of a narrative study cast within a case study design, and concludes with a consideration of how to evaluate the trustworthiness of case studies.

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The Story as a Quality Instrument: Developing an Instrument for Quality Improvement Based on Narratives of Older Adults Receiving Long-Term Care

Associated data.

Not applicable.

The individual experiences of older adults in long-term care are broadly recognized as an important source of information for measuring wellbeing and quality of care. Narrative research is a special type of qualitative research to elicit people’s individual, diverse experiences in the context of their lifeworld. Narratives are potentially useful for long-term care improvement as they can provide a rich description of an older adult’s life from their own point of view, including the provided care. Little is known about how narratives can best be collected and used to stimulate learning and quality improvement in long-term care for older adults. The current study takes a theoretical approach to developing a narrative quality instrument for care practice in order to discover the experiences of older adults receiving long-term care. The new narrative quality instrument is based on the available literature describing narrative research methodology. The instrument is deemed promising for practice, as it allows care professionals to collect narratives among older adults in a thorough manner for team reflection in order to improve the quality of care. In the future, the feasibility and usability of the instrument will have to be empirically tested.

1. Introduction

Trends in western societies have increased the attention paid to the individual needs and preferences of persons receiving care and treatment. Holding the values of the person receiving care central in decision making is a central feature of person-centered care [ 1 ]. It has been advocated that the primary focus on technical quality be moved towards the experiential elements of care, in which the experiences of clients and their families are seen as an important source [ 2 ]. Person-centered care prioritizes the wellbeing and quality of life outcomes of service users and families to enable the stakeholders to flourish in care [ 3 ]. Emphasis is placed on the ability of care professionals to view and treat older adults as holistic beings, and to contextualize knowledge in the life-world of older adults [ 3 ].

Given their experience, older adults receiving care are legitimately positioned to have a say in that care and its evaluation by determining the extent to which their needs and preferences are being met [ 4 ]. Quantitative and qualitative instruments have both been used to study the experiences of older adults as regards the quality of care, although quantitative instruments dominated traditionally. In the Netherlands, the Consumer Quality Index (CQ index) has been embraced as the national standard quantitative survey instrument to increase external transparency in long-term care. A central database allows for national comparisons, benchmarking and public reporting [ 5 ]. In 1998 already, Van Campen et al. reported four disadvantages of using quantitative instruments to map patient perceptions of the quality of healthcare. Surveys for quality research often produce highly skewed scores in which the majority of clients appear to be satisfied. Survey scores also do not provide information about individual levels of expectations, needs and wishes. Rather than the client perspective being central, surveys often evaluate services from the supplier’s point of view; for example, by only including the topics relevant for the quality system of care organizations. Finally, the surveys often contain generic items only, without taking into account specific contextual or illness-related attributes [ 6 ].

Qualitative instruments, on the other hand, convey more nuance, detail, and emotional content and can provide a nuanced view of a client’s lifeworld [ 7 ]. Qualitative data provides a readable and memorable source which professionals can use for reflection on the strengths and weaknesses of the care provided. Qualitative data might make it easier to interpret and identify specific priorities for improvement [ 8 ]. National policy and quality documents published in 2014 and 2017 focused on nursing care for older adults in the Netherlands and emphasized the value of qualitative data for reflection in practice. Reflection by, and an open dialogue between, stakeholders is advocated for improving quality in a specific care context. Emphasis is placed on learning as a basis for quality improvement [ 9 , 10 ].

Narrative research is a special type of qualitative research where respondents interpret their own experiences by telling their individual story in their own way to the researcher in an interview. These storylines offer a fresh and humane outlook on the life world of clients [ 11 ]. An attempt is made to minimize the influence of the interviewer by avoiding the question-answer structure which is common in structured or semi-structured interviews and by avoiding restructuring, as the researcher does not question the responses of the interviewee but simply encourages the interviewee to tell their story [ 12 ]. The researcher then interprets the meaning of the interview through an analysis of the narrative, hereby making a new interpretation [ 13 ]. The research findings are therefore a joint product of the participant who shares their experiences and the researcher who analyzes them [ 14 ].

Narrative inquiry can capture the experiences of people in care, and provide insights into the vital components of care for each individual. A narrative showing the connectedness of someone’s experiences with a specific care context and their previous experiences can provide a detailed view of the experiences of a person receiving care [ 15 ]. Narratives provide a rich description of a person’s experiences and an exploration of the meanings that an individual derives from their experiences. It helps others to understand specific issues, such as quality of care, from the respondent’s point of view within their social context [ 16 ]. An open approach in which client experiences are viewed more broadly than through only the clinical pathway might facilitate clients to talk about their experiences more naturally, as clients do not perceive concepts such as quality, safety, and cost as demarcated [ 17 ].

Narratives can be used in several ways in a care context, for example, in the professionalization and training of care professionals, quality improvement, to obtain a more detailed clinical picture of an individual client, in the health advocacy and activism of client groups, and in tailoring communication for a specific client [ 18 ]. The primary focus of this paper is the use of narratives for quality research. Most qualitative quality instruments developed for Dutch nursing home care are not built on a theoretical foundation or substantiated with evidence regarding validity, reliability and user experiences [ 19 ]. The need for a systematic procedure for collecting, analyzing, and synthesizing narratives to stimulate learning and quality improvement is therefore emphasized [ 20 ]. Little is known about how narratives can best be collected and used in practice for quality improvement, as use of the narrative method to structurally assess long-term care for older adults is relatively new [ 21 ].

The current study takes a theoretical approach to developing and substantiating a quality instrument for practice to discover the experiences of older adults receiving long-term care. The design of a new narrative quality instrument is based on the available literature describing narrative research. The main question is, what theoretical principles and techniques from the literature on narrative research can be used in the design of a new quality instrument to discover the experiences of older adults receiving long-term care? Care professionals will be appointed as insider researchers, and perform a central role in the instrument as interviewers, in order to stimulate learning, increase understanding of the client perspective, benefit from their contextual knowledge, and to create support for the measures emerging from quality research.

The literature on narrative research methodology was reviewed in order to define design foundations for the development of a narrative quality instrument. The theoretical principles and techniques of the narrative method were derived from the literature so as to develop and substantiate a narrative quality instrument. A narrative quality instrument was developed for to measure the quality of long-term care provided to older adults with a physical or mental frailty.

Theoretical Development of a Quality Instrument

Books and articles published up to 10 October 2020 were reviewed. Searches were conducted in the following databases: Catalogus WorldCat Discovery, Google Scholar, CINAHL, MEDLINE and PsycINFO. The search terms used were “narrative research”, “narrative inquiry”, “story-telling”, “narrative analysis”, “narrative”, and were used both on their own and also combined with [AND] “method”, “methodology”, “practice development”, “quality research”, “quality assessment” [OR] “older people”, “health care”, “long-term care”, “nursing care”, “home care”, and “person-centered care”. The search covered academic books and articles published in peer-reviewed journals in English. The resulting articles and books were examined for the relevance of their content in determining the key principles and techniques of the narrative research methodology and, when determined as useful, summarized for the synthesis. The reference lists of the relevant articles were examined to identify further relevant publications that had been missed in the search. Relevant journals were reviewed (e.g., Narrative Inquiry, Qualitative Inquiry, Qualitative Research, Qualitative Research in Psychology, and Qualitative Sociology).

When questions arose from the material collected, additional literature from the broader field of qualitative research was searched. Extra information on the transcription of audio-recorded interviews conducted in the field of qualitative research was thus included, using the search terms “transcription”, “transcribe” and “note-taking”, combined with “qualitative research”. Additional literature was also searched regarding the role of insider-researchers-specifically nursing professionals-performing qualitative research. The following search terms were used: “insider researcher”, “nurse researcher”, and “researcher-researched relationship” combined with “qualitative research”.

Practical, functional and applicable information about the principles and techniques of narrative inquiry was primarily derived from the literature for the development of a quality instrument. The three authors discussed their first interpretations and emerging findings on a regular basis to develop plausible interpretations. All three authors were familiar and experienced with the qualitative research methodology. The discussions encouraged reflection upon, and a consideration of, possible explanations and interpretations as they emerged in relation to the data.

The result section of this article comprises two sections. The first section synthesizes and discusses the main theoretical principles derived from the literature. These principles include the contextualized and situated nature of a narrative interview, the open style of interviewing, the types of recording and transcription available, and the main types of analysis in narrative research. Insights into the role of care professionals as insider researchers are discussed. The second part of the results presents a schematic overview of the main design elements from the literature that are used as a theoretical basis for the development of a narrative quality instrument. This newly developed narrative quality instrument is named “The story as a quality instrument”.

3.1. Theoretical Principles from the Literature

3.1.1. interview as contextualized and situated.

Narrative inquiry draws on the constructivist paradigm, with its phenomenological and hermeneutic foundations and the idea that interpretative processes are subjective and culturally rooted. Narrative inquiry is also founded in the poststructuralist paradigm, in which the social reality is viewed as constructed and fluid and the use of language as transparent medium is problematized [ 22 , 23 ]. Post-modernism and post-structuralism called into question the researcher’s authority in knowing or asserting knowledge for the reason that an objective reality is challenged. The position of the researcher and respondent is reconceptualized as bounded to a specific context, situation, and time. Narrative researchers embrace the particular experiences of actors to understand them within specific places at specific times [ 24 , 25 ]. The interview is a discourse which is jointly constructed between the researcher and the respondent [ 26 ]. Narratives are therefore interactively produced and interpreted in the interaction between researcher and respondent. At the same time, creating narratives also constitutes to someone’s identity and experiences [ 18 ].

Furthermore, language is no longer perceived as value-neutral. People may not hear a sentence through the same meaning-frame and may therefore understand words differently than was intended by the speaker [ 23 ]. Each word has so many meanings that we cannot say only what we intend to say but unconsciously say more [ 24 ]. The meanings of interview questions and answers are not fixed but instead emerge, develop, are shaped by, and in turn shape, the discourse [ 26 ]. In qualitative research, words spoken by respondents will be edited and filtered through the lens of the researcher and their framework: The researcher hears the meanings of words through their own knowledge framework. It is therefore important to place the research content, the researcher, and the analysis process within the social and cultural context [ 27 ]. Although each interview is always inevitably a collaborative construction, the authentic voice of the narrator should be at the forefront [ 28 ].

In summary, the influences of constructivism, post-structuralism, and post-modernism led to the conception that a (narrative) interview is bounded to the specific context, situation, and time in which it takes place. Contextual information can thus enrich the interpretation of interview data. The stories shared by a respondent are also filtered through the interpretation lens of the researcher, and therefore, the background and meaning-frame of the researcher are inherently part of the research process and should be made explicit.

3.1.2. Using an Open Style of Interviewing

One major pitfall in conventional qualitative research is to ask “sociological questions” instead of simple questions related to life experiences, which results in brief reports instead of detailed and longer stories [ 26 , 29 ]. Instead, one of the unique characteristics of the narrative methodology is its focus on an open interview approach, in which the interviewee feels free to express themselves [ 30 ]. A question-response structure is avoided, and the responses of the interviewee are not restructured or reformulated, in order to minimalize the influence of the interviewer [ 12 ]. In this way, the interviewer enables the interviewee to tell their story in his own way [ 31 ]. The interview agenda is open to input and change depending on the interviewee’s experiences [ 32 ]. In conventional forms of interviewing, the narrative flow of a respondent is often interrupted by questions from the interviewer. In narrative interviews, the respondents should instead be enabled to talk freely and spontaneously about their experiences [ 27 ]. An open, non-directive question encourages the natural flow of telling and invites the respondent to speak from a temporal account [ 22 ].

An open narrative interviewing style will elicit experiences of the whole personhood, rather than smaller accounts of, for example, illness [ 15 ]. Interpretation and content should be based on the interviewee’s perspectives throughout the whole narrative research process, including by using the person’s own words [ 30 ]. Such inductive narratives open up fresh and humane ways of accessing the life worlds of clients [ 11 ].

The role of the interviewer is to actively listen and facilitate the interviewee in sharing their story by encouraging them verbally , by humming, affirmative statements, or asking clarifying questions; and non-verbally for example, by nodding, facial expressions and adopting a position of attentive listening [ 12 ]. Only when an interviewer listens non-judgmentally and there is mutual trust, the respondent will be able to express themselves freely [ 30 ]. The interviewer should therefore follow ethics such as respect, mutuality, and openness to multiple voices and negotiation [ 24 ].

Fritz Schütze and Gabriele Rosenthal developed with their colleagues from the German Bielefeld Sociologists’ Working Group a clear method for open narrative interviewing within biographical research to present a whole life story regardless of the thematic focus [ 33 , 34 ]. This method, which is used widely nowadays, was developed originally to study the lives of holocaust survivors and Nazi soldiers [ 33 , 34 , 35 ]. When people are invited to tell their story at length and in their own way, they reveal what is important to them and unfold the “gestalt” informing their life. The open narrative interview method consists of two phases. In the first phase, the interviewer poses one single, open, initial question which is also an invitation: “Please, tell me your story”, which can be related to a particular topic. Thereafter, the interviewer should not interrupt the narration but maintains eye contact and makes encouraging sounds and comments. The researcher may note down some key words to remember questions that can be asked later on. In the second phase, the interviewer first poses internal questions on subjects that have been mentioned by the respondent, following the thematic structure of the story. Additionally, some external questions can be posed about topics which have not been mentioned yet. At all times, questions asking for an opinion or a reason should be avoided. In short, four principles are leading in the open narrative interview: (a) using open-ended questions, the more open the better; (b) eliciting detailed and particular stories; (c) avoiding “why” questions, as these interrupt the flow of the interviewee; (d) following up on the respondent’s wording, ordering and phrasing to retain their framework of meaning [ 23 , 33 , 34 , 35 ].

This type of open narrative interviewing was used as the basis for the development of two closely related narrative methods: the biographic-narrative interpretive method (BNIM) and the free association narrative interviewing (FANI) technique. Similar to the original method, BNIM uses a single question aimed at inducing narrative: a minimalist-passive narrative-inducing question with no further interruption of the respondent resulting in multiple particular incident narratives within a long narration [ 36 , 37 , 38 ]. Optionally one or two sub-sessions can follow depending on the nature of the research, in which probing questions arising from the first session can be asked [ 36 , 37 , 38 ]. Hollway and Jefferson (2001; 2012) adapted the open narrative interviewing method in their free association narrative interviewing technique (FANI). On the basis of psychoanalysis, Hollway and Jefferson look for social and psychological explanations of conscious and unconscious behavior about which the respondents tell a deeper story of the underlying emotional dynamics and formative experiences. Free associations are used to elicit deeper meanings and underlying explanations, through both the contents of the story told, and on the relationship established between the respondent and the researcher [ 39 , 40 , 41 ].

In summary, an open narrative interview structure based on one open invitation is proposed in narrative literature to invite respondents to talk about their experiences freely. The role of the interviewer is to listen and encourage the respondent to elaborate further. After the first part of the interview in which the interviewer interferes as little as possible, a second part can follow in which additional questions for clarification, concrete examples and additional topics can be posed.

3.1.3. Transcription

There are several ways to recount or record qualitative data with regard to (narrative) interviews, such as field notes, transcripts of digital audio-files, and working directly from digital files [ 42 ]. Transcription refers to “the process of reproducing spoken words, such as from an audiotaped interview, into written text” [ 43 ]. Transcripts are described as having some advantages over field notes, as field notes are less precise and detailed, with the risk of simplistic interpretation. An interview transcript is more complete and more reliable as the interview can be analyzed in more detail, by multiple researchers [ 42 ] and the transcription process can deepen insights and understanding [ 44 ]. Any transcription of speech must be seen as a compromise as intonations, emphasis, and non-verbal behavior will be lost in transcription [ 27 ]. Some qualitative researchers therefore choose to work directly from digital audio files to avoid misrepresentation and loss of context, as emotional content, intonation, laughter, and silences are best captured in this way [ 42 , 45 ].

When the choice for transcription is made, a detailed transcription of the recorded narration is used for narrative analysis [ 30 ]. The researcher will write out the whole interview, by typing out both the respondent’s words and those they used themselves to capture the entire interview, including emotions and notable non-verbal signals [ 30 ]. Verbatim transcription is a well-known form of transcription and refers to “the process of reproducing spoken words, such as those from an audiotaped interview, into written text” [ 43 ]. A “clean” or “verbatim” transcript makes the content of the material easy for non-scientific or lay readers to read, although no extra information is included on the form. It captures the chronology of events and evaluative elements in the precise words chosen by the interviewee [ 27 ].

More detailed types of transcription include additional information on the speaker’s use of intonation, pauses, rhythm, hesitations and body language, depending on particular analytical interests [ 27 ]. For example, transcripts produced for conversation analysis can include additional description and symbols to indicate body language such as frowning or gasping, interruptions, the prolongation of sounds, and intonations [ 27 , 46 ]. The unit of discourse approach by Gee is another example, in which the rhythm and structure of speech are included by splitting the transcript into groups of short lines often ending with a fall in voice or a short pause [ 47 , 48 ]. It is less time consuming to create and read the verbatim transcript compared to more advanced types of transcriptions [ 27 ]. The amount of detail needed for the transcription can be determined by bearing in mind the aims of the research [ 49 ].

In summary, digital audio recordings are often used and transcribed into written text afterwards, which is considered a thorough and reliable procedure in qualitative research. Verbatim transcription is often chosen as a compromise to balance scientific rigor with the amount of time and scientific abilities required, when the analysis is primarily focused on the content rather than structural components of the narrative (see Section 3.1.4 . for both options).

3.1.4. Different Types of Analyzing Narratives

Narratives can be analyzed in different ways, in two main dimensions: (a) thematic versus holistic approaches and (b) content versus form (see Figure 1 ) [ 50 ]. Polkinghorne (1995) describes the first dimension as distinguishing “the analysis of narratives” and “narrative analysis” [ 51 ].

Dimensions of analyzing narratives [ 48 ].

• Categorical Content

The analysis of narratives involves a thematic and paradigmatic type of narrative inquiry in which stories are collected as data to analyze the descriptions of common themes or categories across the stories, characters, or settings ( Figure 1 : Categorical Content). This type of analysis functions to generate general themes from a set of narratives and moves from the stories to common elements [ 51 ]. The narratives are primarily seen as the data and thus the starting point of the analysis [ 52 ]. This analytical approach can be chosen when a researcher is primarily interested in a certain problem shared by a group of people [ 50 ]. Within this categorical-content type of analysis, a researcher can either choose to derive the concepts inductively from the data or take a more theoretical position by deriving concepts from previous theories and determining whether these concepts can also be found in the data. The grounded theory method of Glaser and Strauss (1967) is often used when a more theoretical approach is chosen [ 51 , 53 ].

• Holistic Content

The second type of analysis involves the holistic narrative analysis ( Figure 1 : Holistic Content). Descriptions of events and experiences are collected and synthesized into a story that unites and gives meaning to the data. Narrative analysis thus moves from elements to stories. Where a categorical content analysis separates the narrative in themes, the second type of analysis synthesizes the data into a story [ 51 ]. The narrative is seen as the product and end point of the analysis [ 52 ]. The researcher discovers a plot that connects crucial events and other data elements and composes these elements into a whole or story [ 51 ]. Sections of the narrative are holistically interpreted in the context of other parts. This type of analysis is chosen when there is a focus on each person holistically, and the developments of each individual towards the current position, simultaneously embracing the variations among people [ 50 ]. Holistic analysis is widely used in narrative research, and the procedures are described in detail in Section 3.1.4.1 .

• Holistic Form and Categorical Form

Where the first two types of analysis are common in that they are focused on the content of what is told (what, who, why, how), another type of analysis focuses primarily on the form: the structure and progression of the plot, the sequence of the events, the choice of metaphors and phrasing of words. The form can be analyzed both holistically and categorically [ 50 ]. The form is harder to manipulate by the respondent and so implicitly elicit deeper layers of the respondent’s identity. A speaker can be unaware of, or deny something verbally, but hidden emotions come forward based on an analysis of form [ 50 ]. In a well-known example, Labov and Waletzky identified formal structural properties which often recur in narratives and can be used to analyze each element: the abstract, orientation (time, place, situation, and participants), complicating action (what happened), the evaluation (by the narrator), the resolution (how it ended), and the coda (returning to the present) [ 27 , 54 ]. Another example focuses on sections of narratives and analyzes the formulation and repetition of phrases indicating degrees of criticism of respondents to their relatives or the emotional disturbance surrounding certain events [ 50 ]. Examples in the literature show that substantial analysis skills and abstract interpretation levels are required to conduct such structural types of narrative analysis [ 50 ].

3.1.4.1. Holistic Content Analysis: Restorying

In (holistic) narrative analysis, researchers analyze transcripts and field notes and consequently retell or restory the narratives of the research participants. This process is appropriately called “ restorying ” in narrative research: the process of collecting stories, analyzing them for key elements and then composing and rewriting each story in chronological sequence [ 55 , 56 ]. This creates the difference between first-order narratives–the stories that individuals tell about themselves and their own experiences–and second-order narratives–which researchers construct to make sense of the experiences of respondents [ 27 ]. Rich detail is included about the setting or context in which the experiences of the respondent physically take place [ 55 ]. Restorying involves developing a plot-what the story is about-by linking the data elements into a meaningful whole [ 51 ]. The story plot retrospectively aligns events and actions to make sense of experience [ 57 ].

The general eclectic methodological approach portraiture is closely linked to restorying but originates from a blending of qualitative methodologies such as life history, naturalist inquiry, and ethnographic methods [ 58 ]. Similar to a visual artistic portrait, portraiture captures and represents the research participants and their experiences through the critical lens of the researcher [ 59 ]. It shows a respondent’s experiences holistically and moves beyond the walls of the academia by communicating people’s experiences in understandable language [ 59 , 60 ].

By analyzing, interpreting, and reordering a story, it is unavoidable that the researchers voice is included in the text produced [ 61 ]. To remain close to the voices of the participants, Byrne (2015) used a participant’s words and used writing in the first person from the perspective of the respondent who shared the story [ 61 ]. This kind of restorying, in which researchers base their reports on the participant story and wording, is also called the inductive mode [ 22 ]. Another effective measure to guarantee the voices of the participants are represented well in the final story is member checking [ 28 ]. It is crucial that the researcher reflects on their framework prior to entering the field, including norms, values, and ideological and autobiographical assumptions [ 59 ].

An author can choose to present a narrative from the first, second or third person; and the perspective from which the story is told (respondent or researcher). An advantage of the first person respondent position is that the reader sees the story from the perspective of the participant, which increases feelings of affinity. It also limits the potential to include information or reflection from other viewpoints, however, such as that of the researcher [ 62 ].

Hollway and Jefferson (2001) provide an example of restorying from the free association narrative interviewing technique they developed. After an interview, they drafted a “pen portrait” aimed to make the person come alive to the reader. A pen portrait is largely descriptive, around five pages long, and provides a great deal of information. A two-page form was completed for every respondent, containing standard biodata (age, sex, race, marital status, family, and health) and comments on the themes that emerged [ 39 ]. Another example of a procedure for restorying is the step-by-step guide of Murray and Sools, in which the analysis focusing on the storyline of the narrative is separated from three other stages: the interactional analysis focused on the positioning of the storyteller, the contextual analysis, and a comparative analysis between cases [ 63 ].

In short, narratives can be analyzed holistically or categorically, with a primary focus on either the content or the form. In reality the distinctions are less rigid, as researchers use combinations of different types of analysis. When a study is focused on each individual and focused on the content of narratives, the holistic content analysis is the most legitimate approach. A portrait or second-order narrative is composed of the key elements, often chronologically restructured. The whole is seen as a sum of its parts, and rich detail is included. In an inductive mode, the wording of the respondent can be followed to remain close to the voice of the respondent.

3.1.5. From Theory to Quality Assessment Research: The Role of a Care Professional as Interviewer

A narrative interview is always a joint product of both the participant, as data supplier, and the researcher, as data collector and analyst [ 14 ]. The participant interprets their experiences by telling a story in an interview, and when the researcher analyses the stories told, they make a new interpretation, a new story [ 13 ]. The interviewer is also involved in the interaction and the questions posed to the interviewee. So the interviewer both shapes and is shaped by the context they study [ 24 ]. Why, to whom, and how the story is been told determines what the story is about [ 64 ]. A researcher’s inherent subjectivities matter in an interview, including background characteristics, values, beliefs, and emotions. Rather than treating the interviewer as an objectified neutral party in the interview, the influence of the researcher’s personality should be accepted as centrally involved in the research process, and therefore made explicit [ 65 ].

It is argued that there are both advantages and disadvantages to being an insider-researcher [ 66 ]. Advantages include speaking the same language, understanding local values and knowledge, and knowing the formal and informal power structure [ 66 ]. Insider researchers from the nursing professions benefit from social skills [ 67 , 68 , 69 , 70 ], reflection abilities [ 68 ], and their more equal position with clients, compared to academic clinicians, psychiatrists and perhaps academic researchers [ 68 ].

Disadvantages related to the insider-position might include the role duality, an assumed knowledge of the participant’s views, and overlooking certain routine behaviors [ 66 , 71 ]. Several measures should be taken to prevent role confusion or a blurring of role boundaries between the insider researcher and the respondents [ 65 ]. Measures include clearly defining the interviewing role and noting professional background [ 70 , 72 ], not wearing a clinical uniform [ 70 ], and providing a transparent explanation of confidentiality issues, including specifying the persons with whom the data will be shared [ 71 ].

Care professionals are discouraged from interviewing their own clients as they might feel forced to participate and it might prompt clients to give socially desirable answers due to their care dependence [ 72 , 73 , 74 ]. It is also advised that interviewers consider doing the research at a different site, but in a similar setting [ 71 ]. One nurse researcher favored the position of being both an insider and outsider by studying clients on another ward and noted that these unfamiliar clients seemed open and honest [ 68 ].

There might be dilemmas during interviews when a care professional is asked to intervene or provide assistance [ 67 , 72 ]. Care professionals must decide how to respond if intervention is not immediately needed: (a) step out of the researcher role and intervene or (b) remain in the researcher role and refer the client to professionals elsewhere [ 67 ]. If direct intervention is needed, the care professional should document the event and the reasons for intervening [ 72 ]. To minimize ethical dilemmas related to role diffusion, care professionals need to consciously reflect on their dual roles when interviewing [ 68 ]. The interviewer has to truly understand and internalize the purpose and value of being a researcher and the research process [ 75 ]. Role play could help researchers be better prepared for dilemmas and similar situations, and discussion with colleagues during the data collection can be beneficial [ 76 ].

In summary, care professionals are habituated in specific care contexts and can therefore be defined as “insider researchers”. Their insider position provides both advantages and certain challenges. Care professionals taking on the role of insider researcher are therefore discouraged from interviewing their own clients and encouraged to make both their professional background and their role as interviewer explicit. Role play and discussion with colleagues can be beneficial in concretizing ways to deal with ethical dilemmas.

3.2. Development of a Narrative Quality Instrument

Based on the literature synthesized in the first section of the results, a new quality instrument is developed to collect narratives from older adults receiving long-term care. Table 1 summarizes the main design principles derived from the literature, which are included in the new narrative quality instrument.

Overview of the design principles used for the narrative quality instrument.

Care professionals will take on the role of insider researchers and interview older adults with whom they do not have a care relationship. Care professionals receive a training to be prepared for performing the interviewing role, such as practicing narrative interviewing skills and analyzing the narratives. The open narrative interviewing method is followed to allow older adults to talk freely. After the open invitation “You have been receiving care at organization X for a while. Please tell me about this.” the flow of a natural conversation is followed. The interviewer will be instructed to not introduce any further themes but to keep the conversation going so that it follows the flow of a natural conversation. Non-verbal body language and verbal cues from the wording and phrasing of the respondent will be used to invite them to continue speaking.

When the older adult seems to have finished their story, the interview moves into the second stage. In the second part of the interview, probing questions can be posed to supplement information shared by the older adult using their own wording. Some probing questions will be tailored specifically towards care provision and possible areas for improvement to make the narratives suitable for quality research. Interviews are audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim afterwards, and used to create a holistic portrait of each interviewed older adult.

As the narrative method can elicit the individual and diverse experiences of older adults from their position in the lifeworld, narratives can provide a rich description from the older adult’s perspective on their own life and, specifically, the care provided. Care professionals can use the newly developed instrument to discover and collect the experiences of older adults receiving long-term care from an inductive perspective following the narrative methodology. The collected narratives can be used for a variety of purposes, including team reflection to achieve improvement in quality towards person-centered care. A detailed description of the instrument “The story as a quality instrument” is included in the Appendix A .

4. Discussion

There is a need in Dutch long-term care practice for older adults for a scientifically substantiated qualitative instrument to evaluate client experiences of the care provided from an insider’s perspective [ 9 , 10 , 77 ]. Narratives can provide a rich description of an older adult’s life from their own point of view and, specifically, the care provided [ 11 ]. Using a narrative approach means that older adults are likely to talk in a natural and unstructured way about the events that matter to them most [ 16 , 17 ]. In the current study, a theoretical approach was used to develop and substantiate a practical narrative quality instrument to discover the experiences of older adults receiving long-term care. “The story as a quality instrument” was developed to collect narratives for quality research based on the theoretical principles and techniques of narrative research. Care professionals will take on the role of insider researchers and interview older adults with whom they do not have a care relationship. Care professionals receive training to prepare them for performing the interviewing role, for example, practicing narrative interviewing skills and analyzing the narratives. The open narrative interviewing method is followed to allow older adults to talk freely. After one open invitation, the flow of a natural conversation is followed. In the second part of the interview, probing questions can be posed to supplement information. Interviews are audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim afterwards and used to create a holistic portrait of each interviewed older adult.

There are issues related to the future implementation of the developed instrument, which must be explored in more depth. Prior to the execution of the instrument, the care organization needs to determine the goal(s) towards which the quality instrument will be deployed. In addition to quantitative forms of quality measurement for external accountability, this instrument can be used to uncover relevant insights into care provision. The narratives can be used for quality research on an individual level , for a whole location or team, or even a whole care organization . In the second or third case, the portraits can be used by care professionals to determine relevant themes and areas for improvement in the care process and policy more generally, thus transcending individual care by formulating team goals, proposing follow-up actions, and making policy changes. This has implications for information provision prior to the interviews and the degree of comfort with which clients will share their experiences. When the instrument is used to improve the individual care of the clients interviewed, the portraits will not remain anonymous for the care professionals who are going to work on the issues. Clients might therefore be less open and more careful in what they share, fearing negative consequences for care relationships or the care provided. Older adults in particular find it hard to share (negative) feedback and tend to avoid complaining [ 78 ]. When narratives are used for quality research at the team or location level, identifying information such as names and revealing hobbies or interests can be removed. Clients might feel more able to speak freely and share negative experiences when confidentiality is strived for. Complete anonymity might still not be possible due to the uniqueness of individual stories, and therefore, it is important to discuss with respondents which target audiences will use the stories for what purpose and ask for consent [ 79 ].

Another issue regarding implementation concerns which care professionals can be invited as insider researchers applying the quality instrument. A variety of long-term care professions focus on older adults, including care aides, nurses, and occupational therapists organizing daily activities. The focus and content of the required education differs between these professions, from more practical training to more academic and theoretical orientation. In addition to formal education, certain individuals might fit better with narrative interviewing based on their personality, interests, and capabilities. Some basic interview and analyzing skills are required for proper application of the instrument. Adopting an open and inviting approach so as not to steer older adults in a certain direction is important to enable the interviewees to speak freely and to ensure sufficient quality of the narrative information. Some analytic skills and writing abilities are minimally necessary to develop a portrait which is non-judgmental or prejudiced and covers the relevant information shared. The training aims to create opportunities for practicing and developing these required skills, for example, by providing detailed instructions for the data collection procedures and by scheduling trial exercises with colleagues. Other measures taken to guarantee the quality of the data collection process include peer reflection during the quality research and analyzing the same narrative in pairs to learn from the different viewpoints. It is still possible that some individuals or specific professions are better equipped to interview or create a portrait than others.

Finally, one of the conditions for the proper execution of the instrument concerns sufficient time available to attend the training and undertake and analyze the interviews. When care professionals play a central role in quality research, it gives them extra responsibility in their—already busy—schedule. Undertaking the training and three narrative interviews will take around 25 h of work, if the transcription is outsourced to a transcription agency. The quality framework for nursing home care encourages an atmosphere in which continuous learning and team development are central [ 10 ]. At the same time, several studies note the tight work schedule and high work pressure in nursing home care [ 80 , 81 , 82 ]. Future implementation will demonstrate whether the costs of the instrument balance against the benefits for the care professionals and care organizations using the instrument.

4.1. Strengths and Limitations

The study has some strengths and limitations. One strength concerns the theoretical approach used to develop a quality instrument to ensure a thorough and valid procedure for data collection. A substantial number of qualitative quality instruments are more pragmatically developed using a practical approach without a theoretical foundation without evidence regarding validity, reliability, and user experiences [ 19 ]. The study resulted in a relatively straightforward instrument which can be applied in practice for a variety of purposes, from the micro-care process to team learning and bottom-up innovation at the location level. The instrument was developed in order to interview older adults who are physically and mentally capable of describing their care experiences themselves. An observational method might be more suitable for older adults with non-congenital brain damage, mental decline, or physical conditions hindering them from talking about their experiences or, alternatively, an instrument focused on the experiences of relatives.

The manual search procedure is a drawback of the study design. Although the search procedure, including search terms and the focus of the review, was described in detail in the method section, it was carried out manually, meaning that some relevant studies might have been missed which would have been included with a more systematic search procedure. The included literature was not assessed on quality criteria, which could have provided the reader with more insight into its methodological quality.

4.2. Future Research

Several topics for future work arise from this study. A systematic procedure for narrative data collection and analysis was developed based on the academic literature. The current study did not include empirical testing of the instrument developed. A follow-up study evaluating the empirically testing and execution of the instrument will provide more insights into the feasibility and usability of the instrument in practice. Another necessary next step for the appropriate use of the portraits concerns the development of an approach to actually use the narrative portraits for team reflection to achieve quality improvement. Action is the missing link in the literature, as client experiences should not only be heard but also acted upon [ 20 ]. This requires a systematic approach to use client information for quality improvement efforts across teams and the organization [ 20 ]. This approach can best be designed in co-creation with stakeholders (e.g., care professionals, quality employees, and client representatives), to ensure that their needs and conditions are taken into account [ 83 , 84 ]. Finally, whether the instrument can be used in other settings (e.g., in the curriculum of studies for future care professionals) and for other client groups receiving care could be explored.

5. Conclusions

A theoretical approach was adopted in this study to develop and substantiate the narrative quality instrument “The story as a quality instrument”. The open narrative interviewing method is selected for structuring the interview, followed by a holistic narrative analysis resulting in individual portraits of older adults. The instrument is deemed promising for practice to collect the narratives of older adults receiving care in a thorough manner, as the instrument is composed of theoretical principles and techniques of narrative research. Empirically testing the feasibility and usability of the instrument is the next step in development. A systematic approach must be taken in the future to translate narrative portraits into actions targeting quality improvement in the long-term care of older adults.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Beatriz Roman for her contributions to the related previous study which took place from 2016–2018. Beatriz Roman and Katrien Luijkx performed an empirical study focused on narrative quality research in long-term care for older adults. This previous work laid the foundation for the current article.

Appendix A. Description of “The Story as a Quality Instrument”

This section describes the characteristics of the instrument “The story as a quality instrument” in detail. Care professionals will be appointed as insider researchers to achieve individual and collective learning, increase understanding of client perspectives, benefit from their contextual knowledge, and gain support for the measures taken in the quality research. Following the advice of previous insider researchers, care professionals will be instructed to interview older adults with whom they do not have a care relationship [ 72 , 73 , 74 ] and who are ideally clients from a different team [ 68 , 71 ]. This will create a safe interview environment and reduce the likelihood that older adults will give socially desirable answers.

The care professional will start the interview by introducing themselves and their professional background, and highlighting their interviewing role [ 70 , 72 ]. They will explain that the respondent can talk about their experiences freely. The confidentiality of the conversation and the use of the information will be explained, for example, that identifiable information such as the respondent’s name and the names of anyone mentioned will be removed from the transcript [ 71 ]. The reason for audio-recording will be explained. The interviewer will offer the opportunity to ask any questions and will ask the older adult to sign an informed consent statement to confirm their willingness to be interviewed. The narrative interview can then formally start.

The open interview approach of the biographical narrative interviewing method is used as the main foundation for the interview process [ 23 , 35 ]. To allow the older adult to talk about their experiences freely, the interview will be based on one simple open invitation: “You have been receiving care at organization X for a while. Please tell me about this.” The interviewer will be instructed to not introduce any further themes but to keep the conversation going so that it follows the flow of a natural conversation. Non-verbal body language such as an active listening position, using eye contact, nodding and humming will be used to assist and encourage the respondent to continue their story. Verbal cues from the wording and phrasing of the respondent will be used to invite them to continue speaking, for example, repeating the respondent’s last sentence, asking a small clarifying question or summarizing what has been said. When the older adult seems to have finished their story, the interview moves into the second stage. In the second part of the interview, probing questions can be posed to supplement information shared by the older adult using their own wording [ 23 , 35 ]. Some probing questions will be tailored specifically towards care provision and possible areas for improvement to make the narratives suitable for quality improvement.

Each interview will be audio-recorded to allow a verbatim transcription of the interview [ 30 ]. After the interview, the interviewer will note down any impressions or insights they had during the interview, in addition to the transcript, such as contextual elements, emotions, or body language [ 30 ]. Using the verbatim transcription, the care professional will analyze the transcript and “restory” the most important themes into a portrait [ 39 , 59 ]. The “portrait” is the analyzed story, so there is a shift of “what has been told” to “what the care professional has heard” [ 27 ]. A reliable representation of the respondent’s story will ideally be achieved by staying close to the respondent’s words, using literal transcription of recordings [ 61 ], and working in pairs on the first analysis to stimulate discussion [ 76 ]. A more inductive mode of restorying will be used [ 22 ]. Any characteristics of the respondent that make the portrait traceable will be removed or rephrased to make the portrait useful for quality improvement.

Training will be provided in three meetings to provide care professionals with the necessary background information and practice interviewing and analyzing skills to use the instrument. This will be provided by a trainer who continually shares feedback on exercises and stimulates care professionals to reflect on their experiences and their role as interviewers. The first training session consists of a combination of explanation and practicing narrative interview techniques. The explanation includes the meaning of quality of care, the difference between quantitative and qualitative methods, the basic theoretical principles of narrative inquiry, and the procedures of “the story as a quality instrument”. Role play is used to let care professionals practice the interview procedures [ 71 ]. After the first training session, the care professionals will carry out two narrative interviews. The second training session is primarily focused on reflection and peer discussion based on the narrative interview experiences [ 76 ]. Care professionals share their experiences with narrative interviewing, reflect on their role as interviewer, analyze the stories, and learn how to draft a portrait. After the second training session, the care professionals will carry out one narrative interview. In the third training session, the care professionals work further on their analysis of the portraits, share their experiences, discuss reliability and validity issues, and discuss the results of the three interviews.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, A.S., M.J., and K.L.; reviewing the literature, A.S.; original draft preparation, A.S.; review and editing, M.J. and K.L. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

The Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport structurally funds the expansion of the knowledge infrastructure in nursing home care. The funder played no role in the design of the study, collection, analysis, or interpretation of data or in writing the manuscript.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Informed consent statement, data availability statement, conflicts of interest.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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• Introduction
• Characteristics

3.  Collecting Individual Stories

4.  restorying, collaborating with participants.