Narrative inquiry or narrative analysis emerged as a discipline from within the broader field of qualitative research in the early 20th century,Riessman, C. K., 1993. "Narrative Analysis" (Newbury Park: Sage Publications). as evidence exists that this method was used in psychology and sociology. Narrative inquiry uses field texts, such as stories, autobiography, journals, field notes, letters, conversations, interviews, family stories, photos (and other artifacts), and life experience, as the units of analysis to research and understand the way people create meaning in their lives as narratives.
Narrative inquiry has been employed as a tool for analysis in the fields of cognitive science, organizational studies, knowledge theory, applied linguistics, sociology, occupational science and education studies, among others. Other approaches include the development of quantitative methods and tools based on the large volume captured by fragmented anecdotal material, and that which is self signified or indexed at the point of capture. Narrative inquiry challenges the philosophy behind quantitative/grounded data-gathering and questions the idea of "objective" data; however, it has been criticized for not being "theoretical enough."Clandinin and Connelly, 42. See also Laurel Richardson, "Narrative and Sociology," in Representation in Ethnography, edited by John Van Maanen (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995). In disciplines like applied linguistics, scholarly work has pointed out that enough critical mass of studies exists in the discipline that uses this theory, and that a framework can be developed to guide its application.
Background
Narrative inquiry is a form of qualitative research, that emerged in the field of management science and later also developed in the field of knowledge management, which shares the sphere of information management.See Narrative case studies were used by Sigmund Freud in the field of psychology, and biographies were used in sociology in the early twentieth century. Thus narrative inquiry focuses on the organization of human knowledge more than merely the collection and processing of data. It also implies that knowledge itself is considered valuable and noteworthy even when known by only one person.
Knowledge management was coined as a discipline in the early 1980s as a method of identifying, representing, sharing, and communicating knowledge.See and Knowledge management and narrative inquiry share the idea of knowledge transfer, a theory which seeks to transfer unquantifiable elements of knowledge, including experience. Knowledge, if not communicated, becomes arguably useless, literally unused.
Philosopher Andy Clark speculates that the ways in which minds deal with narrative (second-hand information) and memory (first-hand perception) are cognitively indistinguishable. Narrative, then, becomes an effective and powerful method of transferring knowledge.
More recently, there has been a "narrative turn" in social science in response to the criticism against the paradigmatic methods of research. It has also been forecasted that soon narrative inquiry will emerge as an independent research method as opposed to being an extension of the qualitative method.
Narrative ways of knowing
Narrative is a powerful tool in the transfer, or sharing, of knowledge, one that is bound to cognitive issues of memory, constructed memory, and perceived memory. Jerome Bruner discusses this issue in his 1990 book, Acts of Meaning, where he considers the narrative form as a non-neutral rhetorical account that aims at "illocutionary intentions", or the desire to communicate meaning.Jerome S. Bruner, Acts of Meaning (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), 85. This technique might be called "narrative" or defined as a particular branch of storytelling within the narrative method. Bruner's approach places the narrative in time, to "assume an experience of time" rather than just making reference to historical time.Donald Polkinghorne, Narrative Knowing and the Human Sciences (Albany: SUNY Press, 1988), 132.
This narrative approach captures the emotion of the moment described, rendering the event active rather than passive, infused with the latent meaning being communicated by the teller. Two concepts are thus tied to narrative storytelling: memory and notions of time; both as time as found in the past and time as re-lived in the present.See Jacques Le Goff, History and Memory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992).
A narrative method accepts the idea that knowledge can be held in stories that can be relayed, stored, and retrieved.Ronald E. Fry, Appreciative Inquiry and Organizational Transformation: Reports from the Field (Westport: CN: Quorum Books, 2002), 166. There is also a view that a critical event can play an important role as creating the context of a narrative to be captured.
Method 1. Develop a research question A qualitative study seeks to learn why or how, so the writer's research must be directed at determining the why and how of the research topic. Therefore, when crafting a research question for a qualitative study, the writer will need to ask a why or how question about the topic. 2. Select or produce raw data The raw data tend to be interview transcriptions, but can also be the result of field notes compiled during participant observation or from other forms of data collection that can be used to produce a narrative.
3. Organize data According to psychologist Donald Polkinghorne, the goal of organizing data is to refine the research question and separate irrelevant or redundant information from that which will be eventually analyzed, sometimes referred to as "narrative smoothing." Some approaches to organizing data are as follows: (When choosing a method of organization, one should choose the approach best suited to the research question and the goal of the project. For instance, Gee's method of organization would be best if studying the role language plays in narrative construction whereas Labov's method would more ideal for examining a certain event and its effect on an individual's experiences.)Riessman, C.K. (1993). "Narrative Analysis". Newbury Park: Sage Publications.Smith C.P. (2000). Content analysis and narrative analysis. In: Reis HT, Judd CM, eds. Handbook of research methods in social and personality psychology. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Labov's: Thematic organization or Synchronic Organization. This method is considered useful for understanding major events in the narrative and the effect those events have on the individual constructing the narrative.Smith C.P. (2000). Content analysis and narrative analysis. In: Reis HT, Judd CM, eds. Handbook of research methods in social and personality psychology. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. The approach utilizes an "evaluation model" that organizes the data into an abstract (What was this about?), an orientation (Who? What? When? Where?), a complication (Then what happened?), an evaluation (So what?), a result (What finally happened?), and a coda (the finished narrative). Said narrative elements may not occur in a constant order; multiple or reoccurring elements may exist within a single narrative.Coffey, A. & Atkinson, P. (1996) Making sense of qualitative data. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
Polkinghorne's: Chronological Organization or Diachronic Organization also related to the sociology of stories approach that focuses on the contexts in which narratives are constructed. This approach attends to the "embodied nature" of the person telling the narrative, the context from which the narrative is created, the relationships between the narrative teller and others within the narrative, historical continuity, and the chronological organization of events. A story with a clear beginning, middle, and end is constructed from the narrative data. Polkinghorne makes the distinction between narrative analysis and analysis of narratives. Narrative analysis utilizes "narrative reasoning" by shaping data in a narrative form and doing an in-depth analysis of each narrative on its own, whereas analysis of narratives utilizes paradigmatic reasoning and analyzes themes across data that take the form of narratives.
Bruner's functional approach focuses on what roles narratives serve for different individuals. In this approach, narratives are viewed as the way in which individuals construct and make sense of reality as well as the ways in which meanings are created and shared. This is considered a functional approach to narrative analysis because the emphasis of the analysis is focused on the work that the narrative serves in helping individuals make sense of their lives, particularly through shaping random and chaotic events into a coherent narrative that makes the events easier to handle by giving them meaning. The focus of this form of analysis is on the interpretations of events related in the narratives by the individual telling the story.
Gee's approach of structural analysis focuses on the ways in which the narrative is conveyed by the speaker with particular emphasis given to the interaction between the speaker and the listener. In this form of analysis, the language that the speaker uses is the focus. This includes the language, the pauses in speech, discourse markers, and other similar structural aspects. In this approach, the narrative is divided into stanzas and each stanza is analyzed by itself and also in the way in which it connects to the other pieces of the narrative.
Jaber F. Gubrium's form of narrative ethnography features the storytelling process as much as the story in analyzing narrativity. Moving from text to field, he and his associate James A. Holstein present an analytic vocabulary and procedural strategies for collecting and analyzing narrative material in everyday contexts, such as families and care settings. In their view, the structure and meaning of texts cannot be understood separate from the everyday contexts of their production. Their two books--"Analyzing Narrative Reality" and "Varieties of Narrative Analysis" provide dimensions of an institutionally-sensitive, constructionist approach to narrative production.
There are a multitude of ways of organizing narrative data that fall under narrative analysis; different types of research questions lend themselves to different approaches. Regardless of the approach, qualitative researchers organize their data into groups based on various common traits.
4. Interpret data Some paradigms/theories that can be used to interpret data: {| class="wikitable" |- ! Paradigm or theory !! Criteria !! Form of theory !! Type of narration |- | Positivist/postpositivist || Universalist, evidence-based, internal, external validity || Logical-deductive grounded || Scientific report |- | Constructivist || Trustworthiness, credibility, transferability, confirmability || Substantive || Interpretive case studies, ethnographic fiction |- | Feminist || Afrocentric, lived experience, dialogue, caring, accountability, race, class, gender, reflexivity, praxis, emotion, concrete grounding || Critical, standpoint || Essays, stories, experimental writing |- | Ethnic || Afrocentric, lived experience, dialogue, caring, accountability, race, class, gender || Standpoint, critical, historical || Essays, fables, dramas |- | Marxism || Emancipatory theory, falsifiability dialogical, race, class, gender || Critical, historical, economic || Historical, economic, sociocultural analyses |- | Cultural studies || Cultural practices, praxis, social texts, subjectivities || Social criticism || Cultural theory as criticism |- | Queer theory || Reflexivity, deconstruction || Social criticism, historical analysis || Theory as criticism, autobiography
Denzin, N.K. & Lincoln, Y.S. (1998) (Eds). Collecting and interpreting qualitative materials. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publication.