Narrative research is a specific type of qualitative designs in which ‘narrative is understood as a spoken or written text giving an account of an event/action or series of events/actions, chronologically connected’ (Czarniawska, 2004, p. 17). It implies studying one or two individuals, collecting data through their stories in which they report individual experiences, and then chronologically ordering the meaning of the experiences (Creswell et al., 2007, p. 240). Narratives may have a guiding theoretical lens or perspective (e.g. a feminist lens).
According to Creswell (2007), various forms of narrative study can be found in the narrative research practice, such as:
- biography – the researcher writes about/records the experiences of another person’s life;
- autobiography – the individuals who are the subjects of the study write about/record the experiences of their lives;
- life histories – portrayals of an individual’s whole life;
- oral histories or personal-experience stories – a study of someone’s personal reflections of events, and their causes and effects, collected from one or several individuals (Plummer, 1983).
The narrative study procedure implies:
- determining if the research problem or question best fits the narrative study;
- selecting one or two individuals of interest to the study and having them tell their stories (field texts), thus collecting raw data. The field texts may include a record of their stories in a journal or diary. The researcher may also observe them, and record field notes, or collect letters sent by them, gather documents about them, stories about them from family members, photographs, etc.;
- collecting information about the context of these stories (the participants jobs, homes, culture, historical contexts, etc.);
- the researcher analyses the participant’s stories searching for key elements, and orders them into a chronological presentation. It is this chronology with an emphasis on the sequence that represents the distinctive feature of narrative research. The final story might include the elements typically found in novels, such as time, place, plot, and scene;
- collaborating with participants by actively involving them in the research and negotiating the meaning of stories with them to add to the validity of the analysis (Creswell & Miller, 2000).
These narrative research procedures and characteristics make this research design challenging to use – an extensive amount of information needs to be collected, the context of the individual’s life needs to be clearly understood, active collaboration with the participant is mandatory, a keen eye is needed to identify the particular stories that capture the individual’s experiences in the gathered source material, and the researcher has to be reflective about their own personal and political background, which determines how they present the participant’s stories (Creswell, 2007, p. 57).
Additional source of information: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKTH5_k50vM&t=37
