19.5 Narrative

What is the purpose of narrative research?

As you savvy learners have likely surmised, narrative research, often referred to as narrative inquiry, is all about the narrative. For our purposes, narratives will be defined as those stories that we compose that allow us to make meaning of the world. Therefore, narrative inquiry is attempting to develop a rich understanding of what those narratives are, and weave them into a grander narrative that attempts to capture the unique and shared meanings we attach to our individual narratives. In other words, as narrative researchers, we want to understand how we make sense of what happens to us and around us.

As social workers, our profession is well-acquainted with the power of narratives. Michael White and David Epston are social workers you may know of that harnessed this power of narratives in the therapeutic relationship by helping clients to tell and then transform their many-storied lives through narrative therapy. Just as narrative therapy encourages clients to explore the stories in their own lives and the significance they attach to them, narrative inquiry prompts research participants to share the stories they have regarding the topic we are studying. Just as we discussed in our chapter on qualitative data gathering, our aim in narrative inquiry is to elicit and understand stories, whereas narrative therapy is concerned with fostering a therapeutic relationship. Our hope is that narrative studies do, however, help the audience that consumes our research (whether that is providers, other researchers, politicians, community members) to better understand or appreciate the worldview of the population we are studying.

Fraser (2004)^[1] suggests that narrative approaches are particularly well-suited for helping social workers to:

• make sense of language(s) that are used by individuals and groups
• examine multiple perspectives
• better understand human interactions
• develop an appreciation for context
• reduce our role as an expert (we are most called here to be skillful listeners)
• elevate the stories and perspectives of people who may be otherwise be disenfranchised or silenced

Narrative inquiry may be a good fit for your research proposal if you are looking to study some person/groups’ understanding of an event, situation, role, period of time, or occurrence. Again, think about it like a story; what would you form your story plot around. The answer to that gets at the core of your research question for narrative inquiry. You want to understand some aspect of life more clearly through your participant’s eyes. After all, that is what a good story does, transports us into someone else’s world. As a student, you may not be able to access clients directly as research participants, but there are many people around you in your placement, at school, or in the community who may have valuable insights/perspectives on the topic you are interested in studying. In addition, you may be able to access publicly available sources that give you narrative information about a topic: autobiographies, memoirs, oral histories, blogs, journals, editorials, etc. These sources give you indirect information about how the author sees the world —just what you’re looking for! These can become sources of data for you.

What is involved in narrative research?

At the risk of oversimplifying the process of narrative research, it is a journey with stories: finding stories, eliciting stories, hearing and capturing stories, understanding stories, integrating stories, and presenting stories. That being said, each leg of this journey is marked with its own challenges (and rewards!). We won’t be diving deeply into each of these, but we will take time to think through a couple of brief considerations at each of these phases. As you read through these phases, be aware that they reflect the iterative nature of qualitative work that we have discussed previously. This means you won’t necessarily complete one and move on to the next. For instance, you make be in the process of analyzing some of the data you have gathered (phase: understanding stories) and realize that a participant has just blown your mind with a new revelation that you feel like you need to learn more about to adequately complete your research. To do so, you may need to go back to other participants to see if they had similar experiences (phase: eliciting stories) or even go out and do some more recruitment of people who might share in this storyline (phase: finding new stories).

Finding stories

It can feel a bit daunting at first to consider where you would look to find narrative data. We have to determine who possesses the stories we want to hear that will help us to best answer our research question. However, don’t dismay! Stories are all around us. As suggested earlier, as humans, we are constantly evolving stories that help us to make sense of our world, whether we are aware of it or not. Narrative data is not usually just drawn from one source, so this often means thoughtfully seeking out a variety of stories about the topic we are studying. This can include interviews, observations, and a range of other artifacts. As you are thinking about your sample, consult back to Chapter 17 on qualitative sampling to aid you in developing your sampling strategy.

Eliciting stories

So, now you know where you want to get your narrative data, but how will you draw these stories out? As decent and ethical researchers, our objective is to have people share their stories with us, being fully informed about the research process and why we are asking them to share their stories. But this just gets our proverbial foot in the door. Next, we have to get people to talk, to open up and share. Just like in practice settings, this involves the thoughtful use of well-planned open-ended questions. Narrative studies often involve relatively unstructured interviews, where we provide a few broad questions in the hopes of getting people to expound on their perspective. However, we anticipate that we might need to have some strategic probes to help prompt the storytelling process. We also might be looking to extract narrative data from artifacts, in which case the data is there, we just need to locate and make sense of it.

Hearing and capturing stories

We need to listen! While we are trained in the art of listening as social workers, we need to make sure that we are clear what we are listening for. In narrative research we are listening for important narrative detail. Fraser (2004)^[2] identifies that it is important to listen for emotions that the story conveys, the evolution or unfolding of the story, and last but not least, our own reactions. Additionally, we need to consider how we will capture the story—will we record it or will we take field notes? Again, we may be drawing narrative data from artifacts. If this is the case, we are “listening” with our eyes and through our careful review of materials and detailed note-taking.

Understanding stories

As we are listening, we are attending to many things as we go through this part of the analysis: word choice and meaning, emotions that are expressed/provoked, context of what is being shared, themes or main points, and changes in tone. We want to pay attention to both what the story is and how is it being told.

Integrating stories

Part of the work (and perhaps the most challenging part) of narrative research is the bringing together of many stories. We aim to look across the stories that are shared with us through the data we have gathered and ultimately converge on a narrative that honors both the diversity and the commonality that is reflected therein, all the while tracking our own personal story and the influence it has on shaping the evolving narrative. No small task! While integrating stories, Fraser (2004)^[3] also challenges us to consider how these stories coming together are situated within broader socio-political-structural contexts that need to be acknowledged.