Narrative research designs focus on studying the life experiences of individuals through their stories. Researchers collect stories from participants about their lives and experiences, analyze them for themes and context, and then retell the stories in a chronological sequence. Key characteristics include focusing on individual experiences over time, collecting first-person stories, analyzing the stories for themes and context, and collaborating with participants in the research process. Researchers restore or retell the stories in a way that provides insight into the meanings and implications of the individual's experiences.

1. Narrative Research Design
Reference:
John W. Creswell (2012). Educational Research: Planning, Conducting, and
Evaluating Quantitative and Qualitative Research, 4th ed: Pearson Education Inc.
Given, L.M. (2008)nThe SAGE Encyclopedia of qualitative research methods vol. 1 &
2, SAFE inc.: Thousand Oaks, California

2. By the end of this session,
you should be able to:
• Define narrative research and describe when to
use it
• Describe the key characteristics of narrative
designs
• Understand the steps used in conducting
narrative research
• Understand forms of narrative designs

3. What is Narrative Research?
• the term narratives from the verb to narrate or to tell in detail
•a distinct form of qualitative research, a narrative typically focuses on
studying a single person, gathering data through the collection of stories,
reporting individual experiences, and discussing the meaning of those
experiences for the individual (Creswell, 2012)
• illuminate the meaning of a person’s work or life experiences in ways
that help us understand the complexities embedded.
• outcome of narrative research is a researcher-generated story (a
retelling) that answers “How” and “What” questions about the life story
and meaningful experiences that have implications for others
• in anthropology - a life story
• psychology –therapeutic conversation

4.  Narrative Research is closely related to phenomenology as
well as case study research in the family of qualitative
research designs.
 It is distinguished by the life story method, in which
people describe their life experiences via storytelling
 Attention to sequences of action distinguishes narrative
methods from other qualitative approaches.
 Narrative analysts interrogate intention and language—
how and why events are storied, not simply the content to
which language refers.
What is Narrative …?

5. Examples of Types of Narrative
Research Forms
 Autobiographies • Biographies • Life writing • Personal
accounts • Personal narratives • Narrative interviews
 •Personal documents • Documents of life • Life stories
and life histories • Oral histories • Ethnohistories •
Ethnobiographies
 • Autoethnographies • Ethnopsychologies • Person-
centered ethnographies • Popular memories • Latin
American testimonies, polish memoirs

6. Key Characteristics of Narrative Designs
• Individual experiences- social and personal interaction
• Chronology of the experiences- past, present and future
experiences
• Collecting individual stories- first person
• Restoring (or retelling )
• Coding for themes or categories
• Incorporating the Context or setting into the story or themes
• Collaboration with participants- negotiating field texts

7. Individual experiences and chronology
of experiences
Individual experiences - the narrative researcher
 explores experiences of a single individual
 interested in exploring the past and present
experiences of that individual
 interested in how the individual interacts with
others
Chronology of experiences- researcher
 analyzes and writes about an individual life
using a time sequence or chronology of events
 orders these events in a way that makes sense
to a reader

8. Restoyring
• A story in narrative research is a first-person oral telling or
retelling of an individual’s experiences.
• Stories:
 have a beginning, middle, and end
 involve a predicament, conflict, or struggle; a
protagonist or character; and a sequence with implied
causality (a plot) during which the predicament is
resolved in some fashion
 like novels, have time, place, plot, and scene
• Varied sources of data comprise the database.

9. Restorying
The researcher -
 gathers stories and analyzes them for elements of
the story.
 rewrites the story to place it in a chronological
sequence.
 restorying provides a causal link among ideas.
 information would include interaction, continuity,
and situation
The challenge for the researcher is to define the elements
of the person’s stories (the raw data), identify themes,
uncover important sequences, and retell the story in ways
that provide insight (the meaning of the story).

10. The Process of Restorying
• Transcription: Researcher conducts the interview
and transcribes the conversation from an audiotape.
• Retranscription: Researcher identifies the key
elements of the story. Codes are used by the
researcher to identify setting, characters’ actions,
problem, and resolution in the transcript.
• Restorying: Researcher organizes the key codes
into a sequence.

11. The Elements of Restorying
• Context: environment, conditions, time of year
• Characters: individuals in the story described as
archetypes, their behaviors, personalities, patterns
• Actions: movements of individuals through the story
that illustrate behavior of characters
• Problem: questions to be answered
• Resolution: answers to the questions

12. Coding for Themes & Context/Settings
Themes
 provide the complexity of the story
 add depth to the insight about understanding an
individual’s experiences
 can be incorporated into the passage retelling the
individual’s experience or as a separate section of the
study
Context/Setting
– includes the people involved in the story
– includes the physical setting
– setting may be described before events or actions, or can
be woven throughout the study

13. Collaboration with Participants
Collaboration: Inquirer actively involves the
participant in the inquiry as it unfolds.
Strategies
 negotiating relationships
 involving participants in the process of
research
 negotiating transitions in the research process

14. Steps in Narrative Research
Identify a phenomenon
that addresses an
educational problem
Purposefully select an
individual to learn
about the phenomenon
Collaborate with
participant storyteller in
all phases of research
Restory or retell
the individual’s
story
Collect stories from
the individual that
reflect personal experience
Have them
tell story
Collect other
field texts
Build in past,
present, future
Build in place
or setting
Validate the accuracy of
the report
Write a story about the
participant’s personal
and social experiences
Describe their
story
Analyze story
for
themes