The concept of narrative interview implies a concept based on a person’s ability to tell. The story is a means of transmitting information, the basis of human relationships. The main goal of any type of narrative interview is to identify the biographical processes characteristic of a particular person or group. They come to light from the point of view of the storytellers themselves.
Wide understanding
In a broader sense, this is the perception of qualitative information that relates to any area of public life. As a rule, we are talking about problems that are associated with reforms and changes. The prerequisites for narrative interviews and interviews are that the person possesses certain knowledge, skills in the issue of building a story, and also in reproducing his own biography. The story has the same structure as the life process of the individual. In essence, this is the crystallization of all the experience he has experienced at a given point in time.
Homology in a narrative interview is possible only if the informant spoke about the events of his own life, and not someone else's. The main principle of this presentation is the inability to prepare for the story. In this case, the person focuses less on the need to present himself.
Of paramount importance in the analysis of narrative interviews, in it itself is noted the notion of what rules and principles the narrator is guided by. It also reveals how holistic and complete he presented the text. The points are noted at which the narrator focuses his attention; according to the examples cited by him in a narrative interview, a lot of personality is determined in the analysis. It also determines how consistent the story is.
At the initial stage of a narrative interview, the most important task is to turn the interviewee into a narrator. For this, the specialist resorts to a number of tricks.
The survey begins, the main story, then follow up with additional questions regarding the points mentioned during the narration. Narrative interview concludes with explanations, evaluations.
Application
Quite often, this technique is used to interview groups of citizens, including the unemployed, the homeless, undergoing treatment in psychiatric clinics, participants in armed conflicts, and so on. Narrative interviews in sociology are widely used in studies of marginalized groups that differ in deviant behavior.
Development
In clinical psychology, Sigmund Freud had a great influence on the development of the field. Developing methods for the study of personality, he identified the rules that allow you to get the most information. He introduced “free floating attention” into the technique of narrative interviews. It reflected the attitude of the respondent to the heard story. Influenced the development of technology and J. Bruner. He revealed a close relationship between the experience and the story about it.
Fischer-Rosenthal confirmed the argument that the narrative coincides with the constructed identity of the person.
the main objective
The interviewer’s task is to get the story as detailed as possible. It should break up into separate sequences. Not in all cases they may coincide with the course of events. However, sequences should be embedded in the narrative logic.
To get such a story, it makes sense to familiarize yourself with narrative interview samples. But the most important thing here is to catch the main idea. It is necessary to stimulate a person with a question that will form a response frame.
Start example
It is appropriate to start a narrative interview, for example, with the question: "How was your life until the moment you adopted Islam?" A question will also suit, depending on the goals of the interviewer: “Tell us, how did your childhood years go?”
These questions clearly enough draw a frame in which the answer will be built. In the first case, the experience of life as a Muslim is examined, and in the second, in the role of a child. These narrative interview examples emphasize that a procedural narrative is expected. In response, a detailed story should follow. Do not interrupt the interviewee. The main thing is to support the course of the narration, right down to its codes, mimically or interjectively. So ends the first part of the interview.
Ending
The second part includes a survey with further clarification of the details of what was heard. If something is unclear, you need to use the vocabulary of the narrator. Questions are usually prepared in advance in the form of a guide. During the survey, they are asked in a certain sequence, given the logic of the biography.
The survey ends with the narrator returning at the moment questions about evaluating past events from their current position. The main task here is to consider how a person interprets the experience in the context of modernity. An example of a narrative interview with such an ending might be the question: “How do you feel about what happened then?”
As a rule, such a survey ends with coda, the main meaning of the story. Usually record the course of the story on the recorder to identify intonations. In examples of decoding narrative impulses in an interview, line-by-line numbering of story lines is found. This is done for convenience in analysis.
Principles of Approach
Before analyzing the story, it is important to identify the main principles of the approach. During the reconstruction of a biography based on an interview, the researcher necessarily relies on several principles. First, he does not formulate hypotheses and theories unambiguously, allowing for many interpretations. He also takes into account the fact that in any example of decoding the narrative impulse in the interview there is a semantic core in which the main meaning of the narrative will be expressed.
The interviewer has a central task - to determine gestalt, the framework underlying the narrative. Since any sequence has something in common with gestalt, the researcher tries to determine its place and role in the final story.
In addition, the researcher explains what rules are followed by the story of his biography, what were the different periods of life, the decision-making process. The narrative itself expands or narrows at the choice of the narrator. And thanks to this, it is revealed what is most important for him, what values drive him as a person.
The purpose of deciphering the narrative is the recognition of the singularity and representativeness of cases, the restoration of latent meaning, which the narrator may not understand himself. The meaning is also derived from the rethinking of the experience.
About Included Observation
It is used by the researcher during surveys of this type. It is important to consider that the included observation and narrative interviews are classified as qualitative research methods. Included observation is aimed at studying the personality in its natural environment. The researcher is free from external control. This method is used to learn more about a person’s motivation.
Included observation and narrative interviews can be used in different ways. After all, the role of the researcher may be different.
Step by step
In total, 6 steps are taken during such studies. At the first, the initial life data of a person is analyzed, a biogram is built, which is used to analyze the text.
In the second step, the first assumptions are made regarding personality identity. The researcher takes into account acquaintance, uses his own knowledge in the field of sociology, historical contexts. Be sure to distance yourself from the text itself and the narrator’s assessment. Separately, the narrative of experience and the line of events itself differ.
At this step, a special analysis method is used. The biography is read in full, and then, during a group discussion, the chronology of events is restored, putting forward a version of what the essence of the narrative “I” is. For example, it can be “a successful girl who overcomes difficulties”, “a unique personality, unique in its internal content”.
In the third step, the entire narrative is analyzed, which focuses on the restoration of gestalt autobiography. The researcher determines narrative sequences, answering the question, for what reason they are arranged in this sequence. It takes into account why the storyteller changes one topic to another, why he chose just the end of his own narrative.
It is important to pay attention to the features of speech, which contain keys to answers to these questions. These can be “later”, “suddenly” markers, final phrases. The coda contains the entire ultimate meaning of the narrative. This is a kind of inference, an argument that leads to the end of sequences. The coda is associated directly with the present tense and the general course of the narrative.
In the fourth step, the biogram and narrative are compared with the context of the story. The researcher identifies the reason why a person deviates from the sequence in the narrative, on which he draws attention, and what omits as insignificant. By identifying what triggered this behavior, you can find the key to understanding the personality.
At the fifth step, text fragments are analyzed in detail. When analyzing individual sequences, it is necessary to identify key categories that directly describe the experience of a person. As a result, the image of the narrative "I" is largely refined, reconstructed on the basis of individual passages of the story. For example, it is worth paying attention to certain points, such as helping a brother in overcoming negative circumstances in the school years of his life.
It is worth focusing on sequence codes - for example, if a person says: “I coped with the curriculum, despite the fact that it was difficult,” the code is the assessment of the educational process as a completed stage.
The analysis technique consists in highlighting the biography story by events, after which it is determined with what emotions the person told it, this allows you to determine what was most significant and what was insignificant. Then the researcher, having determined the code, interprets the events directly presented during the survey.
At the sixth step, the idea of the narrative “I” is clarified, the image of which has already been formed in the course of the previous steps. There is a version check about the reasons for switching topics, choosing some event series as the most significant. The version of the reason for crowding out some memories is evaluated and verified - for example, health problems are omitted in the course of stories about successes in the professional field. After all this, the researcher is engaged in determining the type of biographical story.
Interesting Facts
A man is born without knowing anything about himself. He receives all information about his own body, personality from others, discovering his own strengths and weaknesses, affirming himself and choosing a model of behavior. To create yourself is to write your own life story. It goes, and in the course of various events, a person gives it a certain meaning, taking into account the facts that are built into the picture of the world that already exists in it, taking into account the attitude towards oneself.
The most banal example: for example, the controller fined Ivan and Alexei. Ivan thought that he was unlucky in life. While Aleksey was quite pleased with the situation - he went without a ticket for several months, and this is the first controller. In the same situation, one is a failure and the other is a winner.
If a person does not take himself into his own hands, his picture of the world will be determined by what surrounded him in childhood. So, Alex grew up in a poor family, was ill, but then opened his own business and began to earn a lot, he began to be considered a successful person in society. In his recollections of childhood failures, he broadcasts: “I am used to overcoming obstacles.” While Ivan was also often ill, family members called him “a poor child,” “a misunderstanding.”
In school, he was actively criticized. When a person hears the same thing many times, he begins to believe in it - this is how the psyche works. In the end, he believed that what was said was true. He also opened a business, but all this seems to him an accident, since he does not fit into the picture of the world of a loser. In the biography, according to Ivan, events will indicate that he is a victim.
The life of each person includes many events, but he focuses on those that fit into his narrative. Specialists call such events dominant. And if they contradict the picture of the world, they are attributed to chance. However, randomness is not accidental.
For example, a 14-year-old Lisa has a story about how she is shy and closed. She remembers the moment when during the distribution of roles for theatrical production, she felt an acute desire to take part, but did not say so. A couple of months before that, she applied for participation in a television show, met with a new company. However, she omitted these moments, since Lisa is shy in her own narrative, and she did not pay attention to such episodes.
Narrative methods appeared in the 1980s in Australia, but they reached Russia only in the 21st century. They are actively used during family psychotherapeutic sessions - at the moment they are a priority in this area.
A man writes his life story himself. But those around him are constantly trying to remake the personality; the attitudes prevailing in society also affect them. In different communities, the concepts of what is normal and what is not differ. In any society there are many social institutions - scientific, religious and so on. And they actively broadcast their installations, for example, "everyone builds his own paradise himself" or "paradise will be only in the afterlife", "wealth is bad."
A person is inclined to agree with the tenets of the culture in which he lives. So, a woman who constantly performs plastic surgery on her body lives with the attitude broadcast by society: "Happiness is attainable only for those who have an ideal body." The image of an ideal body is broadcast by the media. During a narrative interview, the dominant attitudes in the consciousness of the person under study are revealed.