Lecture 10 Flashcards
Narrative analysis
Coding often is the central exercise in qualitative analysis
BUT:
Through coding, data may become fragmented and decontextualised
- Narratives are a means to make sense to others or to oneself (questions about audience become important)
- Narrative research focuses on “the ways in which people make and use stories to interpret the world”
- Enable study of lived experience (=phenomenology), what subjective meaning people confer onto this experience
- Importance of context
- Research with narrative (focus on content) versus research on narrative (focus on language)
⇒ ‘narrative turn’ or ‘linguistic turn’ in social sciences led to increased focus on language as vehicle through which meaning is communicated.
Thematic Narrative Analysis
which topics (how topics change within narratives of AA members after becoming a member)
(more on notes)
Structural Narrative Analysis
how the story is told (different stories can be structurally the same – Labov, f.e. fairytales)(more on notes)
Interactional
how the story is produced or co-created by the speaker and listener (example: patient narratives for diagnosis) (more on notes)
Performative
how the narrative is a performance, and achieves something (for example explaining, apologizing, appealing to one’s core identity) (more on notes)
NARRATIVE ANALYSIS & ONTOLOGY AND EPISTEMOLOGY
Narrative analysis is not interested in whether stories are true or not. Stories are always constructions, but as constructions, they are constitutive of reality as well as of identity. As one particular researcher states: ‘we live storied lifes’. In that sense, stories ARE true, because they make up our world.
Discourse analysis
“a mode of organizing knowledge, ideas, or experience that is rooted in language and its concrete contexts (such as history or institutions)”
Joasia: I remember it until today, and I was very conscious of it, that I really understood that Jesus is my Lord and Saviour. That it’s not about the candles, the singing and the atmosphere, but that’s an important moment in my life, a turning point. I’m not saying I’m not
having difficulties, because it’s very difficult sometimes…
Narrative: girl telling the story of her conversion, presenting her identity in accordance with conventions building her reputation as ‘good believer’
Discourse: discourse of ‘the good Catholic’
What do (critical) discourse analysts do?
- Assumption: authors want to achieve something
- Usually analysis of existing text (i.e.‘documents’)
- Analysis is decoding
- Critical discourse analysis: how language is used to exercise power.
Discursive elements bbc news headlines
- Manipulating numbers and percentages
“Most people ‘want to change their lives’ after Covid19–poll”⇒ how many is ‘most’? - Modality (level of certainty)
“Is there any evidence for coronavirus lab release idea?” - Connotations (positive or negative)
“Is pandemic being used for power grab in Europe?” - Presuppositions (statements that are presented as the truth)
“ This is how depression feels in lockdown” - Audience incorporation
“What can we learn from the WW2 generation?” - Metaphors
“When home gets violent under lockdown in Europe” - Agency
“Farm workers to be flown in from Eastern Europe”
What to study
- how the discourse came into being (the historical dimension)
- how it produces particular social activities within a community of practice (the ethnographic dimension)
- how it legitimizes (includes) certain social practices or excludes other social practices (the sociological dimension)
- how it constructs identities (the psychological dimension)
- how discourses may produce their own resistances (the critical theor y dimension)
Critique: it’s just somebody’s interpretation, but
- There are accepted approaches to per form dif ferent types of analysis.
- Approach can be explained (sample, steps in analysis), so that reader can follow and come to the same conclusions.
- Context of the documents should be taken into account (compare: thick description)
- Other researchers may come to the same conclusion (inter subjectivity increases the trustwor thiness!). Indeed, the number of possible interpretations is rather limited.
⇒ remember quality criteria for qualitative research! (credibility, dependability, transferability, confirmability)
Desirability of mixed methods
The epistemological position
Incompatible epistemological (and ontological) principles of quantitative and qualitative research. Research is embedded in ontological/epistemological beliefs. Quantitative and qualitative research are different paradigms.
The technical (pragmatic) position
quantitative and qualitative research strategies can be combined relative strengths and weaknesses of each for data collection / analysis.
Pragmatic solution
Or: having it both
- Not the paradigm is leading, but the research question
- Especially in practically oriented research (marketing, policy research)
*Note, however, that research interests and questions are often related to particular paradigms(especially in academic research).
Why to use Mixed Methods
see notes
Goals of mixing qual and quant methods:
- Triangulation: multiple methods to corroborate data
- Facilitation: one research strategy facilitates another one (sequential)
- Complementarity: different strategies to cover different aspects of the research project
*Note: mixed methods ≠ multi-method!
