Narrative Inquiry

May analyze narratives as texts (structure, plot, voice) from interviews or naturalistic sources, with varying degrees of emphasis on teller collaboration.

Clandinin & Connelly’s three-dimensional space

Narrative inquiry can be mapped along:

1. Temporality — Past, present, and future in the telling; how time is sequenced and given meaning.
2. Sociality — Relationships, dialogue, institutional settings, and power shaping the story.
3. Place — Physical and imagined locations anchoring experience.

Inquiry moves along these dimensions through field texts (transcripts, artifacts), interim texts (shared summaries with participants), and final research texts.

Riessman’s approaches to narrative analysis

Catherine Kohler Riessman distinguishes complementary lenses:

Thematic narrative analysis

Identifies what is told—the content of stories—using codes and themes across narratives. Useful when comparing topics across many accounts.

Structural narrative analysis

Examines how stories are organized—plot, orientation, complication, evaluation, resolution (Labovian elements), emplotment, and genre expectations.

Dialogic / performative analysis

Focuses on co-construction in interview interaction, audience, embodiment, and context of telling. Stories are situated performances, not transparent windows into fixed memory.

Narrative analysis techniques (practical)

• Transcript as poem or stanza — Preserve rhythm and emphasis (with care for representation ethics).
• Sequence charts — Plot events against time claimed vs implied.
• Voice analysis — Who speaks, who is silenced, quoted speech, pronouns.
• Member checking with narrative sensitivity — Invite response without forcing a single “authorized” story.

Storied vs non-storied data

Not all qualitative data arrives as a story. Researchers may:

• Elicit stories through narrative prompts (“Tell me about a time when…”).
• Treat episodic accounts as small stories embedded in conversation.
• Analyze anti-narrative fragments when participants resist coherent plotting—resistance itself is meaningful.

Temporality and plot

• Chronology vs emplotment — Events may be reordered for moral or identity work.
• Turning points — Moments that redefine the “before” and “after.”
• Counter-narratives — Stories that resist dominant cultural scripts.

When to use narrative inquiry vs other methods

Choose narrative inquiry when identity, meaning over time, experience as sequence, or public/cultural stories are central.

Choose phenomenology for essence of a phenomenon with less emphasis on plotted time.

Choose grounded theory for social process theory where narrative may be data but not the primary organizing framework.

Choose thematic analysis when patterns across texts suffice without narrative structure as the main analytic lens.

Ethics

Stories are personal and relational; harm can arise from recognizable detail. Use pseudonyms, composite strategies only with transparent methodology, and informed consent for how stories will be used and stored.

Quality considerations

• Resonance with participants’ sense-making (without collapsing researcher and participant voice).
• Contextualization of tellings (setting, relationship to researcher).
• Reflexivity about how the interview co-produces the narrative.

Key references

• Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, F. M. — Narrative Inquiry.
• Riessman, C. K. — Narrative Analysis; Narrative Methods for the Human Sciences.
• Polkinghorne, D. E. — Narrative configuration and qualitative studies.

Use this skill when users analyze life stories, interview narratives, or choose between narrative and thematic or GT approaches.