Doing Narrative Research? Thinking Through the Narrative Process

  • Tina Miller
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Abstract

Across social science disciplines there has been a growth in narrative research—the so called ‘narrative turn’. This turn echoes broader shifts associated with more complex social worlds, epistemological challenges and feminist responses. Narrative research typically involves exploring individual, subjective experiences through interview-based research, but can also range across researching group and organisational dynamics to document-based analysis. In this chapter the question of what constitutes narrative research is explored and illuminated using data from a qualitative longitudinal study on transition to first-time motherhood. The importance of developing a theoretical rationale when choosing a narrative research approach, together with suggested ways of analysing data once collected, is noted. Researching individual accounts of subjective experience and transitions as a feminist researcher provides opportunities, but challenges too.

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Notes

Acknowledgements

Thanks are given to all the women who so generously shared with me their time and unfolding experiences of first-time motherhood. Thanks too to those women from the original sample I have traced and who have again shared their reflections on being a mother, but this time as their child has reached their 18th birthday. The editors of this collection are also acknowledged and thanked for their energy, insightful feminist thinking and contributions to feminist narrative research.

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Copyright information

© The Author(s) 2017

Authors and Affiliations

  • Tina Miller
    • 1
  1. 1.Oxford Brookes UniversityOxfordUK

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