The concept of a narrative interview implies a concept based on the ability of a person to tell. The story is a means of conveying information, the basis of human relationships. The main goal of any kind of narrative interview is to identify the biographical processes characteristic of a particular individual or group. They are revealed from the point of view of the narrators themselves.
Wide understanding
In a broader sense, this is the perception of quality 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 surveys, interviews are that the person has some knowledge, skills in building a story, as well as in reproducing his own biography. The story has the same structure as the life process of the individual. In fact, this is a crystallization of all the experience he has experienced so far.
Homology in a narrative interview is possible only if the informant spoke about eventsown life, not anyone else's. The main principle of such a presentation is the inability to prepare for the story. In this case, the person is less focused on the need to present a presentation of himself.
The most important thing in the analysis of a narrative interview, in itself, is the notation of what rules and principles the narrator is guided by. It also reveals how complete and complete he presented the text. The moments on which the narrator concentrates attention are noted, according to the examples given by him in the narrative interview, a lot about the 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 storyteller. To do this, the specialist resorts to a number of tricks.
Question begins, main story, followed by additional questions about points mentioned in the course of the story. The narrative interview ends with explanations and assessments.
Application
Quite often, this technique is used to interview groups of citizens, including the unemployed, the homeless, those undergoing treatment in psychiatric clinics, participants in armed conflicts, and so on. Narrative interviews in sociology are widely used in studies of marginalized groups with 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 for obtainingmaximum information. He introduced “free-floating attention” into the technique of narrative interview. It reflected the attitude of the respondent to the audible 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 individual.
Main goal
The task of the interviewer is to get as detailed a story as possible. It should break up into separate sequences. Not in all cases they may coincide with the course of events. However, sequences must be built into the logic of the story.
To get such a story, it makes sense to familiarize yourself with the sample narrative interview. But the most important thing here is to catch the main idea. It is necessary to stimulate the person with a question that will form the frame of the answer.
Starting example
It is appropriate to start a narrative interview, for example, with the question: “How was your life before the adoption of Islam?” An appropriate question, depending on the goals of the interviewer, is: “Tell me about your childhood?”
These questions clearly draw a frame in which the answer will be built. In the first case, the experience of life as a Muslim is explored, and in the second, as a child. In these examples of narrative interviews, it is emphasized that a process story is expected. The answer should be followed by a detailed story. Do not interrupt the interviewee. The main thing is to mimic or interjection to support the course of the story up toto his codes. This concludes the first part of the interview.
End
The second part includes a survey with additional clarification of the details of what was heard. If something is not clear, the narrator's vocabulary should be used. Questions are usually prepared in advance in the form of a guidebook. During the survey, they are asked in a certain sequence, taking into account the logic of the biography.
The survey ends with the narrator returning to the present moment with questions about the assessment of past events from the current position. The main task here is to consider how a person interprets the lived 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 a coda, the main meaning of the story. Usually they record the course of the story on a voice recorder to identify intonations. In the examples of deciphering narrative impulses in interviews, there is a line-by-line numbering of the lines of the story. This is done for convenience in the 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 deciphering a narrative impulse in an interview, there is a semantic core in which the main meaning of the narration will be expressed.
Beforethe interviewers have a central task - to determine the gest alt, the frame underlying the narrative. Since any sequence echoes Gest alt, the researcher tries to determine its place and role in the final story.
In addition, the researcher explains what rules he follows when telling about his biography, what were the different periods of life, the decision-making process. The narrative itself expands or contracts 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 awareness of the singularity and representativeness of cases, the restoration of the latent meaning, which the narrator may not understand himself. Meaning is derived from the rethinking of experience.
About enabled surveillance
It is used by the researcher in this type of survey. It is important to bear in mind that participant observation and narrative interviews are classified as qualitative research methods. Participant observation is aimed at studying the personality in its natural environment. The researcher is free from external control. This method is used to get a deeper understanding of a person's motivation.
Participant observation and narrative interviews can be used in different ways. After all, the role of the researcher can be different.
Step by step
In total, 6 steps are taken in the course of such research. At the first stage, the initial life data of a person are analyzed, a biogram is built, which is used for analysistext.
In the second step, the first assumptions about the identity of the person are put forward. 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 assessment of the narrator. Separately, the narrative of experience and the line of events itself differ.
At this step, a special method of analysis 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 inner content.”
The third step analyzes the entire narrative, which focuses on restoring the gest alt of the autobiography. The researcher defines narrative sequences by answering the question why they are arranged in a given sequence. It takes into account why the narrator changes one topic to another, why he chose this particular ending of his own story.
It is important to pay attention to the features of speech, which contain the keys to answering these questions. These can be markers "then", "suddenly", final phrases. The coda contains the entire final meaning of the story. This is a kind of conclusion, an argument that is given at the end of the sequences. The coda links directly to the present tense and the overall flow of the story.
On the fourthstep compares the biogram and narrative with the context of the story. The researcher reveals why a person deviates from the sequence in the narrative, what he focuses on, and what he omits as insignificant. By identifying what provoked such behavior, you can find the key to understanding personality.
At the fifth step, fragments of the text 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 fragments of the story. For example, it is worth paying attention to certain moments like the help of a brother in overcoming negative circumstances in the school years of life.
It is worth focusing on sequence codes - for example, if a person says: "I did well with the curriculum, despite the fact that it was difficult", the code is to evaluate the learning process as a completed stage.
The analysis technique consists in isolating a story about a biography by events, after which it is determined with what emotions a person told it, this allows you to determine what was the 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 during the previous steps. There is a version check about the reasons for switching topics, choosingsome event series as the most significant. The version of the reason for the repression of some memories is evaluated and verified - for example, he alth problems are omitted in the course of stories about success in the professional field. After all this, the researcher is engaged in determining the type of biographical story.
Interesting facts
Man is born without knowing anything about himself. He receives all the information about his own body, personality from others, discovering his own strengths and weaknesses, asserting himself and choosing a model of behavior. To create oneself means to write one's own history of one's own life. It goes on, and in the course of various events a person endows it with a certain meaning, taking into account the facts that are built into the picture of the world that already exists in him, taking into account his attitude towards himself.
The most banal example: let's say Ivan and Alexei were fined by the controller. Ivan thought that he was unlucky in life. While Aleksey was quite pleased with the situation - he traveled for several months without a ticket, and this is the first controller. In the same situation, one is a loser, 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, Alexei 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 memories of childhood failures, he broadcasts: "I'm used to overcoming obstacles." While Ivan was also often ill, family members called him a "poor child", a "misunderstanding".
BDuring his school years, 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. As a result, he believed that what was said was true. He also opened a business, but it all seems to him an accident, as it does not fit into the picture of the world of the 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. Such events are called dominant events. And if they contradict the picture of the world, then they are written off as accidents. However, accidents are not accidental.
For example, 14-year-old Lisa has a story about how shy and withdrawn she is. She remembers very well the moment when, during the distribution of roles for a theatrical production, she experienced an acute desire to take part, but did not say so. A couple of months before, she had applied for a TV show, getting to know a new company. However, she omitted these moments, because in her own narrative Lisa is shy, 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 own life story. But others are constantly trying to remake the personality, they are also affected by the attitudes that reignin society. 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 attitudes, for example, “everyone builds his own paradise” or “heaven will be only in the afterlife”, “we alth is bad.”
Man tends 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 achievable only for those who have an ideal body." The image of the ideal body is broadcast by the media. In the course of a narrative interview, the attitudes that dominate the mind of the person under study are revealed.
