Question

A researcher is planning to conduct a narrative study on the way non-traditional learners define their social role on the college campus. After this, the researcher would then construct his/her narrative of the study, using such storytelling conventions as scene, characters, and plot. Discuss the data collection instruments appropriate for this study. How would a narrative approach differ from a phenomenological approach for this topic?

Answer 1

In the present study on non-traditional learner’s, the researchers has chosen to use the qualitative method of narrative analysis. Narrative analysis as a research tool involves a probe of the ‘stories’ or narratives that individuals tell about their life. The focus is the particular constructions of the narrators, their style of narrating details about their life or life of others around them. The reasearcher records the narratives as the participants responses and then analyses them in terms of the larger themes, the figures of speech used, plots, the main characters of the narratives and also the marked absences of certain people or significant events in the narratives. The idea behind narrative analysis as a method in research is to understand the phenomenon or the lives of the participants based on what stories people tell others and themselves about their everyday life.

Narrative research therefore is a special tool that documents the life stories of the participants as the data in itself. Thus, It is different from other qualitative methodology like the phenomenological approach as the focus is on going beyond the narratives of each participant to explore and analyse the shared or common spectrum of themes, plots in the narratives. Each narrative can be compared with another. However, in phenomenological approach, the research maintains an idiographic stance. In other words, each participant’s account, life experience is treated as unique and crucial in itself. As such, a cross-comparison between the participants is not completely possible nor is it desirable in a phenomenological investigation. In the context of the given research on non-traditional learner’s, since the population of the study is a unique group in itself, the researcher could benefit from a qualitative approach such as the phenomenological method so as to understand the everyday experience of the youth and how’s they negotiate their roles in the mainstream educational institutions on an everyday basis.