approach, before combining different ways of conducting qualitative

research.
This chapter will help you begin the mastery of one of the qualitative
approaches to inquiry. I take each approach, one by one, and discuss its
origin, the key defining features of it, the various types of ways to use it,
steps involved in conducting a study within the approach, and challenges
that you will likely incur as you proceed.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

What is the background for each approach (narrative study, a

phenomenology, a grounded theory, an ethnography, and a case study)?
What are the central defining features of each approach?
What various forms can a study take within each approach?
What are the procedures for using the approach?
What are challenges associated with each approach?
What are some similarities and differences among the five approaches?

NARRATIVE RESEARCH

Definition and Background

Narrative research has many forms, uses a variety of analytic practices,
and is rooted in different social and humanities disciplines (Daiute &
Lightfoot, 2004). “Narrative” might be the phenomenon being studied, such
as a narrative of illness, or it might be the method used in a study, such as
the procedures of analyzing stories told (Chase, 2005; Clandinin &
Connolly, 2000; Pinnegar & Daynes, 2007). As a method, it begins with the
experiences as expressed in lived and told stories of individuals. Writers
have provided ways for analyzing and understanding the stories lived and
told. Czarniawska (2004) defines it here as a specific type of qualitative
design in which “narrative is understood as a spoken or written text giving
an account of an event/action or series of events/actions, chronologically
connected” (p. 17). The procedures for implementing this research consist
of focusing on studying one or two individuals, gathering data through the
collection of their stories, reporting individual experiences, and
chronologically ordering the meaning of those experiences (or using life
course stages).
Although narrative research originated from literature, history,
anthropology, sociology, sociolinguistics, and education, different fields of
study have adopted their own approaches (Chase, 2005). I find a
postmodern, organizational orientation in Czarniawska (2004); a human
developmental perspective in Daiute and Lightfoot (2004); a psychological
approach in Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach, and Zilber (1998); sociological
approaches in Cortazzi (1993) and Riessman (1993, 2008); and quantitative
(e.g., statistical stories in event history modeling) and qualitative
approaches in Elliott (2005). Interdisciplinary efforts at narrative research
have also been encouraged by the Narrative Study of Lives annual series
that began in 1993 (see, e.g., Josselson & Lieblich, 1993), and the journal
Narrative Inquiry. With many recent books on narrative research, it
continues to be a popular “field in the making” (Chase, 2005, p. 651). In the
discussion of narrative procedures, I rely on an accessible book written for
social scientists called Narrative Inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) that
addresses “what narrative researchers do” (p. 48). I also bring in the data
collection procedures and varied analytic strategies of Riessman (2008).

Defining Features of Narrative Studies

Reading through a number of narrative articles published in journals and
reviewing major books on narrative inquiry, a specific set of features
emerged that define its boundaries. Not all narrative projects contain these
elements, but many do, and the list is not exhaustive of possibilities.

Narrative researchers collect stories from individuals (and documents,

and group conversations) about individuals’ lived and told
experiences. These stories may emerge from a story told to the
researcher, a story that is co-constructed between the researcher and
the participant, and a story intended as a performance to convey some
message or point (Riessman, 2008). Thus, there may be a strong
collaborative feature of narrative research as the story emerges
 through the interaction or dialogue of the researcher and the
participant(s).
Narrative stories tell of individual experiences, and they may shed
light on the identities of individuals and how they see themselves.
Narrative stories are gathered through many different forms of data,
such as through interviews that may be the primary form of data
collection, but also through observations, documents, pictures, and
other sources of qualitative data.
Narrative stories often are heard and shaped by the researchers into a
chronology although they may not be told that way by the
participant(s). There is a temporal change that is conveyed when
individuals talk about their experiences and their lives. They may talk
about their past, their present, or their future (Clandinin & Connelly,
2000).
Narrative stories are analyzed in varied ways. An analysis can be made
about what was said (thematically), the nature of the telling of the
story (structural), or who the story is directed toward
(dialogic/performance) (Riessman, 2008).
Narrative stories often contain turning points (Denzin, 1989a) or
specific tensions or interruptions that are highlighted by the
researchers in the telling of the stories.
Narrative stories occur within specific places or situations. The
context becomes important for the researcher’s telling of the story
within a place.

Types of Narratives
Narrative studies can be differentiated along two different lines. One line is
to consider the data analysis strategy used by the narrative researcher.
Several analytic strategies are available for use. Polkinghorne (1995)
discusses narrative in which the researcher extracts themes that hold across
stories or taxonomies of types of stories, and a more storytelling mode in
which the narrative researcher shapes the stories based on a plotline, or a
literary approach to analysis. Polkinghorne (1995) goes on to emphasize the
second form in his writings. More recently, Chase (2005) suggests analytic
strategies based on parsing constraints on narratives, narratives that are
composed interactively between researchers and participants, and the
interpretations developed by various narrators. Combining both of these
approaches, we see an insightful analysis of strategies for analyzing
narratives in Riessman (2008). She conveys three types of approaches used
to analyze narrative stories: a thematic analysis in which the researcher
identifies the themes “told” by a participant; a structural analysis in which
the meaning shifts to the “telling” and the story can be cast during a
conversation in comic terms, tragedy, satire, romance, or other forms; and a
dialogic/performance analysis in which the focus turns to how the story is
produced (i.e., interactively between the researcher and the participant) and
performed (i.e., meant to convey some message or point).
Another line of thinking is to consider the type of narratives. A wide
variety of approaches have emerged (see, e.g., Casey, 1995/1996). Here are
some popular approaches.

A biographical study is a form of narrative study in which the

researcher writes and records the experiences of another person’s life.
Autoethnography is written and recorded by the individuals who are
the subject of the study (Ellis, 2004; Muncey, 2010). Muncey (2010)
defines autoethnography as the idea of multiple layers of
consciousness, the vulnerable self, the coherent self, critiquing the self
in social contexts, the subversion of dominant discourses, and the
evocative potential. They contain the personal story of the author as
well as the larger cultural meaning for the individual’s story. An
example of autoethnography is Neyman’s (2011) doctoral dissertation
in which she explored her teaching experiences in the background of
major problems of public schools in America and Ukraine. Her story
about problems such as low academic performance, poor discipline,
theft, insufficient parents’ involvement, and other issues shed light on
her personal and professional life.
A life history portrays an individual’s entire life, while a personal
experience story is a narrative study of an individual’s personal
experience found in single or multiple episodes, private situations, or
communal folklore (Denzin, 1989a).
An oral history consists of gathering personal reflections of events and
their causes and effects from one individual or several individuals
(Plummer, 1983). Narrative studies may have a specific contextual
focus, such as stories told by teachers or children in classrooms
 (Ollerenshaw & Creswell, 2002) or the stories told about organizations
(Czarniawska, 2004). Narratives may be guided by interpretive
frameworks. The framework may advocate for Latin Americans
through using testimonios (Beverly, 2005), or report stories of women
using feminist interpretations (see, e.g., Personal Narratives Group,
1989), a lens that shows how women’s voices are muted, multiple, and
contradictory (Chase, 2005). It may be told to disrupt the dominant
discourse around teenage pregnancy (Muncey, 2010).

Procedures for Conducting Narrative Research

Using the approach taken by Clandinin and Connelly (2000) as a general
procedural guide, the methods of conducting a narrative study do not follow
a lockstep approach, but instead represent an informal collection of topics.
Riessman (2008) adds useful information about the data collection process
and the strategies for analyzing data.

• Determine if the research problem or question best fits narrative

research. Narrative research is best for capturing the detailed stories or life
experiences of a single individual or the lives of a small number of
individuals.

• Select one or more individuals who have stories or life experiences to

tell, and spend considerable time with them gathering their stories through
multiples types of information. Clandinin and Connelly (2000) refer to the
stories as “field texts.” Research participants may record their stories in a
journal or diary, or the researcher might observe the individuals and record
field notes. Researchers may also collect letters sent by the individuals,
assemble stories about the individuals from family members, gather
documents such as memos or official correspondence about the individuals,
or obtain photographs, memory boxes (collection of items that trigger
memories), and other personal-family-social artifacts. After examining
these sources, the researcher records the individuals’ life experiences.

• Consider how the collection of the data and their recording can take
different shapes. Riessman (2008) illustrates different ways that researchers
can transcribe interviews to develop different types of stories. The
transcription can highlight the researcher as a listener or a questioner,
emphasize the interaction between the researcher and the participant,
convey a conversation that moves through time, or include shifting
meanings that may emerge through translated material.

• Collect information about the context of these stories. Narrative

researchers situate individual stories within participants’ personal
experiences (their jobs, their homes), their culture (racial or ethnic), and
their historical contexts (time and place).

• Analyze the participants’ stories. The researcher may take an active role
and “restory” the stories into a framework that makes sense. Restorying is
the process of reorganizing the stories into some general type of framework.
This framework may consist of gathering stories, analyzing them for key
elements of the story (e.g., time, place, plot, and scene), and then rewriting
the stories to place them within a chronological sequence (Ollerenshaw &
Creswell, 2002). Often when individuals tell their stories, they do not
present them in a chronological sequence. During the process of restorying,
the researcher provides a causal link among ideas. Cortazzi (1993) suggests
that the chronology of narrative research, with an emphasis on sequence,
sets narrative apart from other genres of research. One aspect of the
chronology is that the stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Similar to basic elements found in good novels, these aspects involve a
predicament, conflict, or struggle; a protagonist, or main character; and a
sequence with implied causality (i.e., a plot) during which the predicament
is resolved in some fashion (Carter, 1993). A chronology further may
consist of past, present, and future ideas (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000),
based on the assumption that time has a unilinear direction (Polkinghorne,
1995). In a more general sense, the story might include other elements
typically found in novels, such as time, place, and scene (Connelly &
Clandinin, 1990). The plot, or story line, may also include Clandinin and
Connelly’s (2000) three-dimensional narrative inquiry space: the personal
and social (the interaction); the past, present, and future (continuity); and
the place (situation). This story line may include information about the
setting or context of the participants’ experiences. Beyond the chronology,
researchers might detail themes that arise from the story to provide a more
detailed discussion of the meaning of the story (Huber & Whelan, 1999).
Thus, the qualitative data analysis may be a description of both the story
and themes that emerge from it. A postmodern narrative writer, such as
Czarniawska (2004), adds another element to the analysis: a deconstruction
of the stories, an unmaking of them by such analytic strategies as exposing
dichotomies, examining silences, and attending to disruptions and
contradictions. Finally, the analysis process consists of the researcher
looking for themes or categories; the researcher using a microlinguistic
approach and probing for the meaning of words, phrases, and larger units of
discourse such as is often done in conversational analysis (see Gee, 1991);
or the researcher examining the stories for how they are produced
interactively between the researcher and the participant or performed by the
participant to convey a specific agenda or message (Riessman, 2008).

• Collaborate with participants by actively involving them in the research

(Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). As researchers collect stories, they negotiate
relationships, smooth transitions, and provide ways to be useful to the
participants. In narrative research, a key theme has been the turn toward the
relationship between the researcher and the researched in which both parties
will learn and change in the encounter (Pinnegar & Daynes, 2007). In this
process, the parties negotiate the meaning of the stories, adding a validation
check to the analysis (Creswell & Miller, 2000). Within the participant’s
story may also be an interwoven story of the researcher gaining insight into
her or his own life (see Huber & Whelan, 1999). Also, within the story may
be epiphanies, turning points, or disruptions in which the story line changes
direction dramatically. In the end, the narrative study tells the story of
individuals unfolding in a chronology of their experiences, set within their
personal, social, and historical context, and including the important themes
in those lived experiences. “Narrative inquiry is stories lived and told,” said
Clandinin and Connolly (2000, p. 20).

Challenges
Given these procedures and the characteristics of narrative research,
narrative research is a challenging approach to use. The researcher needs to
collect extensive information about the participant, and needs to have a
clear understanding of the context of the individual’s life. It takes a keen
eye to identify in the source material that gathers the particular stories to
capture the individual’s experiences. As Edel (1984) comments, it is
important to uncover the “figure under the carpet” that explains the
multilayered context of a life. Active collaboration with the participant is
necessary, and researchers need to discuss the participant’s stories as well as
be reflective about their own personal and political background, which
shapes how they “restory” the account. Multiple issues arise in the
collecting, analyzing, and telling of individual stories. Pinnegar and Daynes
(2007) raise these important questions: Who owns the story? Who can tell
it? Who can change it? Whose version is convincing? What happens when
narratives compete? As a community, what do stories do among us?

PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

Definition and Background

Whereas a narrative study reports the stories of experiences of a single
individual or several individuals, a phenomenological study describes the
common meaning for several individuals of their lived experiences of a
concept or a phenomenon. Phenomenologists focus on describing what all
participants have in common as they experience a phenomenon (e.g., grief
is universally experienced). The basic purpose of phenomenology is to
reduce individual experiences with a phenomenon to a description of the
universal essence (a “grasp of the very nature of the thing,” van Manen,
1990, p. 177). To this end, qualitative researchers identify a phenomenon
(an “object” of human experience; van Manen, 1990, p. 163). This human
experience may be a phenomenon such as insomnia, being left out, anger,
grief, or undergoing coronary artery bypass surgery (Moustakas, 1994). The
inquirer then collects data from persons who have experienced the
phenomenon, and develops a composite description of the essence of the
experience for all of the individuals. This description consists of “what”
they experienced and “how” they experienced it (Moustakas, 1994).
Beyond these procedures, phenomenology has a strong philosophical
component to it. It draws heavily on the writings of the German
mathematician Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) and those who expanded on
his views, such as Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty (Spiegelberg,