Understanding Narrative Inquiry

This text is a comprehensive introduction to narrative inquiry in the social sciences. It provides students with the philosophical and theoretical underpinnings of this popular approach to qualitative research, along with practical guidance on research design, data collection, data analysis and interpretation. Several extracts from narrative studies are included in chapter 9, together with questions for discussion. With chapter-opening vignettes illustrating a graduate student's research dilemmas, the book not only guides students with how to process narrative inquiry, it also helps raise their consciousness about what it means to be a qualitative researcher, and a narrative inquirer in particular.