Narrative analysis
Interpret stories as ordered accounts
Narrative analysis examines how events become meaningful through sequence, plot, character and perspective. Approaches may focus on content, structure or the telling situation. Polkinghorne distinguishes analysis of narratives for cross-story categories from narrative configuration that connects events into an account. Preserving temporal and contextual relationships is essential when those relationships carry the analytical argument.
Use when experience is conveyed through stories and temporal organisation matters to the question. Gather sufficiently extended accounts and decide whether to compare story patterns or reconstruct a particular narrative.
Strengths
- Preserves time, change and personal meaning
- Connects events that fragmented coding can separate
Limitations
- Retrospective coherence may conceal uncertainty or contradiction
- Interpretations depend strongly on selection and presentation
Know the boundary
Narrative coherence is not proof that events happened exactly as told or that one story represents a population.