Tom

24a PrincesAvenue

Muswell Hill

London N10 3 LR

UK

020-8883-9297

For a free copy of the current 'Short Guide to BNIM (biographical narrative interpretive method) research interviewing', please send me details of your institutional affiliation and for what research or teaching purpose you might wish to use BNIM. I'll mail you a copy right back.

From: Anneke Sools [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 23 February 2007 17:14
To: Tom Wengraf
Subject: news from the Netherlands

Dear Tom,

Last year we had some exchange after some questions from my students about BNIM. I started another 'empirical narrative research' course this month at the University for Humanistics. There are six very enthusiastic graduate students in my class. Maybe you remember an introduction to BNIM-interviewing is part of the course. Again my students have some questions, this time practical rather than ethical about BNIM-interviewing. I hope it is okay to ask them. Since I am not a professional BNIM-teacher I can only give them some partial answers, and I don't want to give them wrong directions. So here are my very practical questions. 

-  How many cue-words is 'normal' say in a five minute slot? one student wrote down 10 cuewords in the first 5 minutes of the subsession. These were all related to different topics, and not more than two words per topic, which seems ok. I would say that too many cuewords (more than 20 or 30 in total) would be unpractical. But it also depends on the interviewee I guess and the richness of the account?

It all depends on what they perceive as “the same topic”. You only need one or two cue-words per topic to ‘cue’ the informant in subsession 2 back to the point they were at in subsession 1. If you cue the same topic with too many words – like a short-hand typist – then this will probably lead to worse results rather than better. It may be that your “one student” is too microscopic a view of what a “topic” is best construed as being. But without an English transcript, it’s impossible for me to say.

- Some of the students have difficulty recognising a PIN. I tell them about some characteristics like sequentiality, concreteness and lifelikeness and the different textsorts. But what if a person starts telling a more general yet detailed story like 'I always used to do...' or 'everyday when I was a child...'?

I would say that this is getting at “description” (sometimes called ‘condensed situation’). At this point, the interviewee is giving a theory or a model of a ;’general repetition’ which he or she wants to think. ‘Ethnographic interviews’ of the J.P. Spradley type go for this. Such ‘descriptions’ are a way of either moving towards (or escaping from) the particular account of a particular experience on a particular day (a PIN). As BNIM interviewers, they have to recognize that they haven’t yet got a PIN and at least try to get at a particular lived experience that the generality is about.

 When is it enough PIN-like?

A PIN is an account of a particular incident as experienced and recalled. You need to ask for “examples of any particular occasion” that the generality is\ about. “I did…he said.. I thought… I did…What happened next was….I felt… I did” would suggest to you that a particular incident is being recalled.

I suggest to them to keep pushing for PIN's within the general story, but I am not sure. The problem with this and the next question is, that it seems to imply another instance (yet not about the content of the story but the form) of interpretation by the interviewer. i can imagine the students feel uncertain about whether their attempts to get PIN's are succesful and I feel uncertain as to whether my answer about the characteristics will suffice and is in the spirit of BNIM.

 I sympathise. If you/they read chapter 6 of my 2001 textbook and the relevant sections and Appendix 1 of the current version of the ‘Guide to BNIM’, it ought to be clearer. Failing that, Prue and I are always happy to offer trainings and tasters….!

- When an interviewee keeps on talking in an argumentative or reflexive mode, is it okay to interrupt and ask for narrative? How strict does the non-interrupt-rule apply in this case?

It depends on your research purpose. If you want to get at the best account of their subjectivity, then don’t interrupt. If they’ve been asked a narrative-pointed question, then much insight is gained by seeing exactly how their non-narrative  ‘argumentation/reflexivity’ operates and for how long, and what spontaneously they do next.

. The rule is that you have promised not to ’interrupt’ (see the precise formulation of the default SQUIN) so that when you do you  have\ committed a technical error in BJNIM terms (you are interfering with rather than allowing their unique response to unfold) and an ethical error (you have broken the contract implied by the SQUIN). If you break the non-interruption rule, you deprive yourself of insight and their expression of their gestalt has been broken; you have shifted to an overtly-active and directive role, and the remainder of the session cannot be interpreted well. It ceased to be a free-associative interview at the point where you interrupted their ‘wandering gestalt’…. and started a new type of interview2 with the same person.

Last year's students were very excited about the BNIM-interview. They are very much used to reflexive types of research interviewing and have difficulty overcoming their anxiety about asking for PIN's. But when they succeed they feel rewarded by the richness of the material. I hope this year they will have the same experience. I will keep you informed if you like.

I’m glad that they are getting good material, and sympathise with their anxiety (and your’s) about whether they’re properly pushing for PINs. As the ‘Guide to BNIM’ says, the responsibility of the interviewer is to push for PINs, not to be successful in getting them. Typically, subsession one might only generate two or three PINs; and even in subsession 2, even if the questions\ are correctly narrative or PIN-pointed, more than half the material is likely to be non-PIN. This is not a technical error; it is a guide to how particular subjectivities work. The non-PIN material that they insist on providing along with any PINs they may generate is just as important as the PIN-material that they do generate.

Educated or defensive people mayl try to keep well away from recalling  PINs.; Other people tell a constant flow of equally-defensive and often well-rehearsed PIN-type stories that ‘defend against’ thinking about the meaning of the experiences they are apparently so free to tell. In the latter case, you have asked for “the story of a set of events and experiences” and they may insist on not thinking about the ‘whole story’ by drowning you in inconsequential PINs.

Do keep us posted on how your students do,  especially if any of  your students write in English! They can write to me for most recent versions of the ‘Guide to BNIM’.

Best wishes. Tom.

Best wishes,

Anneke