In her very helpful email, Caroline raises
an important general point when she writes:
The 2nd subsession in a
full BNIM interview uses narrative pointed questions to get respondents to
provide specific narrative about particular incidents that they have spoken
about in the 1st subsession. In my experience again it is difficult to get
people to discuss chronic over acute issues, the term 'particular incident
narrative' (PIN) which Tom uses actually emphasises the 'particular' over the
routine. Yet even recurrent experiences only ever happen once in exactly that
way. So in fact seemingly routine activities, each time they are done, are in
fact 'particular' as it will never happen again.
I completely agree that, faced with a ‘generic
incident narrative’ (GIN) such as the run of barbequeues in the example
cited by Caroline, you may have to work quite hard to elicit a ‘particuklar
incident narrative’. As Caroline says:
In the above example I
could have tried asking - 'you said that you had lots of barbeques while you
lived there. Can you tell me more about the first barbeque you had?' or 'you
said that you enjoyed the barbeques you had at that house can you tell me about
one that you didn't enjoy?'.
Asking for the exception,
for the first, for the last, for the worst , for the best etc.
Another way is to ask the respondent whether
they remember “any particular barbecue for any reason whatsoever”,
and then leave a large space for her to search the archives.
But there is another direction to
eventually get towards PINs.
Finally, the current BNIM notepad has three
bundles of magic words. On the right hand side are the words like “incident,
occasion etc.”. On the left are “image, feeling, thought”. If
the person is blocked at the level of a barbequeue generalisation (GIN), one
direction is to push for “particularity” in the weays described
above.
The other is to push for any thoughts, or
images, or feelings (not all three at once) about “them”, and then
wait (a long time) for some of these to emerge. The most powerful word is “feeling”,
(but it can be a counter-productive to go for it first.). If you take this
other (first-bundle of magic words) direction for somebody stuck at the generic
level, then your question might be:
(A) 'You said that you
had lots of barbeques while you lived there. Do you remember any feelings that
you had about them at the time?”
(B)
Do you now have any feelings about those barbecues that you had then?
(A) is better because it gets at then-feelings which can then be moved towards
a PIN.
(B) is more indirect, but an account of “thoughts or feelings now”
can provide material for then moving back to thoughts and feelings-then. E.G.
What
I now think about those barbecues that we had then is that we were naïve but
enjoyed ourselves
Do
you remember any particular moment when you had this thought that you were naive-then?
Can
you talk more about the sense of enjoyment that you say you had then?
So. A ‘stuck at generalisation’ respondent can be pushed
towards PINs in two ways:
(i) by throwing in specifying words like “exception, first, last,
any memorable one for any reason”;
(ii) by stepping back and stoking the sensory-emotional earth by using
words from the left-hand magic bundle, and then moving slowly rightwards on the
basis of the new material thrown up.
The important useful (if not infallible) assumption is that she
did not mention “the lots of barbecues” for no reason and with no
thought or emotion. It may emerge that it is very important for her not to
remember a single particular barbecue (a) she is lying, (b) there is a
particular self-presentation she is trying to stick to, (c) there is a
particular barbecue she is determined not to remember, and so she “can’t”
remember any. And there other non-exclusive interpretations of “not
getting a PIN” for each particular case.
If you spend 5 minutes using all the directions and devices you can
think of to get from the generic GIN to a PIN…. and fail…. Then maybe
the whole key to the situated subjectivity may lie in that refusal/failure !!
Best wishes
Tom
P.S. Social science researchers. For a free
electronic copy of the current version of the BNIM Short Guide and
Detailed Manual , just click on <[log in to unmask]> . Please indicate
your institutional affiliation and the purpose for which you might envisage
using BNIM’s open-narrative interviews, and I'll send it straight
away.
The BNIM Short Guide and Detailed
Manual builds on and develops ch. 6 and 12 of
my earlier textbook, Qualitative Research
Interviewing: biographic narrative and semi-structured method (2001 Sage
Publications) which has a more general approach to semi-structured depth
interviewing, interpretation, and writing-up.
From:
Discussion list for those practising BNIM
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Rakesh Biswas
Sent: Thursday, June 30, 2011 4:44
PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Chronicling chronic
journeys: human memory con-founders
This last email to the
list is just to inform others that i shall be discussing the email below in
'substantive' detail off list. It
pains me to see all you beautiful people leaving this list because of our
distracting 'discussion of substance prompting thought' (wiktionary definition
of substantive ) and Tom needing to provide an explanation. Please
accept my sincere apologies.
warmest regards,
rakesh
On Thu, Jun 30, 2011 at 8:10 PM, Barratt, Caroline <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Hi Rakesh
I don't think this is something so much to overcome as to notice and be mindful
of during data collection and analysis.
Of course if you are studying something more 'chronic' in nature, for example
managing a long term illness or disability, then we need our repsondents to
talk about it. The 2nd subsession in a full BNIM interview uses narrative
pointed questions to get repondents to provide specific narrative about
particualr incidents that they have spoken about in the 1st subsession. In
my experience again it is difficult to get people to discuss chronic over acute
issues, the term 'particular incident narrative' (PIN) which Tom uses actually
emphasises the 'particular' over the routine. Yet even recurrent experiences
only ever happen once in exactly that way. So in fact seeingly routine
activites, each time they are done are in fact 'particular' as it will never
happen again. But as humans we tend to put them altogether especially i think
when recalling past events when memory isn't as rich as it might be. This
is a challenge interviewers have to work with!
For example a lady i was interviewing recalled having lots of barbeques over
the period of living in a certain property. I tried, without success, to
get her to recall details from one particular barbeque, she had fused them
altogether in her mind if you like (or wasn't prepared to tell me otherwise)
and talked in general terms - 'we always had a great time, I always did the
cooking, we would get a few drinks and invite people over'. These are described
as 'generic incident narratives'.
There are however strategies to get from the general to the particular - for
example asking for the exception, for the first, for the last, for the worst ,
for the best etc. In the above example I could have tried asking - 'you said
that you had lots of barbeques while you lived there. Can you tell me more
about the first barbeque you had?' or 'you said that you enjoyed the barbeques
you had at that house can you tell me about one that you didn't enjoy?'.
BNIM is interested in particular incident narratives because these are often
accompanied with a resurgence, or hints of the emotion that was felt at the
time of experiencing. They can provide a window into the subjectivity of
the person at the time of event in a way that more distant generic accounts and
evaluations cannot.
Rakesh I'm not sure how familiar you are with BNIM so I'm going to stop there
as this may not seem signifcant unless you are aware of how the method works.
Anyway I hope this helps rather than baffles.
Best, Caroline
Dr Caroline Barratt
KTP Associate: Housing and Mental Health
https://www.essex.ac.uk/hhs/staff/profile.aspx?ID=2092
07786 661496
________________________________
From: Discussion list for those practising BNIM [[log in to unmask]]
on behalf of Rakesh Biswas [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 30 June 2011 06:39
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Chronicling chronic journeys: human memory con-founders
Thanks Caroline and Jo for bringing out this very interesting point.
Yes human memory perhaps tends to recall acute and dramatic events as a
priority when asked to recapitulate events from the past.
I wonder how BNIM tackles this? Would be interested to hear Tom's
response among others (apologies in advance if there is a naivete in the
query or if we are being a cause for too many mails on this list...loved
reading Tom's discussion on Kuhn).
regards,
rakesh
Rakesh Biswas MD
Editor in Chief,
International Journal of User Driven
www.igi-global.com/ijudh<http://www.igi-global.com/ijudh>
Deputy Editor,
BMJ group,
http://casereports.bmj.com/site/about/edboard.xhtml
Regional Editor,
Journal of Evaluation of Clinical
http://www.wiley.com/bw/editors.asp?ref=1356-1294
On Thu, Jun 30, 2011 at 6:22 AM, jo kirkpatrick <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
wrote:
Yes it does thanks Caroline
It is a very interesting point that the things a researcher expects to be
important are often not seen in the same way by the participant. I aquired what
other people might regard as severe disabilities in later life. I can relate to
what you mean about getting so used to coping with these day in and out that
now after 15 years it becomes normal for me to have to find interesting new
ways to do ordinary things like getting dressed or taking my change in shops
but I probably wouldn't mention this to a researcher or think of it as an
important part of my life narrative. Looking back I realise my disability is an
important factor in my decision to study psychology and research methods and
continues to be a source of motivation. There is also no doubt that having to
take pain relief medication during and after my illness changed my perspective
on addiction.
Best wishes Jo
________________________________
From: "Barratt, Caroline" <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Fri, 24 June, 2011
16:08:29
Subject: Re: New Member - a better rewrite of my response!!
Hi again Jo
Have just re-read my response to you and realised how inadequate it was –
wrote in a rush for which I apologise.
What I really meant to say was that I have noticed that in telling life stories
in an open way people often focus on the ‘acute’ events in their
life rather than the ‘chronic’ ones. When asked to tell their life
story it is the larger life events, the out of the ordinary, or major changes
in their life that get often get voiced rather than an expression of the day to
day.
This doesn’t mean that ‘chronic’ issues which are present for
a long time and become to some extent normalised, aren’t important and
this would clearly come out through questioning the participant further.
I just found it interesting that such a big issue as alcohol addiction
didn’t play a more important role in the way the respondent framed her
initial story and I felt one possibility was that she had got used to that
being part of her life, it had become part of the norm and therefore
wasn’t explicitly mentioned. Of course she may not have mentioned it for
many other reasons for example denial, not feeling comfortable to etc.
However, it made me reflect that as researchers our prior knowledge of
participants may cause us to expect certain things in the way they construct
their story. For example addiction is generally viewed as being highly
problematic and having many negative impacts on peoples’ lives. I
therefore expected this story to feature strongly. I think your work will
be fascinating for looking at how addiction narratives fit within peoples wider
life narratives and therefore bring more light to this.
I hope this makes the point rather better.
Caroline
From: Discussion list for those practising BNIM [mailto:[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>]
On Behalf Of Cunningham, Margi
Sent: 24 June 2011 08:38
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: New Member
[SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]
Yes I am interested in this too
I will be working on narratives related to missing persons issues
Thanks
Margi
[cid:1.98853519@web28203.mail.ukl.yahoo.com]
MARGI CUNNINGHAM
SENIOR PROJECT OFFICER - NATIONAL MISSING PERSONS COORDINATION CENTRE (NMPCC)
HIGH TECH CRIME OPERATIONS
Tel +61(0) 2 92864551 Ext 124551 Mob +61(0) 447211473
www.afp.gov.au<http://www.afp.gov.au/>
________________________________
From: Discussion list for those practising BNIM [mailto:[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>]
On Behalf Of jo kirkpatrick
Sent: Friday, 24 June 2011 8:35 AM
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Subject: New Member
Hi BNIM Members
I live in Dulwich in South East London and am a journalist for a medical
journal. I am also a Open University Psychology graduate studying qualitative
research methods. I plan to do a PhD on addiction narrative. I am particularly
interested in ethnography, the therapeutic effects of writing, storytelling
especially life narratives and identity construction.
Best wishes Jo Kirkpatrick
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