BNIM:
TFA ‘Double-Experiencing’ Hypotheses (DEH)
+ Linked Following-Hypotheses (LFH)
The Biographic-Narrative Interpretive Method (BNIM) has been used in a
variety of health research theses and post-doctoral research projects (as
well as other areas). It involves a 2-subsession narrative interview and a
protocol for interpreting the materials along two separate tracks and then
bringing the results of the twin-track interpretations together afterwards.
One of the key components of track 2 – the interview transcript treated as
a succession of successive micro-acts – is the TFA (/Teller Flow/Thematic
Field/analysis).
Along this interpretive track, BNIM is concerned to try to get
well-evidenced inferences about the ‘lived experience’ of the interviewee as
they tell their told story in the interview. This involves a
segment-by-segment consideration of the interview record, constantly
inquiring into the ‘lived experience’ of the teller that might be thought to
be ‘behind’ the actual recorded telling.
The danger is that hypothesising about the lived experience in the field of
health – or any other field – can be relatively shallow and rather boring.
As a narrative researcher into the experience of ‘ill-health’ and of health
workers, you might be interested -- whether you use BNIM or not – into the
attempt below to ensure that researchers using BNIM nudge themselves
towards a comparatively ‘deep’ inquiry into often complex and contradictory
experience. It relates to the notion of a ‘BNIM panel’ in which three or
four people including the researcher generate and eventual test and evaluate
hypotheses about the ‘lived experiencing’ of an interviewee going through a
biographic narrative, a told story of earlier experience.
All comments welcomed. If you like a free electronic copy of the current
version of the BNIM Short Guide and Detailed Manual, just let me know
Tom
This is a revised (July 2012) version of a section in the BNIM Detailed
Manual. It is in section (3.5.3.2). on finding the pattern of the telling
of the told story
Note that the interviewee is having a double experiencing in their telling,
and your (panel) hypotheses about “What are they experiencing at this point
in the telling?” must implicitly have a double referent.
In the example below, the interview has recalled being badly treated in
primary school by a teacher.
About-PIN chunk
Event being recalled :
Being badly treated in primary school by a teacher
Chunk of
Evaluation
“At age 35 this is not difficult at all: I suffered a bit, perhaps not even
a bit”
The panel is then asked to put forward a hypothesis about a ’double
experiencing’ at the point at which this Evaluation was given
What might be an EH about….
What might be an EH about…..
Their then-experiencing
Plus Their now-in-the-interview experiencing
Recalled
At the time: repressed great anger and shame?
Now also: Sympathy with past self – sympathy with teacher – nostalgia for
past reality?
The hypothesis of a double experiencing is =>
All of the above in complex joining and mutation,
part-denying, part-asserting
Figure 20 Double experiencing when telling story: I suffered a bit
So the ‘hypothesis about the double experiencing’ at the point at which the
interviewee says
“At age 35 this is not difficult at all: I suffered a bit, perhaps not even
a bit”
might be (after the facilitator has done a lot of pushing (not for PINs but
) for more precise and fully-developed Experiential Hypothesising:
She is remembering that she felt great shame and anger when treated in that
way, and that she had also felt that she had no choice but accept the
treatment. Remembering it now, she wishes to appear in her own eyes and in
the eyes of the interviewer as a mature adult and to do so, she distances
herself from the child she was and her emotions then. Herself now also a
teacher, she can also see that, without realising it then, she herself had
been challenging the teacher in a way that she now knows teachers find it
hard to deal with. She regrets a bit how far she has come from a childhood
and a schooling which she retrospectively thinks of as being quite a happy
and a privileged one, This ‘adult perspective’ makes her keep well away from
identifying with the child she was, and does this by minimising what
happened. That’s why she says
“At age 35 this is not difficult at all: I suffered a bit, perhaps not even
a bit”
The concession to her child-self “I suffered a bit” is pretty much
completely (though not completely) withdrawn when she says “perhaps not even
a bit”.Her current self-image has to suggest that maybe she as a child
“perhaps” didn’t suffer at all.
An earlier admission of being badly treated and by implication is suffering
is in process of being withdrawn by her on the grounds, perhaps, “that for
her now at 35 this is not difficult at all”.
Perhaps, without realising it, in the interview she is re-enacting the
repression of suffering (of great anger and shame) that she felt as a child
that she had to do in the classroom. Does the interviewer now represent her
class peers at the time, her then-teacher and her then-parents?
This is an ‘expanded version’ of the sort of deliberation about experiencing
that might go on in or after a BNIM TFA panel attempting to spell out a
‘double experiencing hypothesis’.
The facilitator would have to find a way of ‘condensing’ such a deliberation
into a few phrases on the flip-chart sheet.
He or she might then ask the following question to the panel:
Do any Structural Hypotheses about her situated subjectivity (in that then-
child-phase of subjectivity, in her current phase of subjectivity within
health care) suggest themselves?
There might or might not be one, or none, or more than one……
A ‘Double-Experiencing Hypothesis’ about the (often contradictory,
ambivalent) experiencing during the doing and the closing of the interview
segment is put forward, and it is part of the BNIM method that such
hypotheses should be preferably linked to an eventual ‘guess’ (one or more
‘following hypotheses’) as to what the shape of the next or succeeding text
segments would be like if the ‘Experiential Hypothesis’ were true
(Linked Following Hypothesis = hypothesis about what might follow in the
data-series, defined more narrowly or more broadly).[1]
E.g. If the ‘double-experiencing hypothesis’ (DEH) is that the interviewee
is embarrassed about showing emotion when giving a detailed story about
topic H (Health), then one ‘linked following hypothesis’ (LFH) about what
will happen next or soon in the text might be that he or she will shift
either to a less emotion-inducing topic (e.g. Work) or to a different way of
talking about the same topic H (rather than re-living a narrated moment
very concretely, s/he might keep the emotion better at bay by either keeping
the topic H but shifting to an abstract argument, or by launching into ‘a
declaration of values’). S/he might possibly do both (changing topic and
shifting out of narrative).
The last paragraph summarises a range of Following Hypotheses that might
arise if the Experiencing Hypothesis (embarrassment about/showing emotion
when giving detailed story – PIN – about topic H) were true.
Once the panel has registered its alternative models of the situated
experiencing subject at that point (Experiential-Hs + some Following-Hs for
each Experiential-H), then the actual next segment is revealed.[2]
This new chunk of data might confirm some previous (following) hypotheses,
force a shift in others, lead us to reject still others. Some earlier
hypotheses might – and for a long time they do -- remain untouched. Having
considered the impact of the new event chunk on earlier hypothesising, the
panel then turns to generate new hypotheses and counter-hypotheses in the
light of the new event-chunk.
Taking the example in the text, if the speaker did shift topic to an
emotionally-neutral one and also started talking in an abstract
position-taking way, then the experiential hypothesis of ‘Embarrassment
about showing emotion’ would appear confirmed.
But, if the shift was to an even more delicate topic and a continuation of
narrating key moments in detail (PINs), then the previous (‘Embarrassment
about showing emotion’) hypothesis about why the previous segment came to an
end might have to be revised or even rejected.
For a magisterial account (and a magisterially difficult one !) about the
revealing difficulties of narrating, see Schütze (2005).
Then the exercise is repeated.
Experiencing hypothesising, and linking them to ‘Following Hypotheses’:
In the “I suffered a bit, perhaps not at all” example cited above (p.552),
the ‘Experiencing/ Experential’ hypothesis was developed in a way which
showed the potential of such hypothesising to explore quite deep into
subjectivity.
In the next example, we can see how a panel not pushed towards deeper
understanding (deep-EHs) can actually stay excessively shallow (and short)
in this crucial work of ‘imagining situated subjectivity’ in the TFA panel.
START OF CRUCIAL DIGRESSION ON ELABORATION OF ‘EXPERIENCING HYPOTHESES’ IN
TIGHT CONNECTION TO ANY ‘FOLLOWING HYPOTHESES’ DERIVED FROM THEM TO ‘TEST’
THEM
1. The hypotheses (especially the ‘Experiencing Hypotheses’ EHs) need to be
detailed
2. The following hypotheses (FHs) are only of interest if linked to
specific EHs (Linked Following Hypotheses)
Notice that you need to move yourself towards quite specific hypotheses
about experiencing. Just putting a one-word EH will not prove to be
sufficient.
The example below is from a recent BNIM trainee’s record of a TFA panel, and
it refers to the interviewee’s experiencing of the delivery of the SQUIN at
the start of the interview. The ‘comment’ is by me. If panel members just
started with one-word accounts of the ‘experiencing’ interviewee (.g.
‘nervous’), the experienced panel-facilitator would not have not just left
the matter there but he or she would, in the panel, have pushed the
one-worders to elaborate each of their initial ‘one-word experiencing’
hypotheses.
Let us see what did happen, as provided in the TFA record.(The comment was
my comment to the trainee on the draft she sent me). .
Line
Textsort
Gist
EH: Hypotheses about the experiencing of the interviewee (EH)
FH: Hypotheses about what might follow (FHs) if a particular EH was true
001
I: Initial Question
D1.Delivery of SQUIN
Interested in young peoples’ experiences of care and leaving care
Uncomfortable
Reluctant
Nervous[RA1] <>
FH1. Will Pause
Unproven by D2
FH2. Will Ask what I wanted to know
Unproven by D2
FH3. Will give chronological account of care
Proven
Slightly revised –
Figure 21 TFA panel record - undeveloped hypothesising, unlinking FHs to EH
In the example above, each experiencing hypothesis is only given ‘one word’
(although interestingly, the FHs in the final column are given more and
better elaboration). In addition, it is not clear to which of the three
‘one-word EH’, each of the FHs is attached. The structure needs to be
elaborated.
1. If, in the final column, FH3 comes to be confirmed by later chunks, we
don’t know how this relates to any of the three EHs in column 3. Therefore,
our guess at an FH was right, but this doesn’t link to confirming a
particular EH. And it is ‘good hypotheses about lived experiencing’ with
which we are concerned.
What was the interviewee experiencing at this moment of the interview? is
the question, and, since the FHs are not related to particular EHs, neither
the refutation of some FHs nor the confirmation of other ones brings us any
closer to more knowledge about the EHs.
If there is no linkage back from a given FH to a particular EH, there is no
point in putting forward a single FH and, even if one does put them forward,
there is no point in checking back from later chunks as to whether an FH is
confirmed or disconfirmed….. because it does not link back to strengthening
or weakening any particular (EH) hypothesis about the (normally double)
experiencing of the interviewee at particular moments of telling their
story.
No linkage from FHs to a particular EH; no point (or very little) in
collecting FHs at all. It is in the complex ‘lived experiencing in the
telling of the story’ which reveals that complex situated subjectivity and
FHs are only worth doing if they link up precisely to elaborated hypotheses
about ongoing lived experience (the double experiencing of the past in the
present) of the teller as they are telling. My argument: if there is No
linkage from FHs to a particular EH; then there is no point in collecting
FHs at all.
See textbook QRI (Wengraf 2001 p.278-9 see how more elaborated you can be
about experiencing Hs, how more elaborated you need to be if you are going
to generate for your audiences accounts of lived experiencing which are
worth the elaborate and sustained effort of following the BNIM interpretive
procedure.[3]
Compare Figure 20 above, with the ‘revision’ on the next page:
Line
Textsort
Gist
EH: Hypotheses about the experiencing of the interviewee (EH)
FH: Hypotheses about what might follow (FHs) if a particular EH was true
001
I: Initial Question
D1.Delivery of SQUIN
Interested in young peoples’ experiences of care and leaving care
E.H.1.1. Uncomfortable about such an open question
FH 1.1.a Will Pause
Unproven by D2
FH 1.1.b Will Ask what I wanted to know in particular
Unproven by D2
E.H.1. 2. Comfortable about being given such freedom
FH2.1.2a Will give chronological account of care
Proven
FH 1.2b Will start with an overall evaluation of the experiences and not a
story
E.H.1.3. Suspicious of motivations and interests of researcher
FH 1.3a Will ask “Why are you doing this research?”
FH 1.3b. will ask “Who is going to read what you write?
FH 1.3c. Will say “I don’t know if I’ve got anything to say”
EH 1.4. Anxiety about capacity to give a good story
FH 1.4a Will say “I don’t know if I’ve got anything to say”
Figure 22 TFA panel record - more elaborate, more linked EH, FH
Please note that
(1) the EH column is not just marked by abstract unspecific subjective
states with one-word descriptors like ‘uncomfortable’, ‘suspicious’,
‘anxious’, but more elaborate hypotheses about experiencing. ‘Uncomfortable’
might be uncomfortable because torn between wanting to talk about matter M1
but wanting not to talk about matter M2 which is very linked, and wanting to
not think at all about how he changed his mind about M3….. etc. A complex
‘experiencing of uncomfortability’ which needs to be -- rather than alluded
to with a one-word unfocused descriptor -- -- spelled out in the equivalent
of a pararagraph a little more like the “suffered a bit, perhaps not
suffered at all” example on p. 552.
(2) the FHs are precisely linked to the EHs from which they are derived
(3) the same FH might be put forward which links back to two or more EHs.
That is, FH 1.3c and FH 1.4a might get ‘confirmed’ by a future chunk if the
interviewer did go on to say in the next chunk ““I don’t know if I’ve got
anything to say”. If the interviewee did go on to say that, we might say
that EH 1.2. was not strengthened by this new chunk, but that we could not
say that which of EH1.3 or EH1.4 were more confirmed than the other by this
new chunk. It would have to be left open.
(4) The same predicted FH might relate to more than one EH, and then, were
the FH confirmed at some future point, then this cannot on its own be taken
to support any and only one particular EH.
(5) The confirmation or disconfirmation of an FH on its own is a loose not a
tight indicator about the possible strength of weakness of any particular
EH. But it is not irrelevant either.
END OF DIGRESSION ON ELABORATION OF ‘EXPERIENCING HYPOTHESES’ AND OF THEIR
BEING TIGHTLY CONNECTED TO ANY ‘FOLLOWING HYPOTHESES’ PUT FORWARD.
Why is this an important point?
The point is not so much to put FHs on the sheets of paper and then tick
them or put a cross against them as new chunks of data confirm or disconfirm
them. That is a means to an end.
The purpose or end is for the slow development in the minds of the panel or
panellists (namely the researcher and allies) of a guided complex sense of
the interviewee’s likely general modes of experiencing their experience. We
are searching to empathise more closely with better-imagined lived
experiencing.[4]
The capacity to imagine the interviewee’s state of mind in the interview
oriented simultaneously to the ‘talking in the interview’ event and to the
‘remembering past situated events and states of mind’ requires a capacity
for empathy and identification rather like that of a historian, in fact,
exactly like that of a (certain type of) historian. See discussion of
‘imaginative identification’ on p. 162, and Kate Grenville’s Search for the
Secret River.
If the hypothesising in the Teller Flow (TFA) panel is not both ‘double’ and
‘deep’, then the structural hypotheses about the interviewee will themselves
have to remain ‘simple and shallow’. This is an over-simplification itself!
_____
[1] A ‘linked following hypothesis’ is one which hypothesises
about the shape of next or future segments that might follow in the
interview were the preceding speculative ‘experiential hypothesis’ true. It
is a draft operationalisation of the ‘experiencing subjectivity-in-context
hypothesis’ (this latter can only be tested indirectly by a risky
prediction about as yet un-known data, i.e. by a ‘following hypothesis’, a
hypothesis about what might ‘follow’ logically and historically) were the
experiential hypothesis to be true.
.
[2] The important mechanics of such ‘registration’ are dealt
with in Wengraf 2001, ch.12. The flow of chunks and of generated and/or
supported and/or disconfirmed hypotheses needs to be registered on A2
flip-charts which get pinned up on the wall for all to keep the flow of
panel thinking in collective sight and in collective mind and for ‘further
noting’ (and memo-ising) as the panel proceeds.
[3] Froggett and Wengraf (2004) has an example of this sort of
work in a discussion of research team (panel) dynamics. What is going on
below the surface in the panel so as to produce the work of experiential
hypothesising?
[4] The extended ‘expansion’ of one particular ‘Experiencing
Hypothesis’ (about repressed anger and shame in the past leading to further
self-repression in the interview: “I suffered perhaps not at all”) on p.
552 above represents a discussion in the pane;. On the sheet of flipchart
paper, the facilitator can only write a few words to remind panel members
during the further discussion (and herself afterwards) of a discussion and
of their experience of that discussion. For example: “Anger and shame
repressed at time; self-distancing in the interview” might be one (not
particularly good) condensation of that discussion onto the flip-chart. A
few words just to remind panel members.
_____
[RA1] <> I think you will find that your ‘experiencing’ comments will get
richer as you do more panels. For example: “nervous”. About what? Spell out
alternative possibilities of what he might be nervous about….about the
interview, about revealing family secrets, about getting too emotional,
about not being able to remember, etc. See textbook QRI p. 262-3 and p.278-9
see how more elaborated you can be about experiencing Hs.
