New voices: The usefulness of a narrative approach to social work research

A methodological journey – A reflection on my route to narrative inquiry

I have always been interested in and captivated by people’s stories. When I reflect on key learning experiences in my life, I am aware that listening to and learning from people’s stories, or telling and reflecting on my own narrative, have been important in my personal, professional and intellectual development. Growing up in a northern English, working class family, I remember that stories were and remain an integral part of our social gatherings and celebrations. We rarely talked about books, politics or music in my family; instead we listened to each other’s stories. I have fond memories of sitting in my Aunty Vera’s front room as a child, balancing a plate of sausage rolls and crisps on my knee, listening to her relate tales about people she had met, places she had been and her emotional responses to these. I would look forward to her stories, particularly those where my mother joined in. They took pleasure in recalling fun times together from their shared past, or drew strength from each other when they spoke of sad events.

I have no doubt that listening to these stories and the manner in which they were presented, coupled with the opportunity to tell my own stories and engage in this way of communication, had a significant impact on me. They were influential in how I have learned about my family history, about my own sense of identity, and about which values I shared with my family and those I chose to rebel against.

My affinity with story telling and listening to people’s narratives was also important in my professional practice as a social worker. Working in a child protection team I had to undertake many assessments of children and their families and I would encourage those I was assessing to tell me their stories. Clandinin and Connelly boldly state, in their text about narrative enquiry in educational settings, that ‘For us, narrative is the best way of representing and understanding experience’ (2000: 18). I empathise with this and often felt that my most holistic, thorough assessments were informed by service users’ stories.

I was of the opinion then, and still am, that stories are an effective way for the narrator (in this instance service users) to explain in their own voice, their social context and the wider social structures in which they live. Also that the process of narration has the potential to unlock and relay human qualities such as love, angst and conflict (Cortazzi, 2001), allowing the listener to understand their perspective. In practice, however, I was also mindful that stories could be employed to mislead and that they could be a very powerful and persuasive way to create a false scenario (Riessman, 2008), which could be extremely challenging when trying to assess a situation and make appropriate decisions in relation to safeguarding. Nevertheless, I found stories a productive and engaging means of eliciting information from families, which often felt less obtrusive (if asked sensitively) than simply firing out assessment questions; this enhanced my relational practice methods.

When I left social work practice to return to study and embark on doctoral research, unsurprisingly I was particularly drawn to narrative analysis as a methodology. My research explores the social impact of charities and how this can be better articulated in the current context of localism agendas and an increasingly plural provider market in health and social care services in the UK. In a sector where quantitative approaches to impact measurement remain dominant in funding applications and evaluation reports (Metcalf, 2013), I am interested to explore how charities can articulate, in a more rigorous and formal way, the more tacit and less easily measureable impacts their services have in our communities. Furthermore, how the voices of those directly supported by or involved in charitable work are captured through their stories, listened to and championed within a bureaucratic, hierarchical commissioning process.

In my initial reading about this methodology, I was drawn to a discussion in Andrews et al., which suggested that often people choose to employ narrative research methods as a means ‘to see different and sometimes contradictory layers of meaning, to bring them into useful dialogue with each other, and to understand more about individual and social change’ (2008: 1). I was intrigued by the notion of layers of meaning and analysing not simply what has been said, but how a person has chosen to present a narrative, the words they use and how I might respond to them as a researcher. Also, that stories, which I love listening to, could have the potential to help me gain a greater understanding of how individual and social change can occur when people connect with a charity for support.

This, and my response to Polkinghorne’s 1988 work, led to my initial research question: how do people directly involved with charities (either as people who connect for support, or those who work or volunteer for a charity), express their understanding of the impact an organisation has in a community; and how do those people perceive, organise and give meaning to their experiences? I became increasingly interested to discover if people’s voices, captured in the telling of their story, could offer an insight and provide clues to those tacit, more difficult to articulate impacts that charities can make, which affect change not just to an individual but to communities. Wang and Geale state that, ‘Story makes the implicit explicit, the hidden seen, the unformed formed, and the confusing clear’ (2015: 195), which made me consider whether narratives could be a useful way to make sense of human lives and their ambiguous nature (Shaw and Holland, 2014).

When reviewing and reflecting on the literature on the use of narratives in academic research, it was clear that the approach and some of its key principles are compatible with my own values and interests, as a social worker and someone who is committed to social justice and equality. One aspect I am particularly drawn to is the commitment within this method to situate the person telling the story at the centre of the research, and that the voice of the research participant really matters (Du Bois and Wright, 2002). Also, that there is value in endeavouring to understand the experiences and the meaning of behaviour from the perspective of the narrator, whatever their position is within the given context. As Kim (2016: 1) describes, narratives have a ‘non pedantic nature that values stories of lay people’. Therefore, the appeal of this method was that it ensures that the voices of those involved in charities are prioritised and championed as valid stakeholders in an increasingly marketised and monetised sector.

Already very taken by this research methodology, I was fortunate enough to take part in a research summer school and a workshop specifically exploring narrative methods, led by Professor Catherine Kohler Riessman. There were many aspects of this course which were stimulating and thought-provoking, but perhaps unsurprisingly given my professional background, I was particularly interested when the discussion in the workshop turned to narrative research methods as a relational practice.

Cleverly employing a narrative style to introduce us to her experiences of narrative interviewing, Professor Riessman layered her story with learning tips and useful references and resources. I was fascinated and excited when she talked about narrative inquiry being responsive and reactive to the research context; that rich narrative data can be gained in situations which are not pre-determined and when spontaneity within the process is embraced. This evoked fond memories of some of my most exciting and interesting times in social work practice, where when working one-to-one with service users no amount of planning could determine an outcome; where interpersonal skills were required which went beyond my professional identity and training; and where the focus was on the relationship between two people and what qualities, values and mood both brought to that interaction.

In the workshop we discussed as a group the role of the audience in the construction of narratives, and then more specifically the role of the researcher within that construction, and that narratives are recipient designed. We talked about the physically present audience and how one’s reactions, body language, how you have been introduced to the narrator and other factors, have a significant impact on how a narrative is produced. Professor Riessman warned against ‘treating narratives as if they are a glimpse of an essential self, but rather to remember that they are a social construct’ and how important it is to be explicit about that within the analysis.

She also discussed the ghostly audience of narratives, the imagined other people who will hear or read a story. Talking about this and imagining different possible ‘ghostly audiences’ resonated with me in three ways. Firstly, this was particularly poignant for me as a new academic and made me reflect on the ‘ghostly audiences’ who will read my academic work and how that can either encourage me to create the best work I can and to push the boundaries of my abilities; but also how these thoughts can also prevent me from producing work and tap into my insecurities.

Secondly, in relation to my practice experience, it made me consider how overwhelming it must have been for some service users to talk about incredibly challenging personal circumstances and not really know who the ‘ghostly audience’ of their stories would be; that they had to cope with the uncertainty about who would read reports about them, which consequently could have a significant impact on their lives.

Finally, in relation to my research and the stories I hoped to hear, I wondered whether those I recruit to take part would consider and fear the ‘ghostly audience’. In the context of a highly competitive sector, it made me consider whether this fear could hinder people’s willingness to engage in the project or to speak openly about their lived experiences. Or, for the potentially vulnerable people I would be speaking to, who possibly would not be familiar with or understand how academic research is produced and used in society, would this fear of the unknown be detrimental and something I would need to be very clear about, when introducing and explaining the process. Indeed, the fear of the ghostly audience did affect my first attempt at narrative interviewing.

My first interview experience occurred just weeks after I attended the course. I had left the workshop feeling inspired and motivated and keen to put what I had learned into practice. I was eager to find people who would tell me their story, start my fieldwork and then practice transcribing and analysing. On reflection, I rather naively felt that it would be straightforward and that my social work skills, knowledge of and experience in relational practice would lead to great interviews, which would yield wonderful data. Of course, as more experienced researchers will know, things don’t always go to plan.

The interview was with a woman employed by a local charity. I had met her on a couple of occasions to discuss my research and she presented as very chatty and someone who naturally offered personal stories about herself in conversation. I was particularly interested in her story because she was employed by a charity which supports blind and partially sighted adults and she was also partially sighted and had talked to me about how she offers a form of peer support within her professional role. I thought she was an ideal narrative research participant and perfect for my first ever narrative interview. Dictaphone poised and notepad ready, I asked her about how she became involved in the charity. Rather than replying with a narrative or any personal anecdote, she reeled off what would be best described as the marketing brief for the charity, seemingly disregarding my question. It was not what I had imagined!

Her chatty, relaxed demeanour had changed, and she appeared rather nervous and cautious. I became acutely aware of the relationship between us, as researcher and research participant, and how both our emotions were affecting the interview. On my part, I was anxious to get it right because it was my first interview and I wanted this methodology, which I had spent lots of time learning about, to work for me. I was eager to hear a ‘text book’ narrative, which was sequential, had characters and a setting. For her, she seemed concerned about presenting the charity in a very positive way, and appeared particularly worried when I started to record the interview.

My experience illustrated what Bold discusses in her 2012 text, ‘Transference of feelings may occur in either direction, and they may be at an unconscious level but still have an impact on the interaction’ (103). I quickly learned that I needed to be flexible and deviate from my original planned questions, and try to relax and engage her in a more natural conversation. As Gubrium and Holstein (1998) suggest, a research participant needs ‘conversational space’ to tell an extended story and both the researcher and the participant need to work together to create a positive conversational environment, where a story has the chance to emerge and develop. As Mishler states, ‘The relevance and appropriateness of questions and responses emerges through and is realised in the discourse itself’ (1986: 65).

It was at this point that I too decided to put my notepad down and deviate momentarily from my planned open questions, or what would be better described as narrative prompts. I decided that to regain her chatty demeanour, I had to reflect this back to her, in both my language and my body language. Thankfully, as we both relaxed and enjoyed talking together, the stories did start to flow and I was able to revert to my planned narrative prompts in a less formal way. She was indeed, in my opinion, a great research participant.

On reflection, what I learned from this experience was that whilst some level of neutrality and detachment as a researcher can be useful in some processes, this is something which feels unnatural to me and can create a formal atmosphere that, in this case, did not yield rich narrative data. I realised that I had been drawn to this methodology for a reason, because it is interactive and responsive, that building relationships is a key part of the process and that being yourself with whatever emotions, values and reactions you bring to that moment is important. I now acknowledge that ‘training’ for this methodology started long before the workshop and my professional social work training, but relates back to those childhood family occasions and the experience of listening to, reacting to and learning from stories all my life.

This paper has offered a reflective account of how, as a PhD student in the early stages of my research, I have become drawn to narrative inquiry methods. It describes my journey from simply being personally interested in stories, to learning more about the methodology and how it could be useful in addressing my initial research questions around the impact of charities. It has also considered how as a social worker this methodology complements my values and professional experiences, particularly in relation to social justice and the benefits of good relational practice. Underpinning my developing knowledge and experience in narrative inquiry is the experience I had of learning from Professor Riessman, whose passion and enthusiasm for social research and this particular methodology was informative, brilliantly delivered and most importantly for me, inspiring.

As a social worker and researcher, I look forward to more narrative discussions with people and learning more about them, their social world and myself along the way. I conclude with a quote from Polkinghorne which I read and liked at the start of this methodological journey. It inspired me then and continues to do so.

The storied descriptions people give about the meaning they attribute to life events is, I believe, the best evidence available to researchers about the realm of people’s experience.

(Polkinghorne, 2007: 479)

Beginning to explore attitudes towards violence against women through the narratives of male offenders

I have always been interested in stories and I have evocative childhood memories of reading adventure stories full of heroes and villains, tussling with each other, good against evil. Such stories helped to shape my early moral view of the world, as it was plain to see who the ‘baddies’ and ‘goodies’ were. Right and wrong appeared so obvious. Of course, as I grew older, good and bad became less dichotomous. Nevertheless, after nine years in the military, and into the early part of my career in the prison service, I still held a strong sense of what I considered to be right and wrong. In both careers, I saw it as my job to protect the good people from ‘the baddies’. However, as my prison service career progressed, so did my attitude to right and wrong, heavily influenced by the stories of prisoners. During the 1990s, initiatives designed to support the rehabilitation and seamless integration of prisoners into the community became more sophisticated and prioritised. I became very familiar with the assessment of prisoners’ needs, the delivery of offending behaviour programmes and one-to-one counselling. In short, I began to listen to people’s stories, and it was a revelation. It was not so much that many of the stories prisoners told featured experiences such as deprivation, isolation, neglect, abuse, low self-esteem and low achievement that surprised me. Rather, it was that many of the stories revealed a common linear nature of such experiences. Stories of the journey through childhood, adolescence, and into adult life and prison followed the same pattern of individuals being subjected to very similar negative life events beyond their control; similar stories with similar themes and plots. For me, good and bad became highly subjective, as stories revealed common attitudes and beliefs that stemmed from common life experiences.

I was drawn to the subject matter of violence against women due to personal factors. My wife was also a prison officer and suffered a serious assault by a prisoner at work. Also the sad death of a dear family member at the hands of her ex-boyfriend proved to be, of course, very traumatic for the whole of her family; but also perplexing. There didn’t seem to be any reason for it other than the ultimate exercise of male power over women. It is not surprising, therefore, that on leaving the prison service I decided to focus my studies on violence against women, and was attracted to using narratives as a way of explaining it.

Of course many perpetrators of violence against women enter the criminal justice system, and some receive custodial sentences. Crime has a ‘pecking order’ amongst prisoners, a so-called ‘hierarchy of crime’ (Willis, 2004: 6) and those sentenced for the more heinous, stigmatised, and generally less ‘accepted’ crimes such as offences against children and violence against women may need to be protected from the redemptive violence of other prisoners by being segregated from them. Through personal observation, such a need has decreased over the years. A study by Mears et al. (2013) suggests that belief systems, such as the code of the street, are brought into prisons and perpetuated there. Therefore, it is the concept of this acceptability in prison that may illuminate changes in the general population, that is of interest to me. Has an increased acceptability in the general prison population contributed to a more capacious social space within which violence against women can operate? My research aims to examine variations over time of attitudes of acceptability/non-acceptability of violence against women amongst male offenders who have not been convicted of those offences.

Inspired by the attendance at a workshop with Professor Riessman, I chose to adopt the three models of narrative analysis (thematic, structural and dialogic/performance) as an additional approach to the data collected from the narrative accounts of the study’s participants, in order to explore attitudes.

Attitudes convey meanings that are socially constructed and changeable, and therefore lend themselves to analysis in a social context (Herek, 2000). Consequently, if attitudes convey meanings, then those meanings may present themselves in storied forms of discourse:

… the analyst is interested in how a speaker … assembles and sequences events and uses language and/or visual images to communicate meaning.

(Riessman, 2008: 11)

In the workshop, Professor Riessman highlighted Labov’s (1972) approach as a useful start to a researcher’s first attempt at narrative analysis:

… doing structural coding of clauses is extremely useful at the early stage of the analytical process. Examining strategic placement can be of enormous aid in interpreting the relation between meaning and action.

(Riessman, 2008: 89)

The following extract is from Luke (real name anonymised), a prisoner serving a life sentence for the murder of a person he believed to be a rapist. I have selected Luke’s narrative and analysis that formed part of my MA dissertation in sociological research, and a pilot for my subsequent PhD. Luke’s account reflected two of the main findings of the pilot study:

That an increased awareness, and increased sense of unacceptability, amongst male offenders, of offences against children, is a correlate for the increased acceptance of sexual violence against women.

I interviewed Luke in a private room in the visits area of a large prison. As with others in the cohort, Luke was selected because he had not been convicted of any offence of violence against women, as the study was concerned with prisoners’ attitudes towards those who commit such offences. Luke’s account was transcribed to the level of intelligent verbatim, meaning that false starts, stutters and pauses were omitted, as were words of affirmation of understanding from me. In fact, I had to ask very little, as Luke appeared keen to relate his story:

My views have changed, towards hurting people, just not towards the crime [of rape]. I still think it’s disgusting, it knocks me sick how someone can force, how someone can get aroused by forcing someone to do that. Especially when it comes to kids, because I was … mistreated badly. I can never understand how someone can get sexually aroused by doing that to someone, knowing these people are crying, screaming, they are hysterical … I could never lift my hand to a woman, I don’t know what it is, whether it’s because I watched my step-dad. My mum cheated on my dad with my real dad. So the man who brought me up for six or seven years found out I wasn’t his … and he started to treat me bad. And because my mum was being hit by him she blamed me for it … This lad (Luke’s victim), him and ten of his mates, had gang raped a young white girl … and slung her in the canal when they had finished with her. I cut the man’s nuts off, I wanted to cause him as much pain as possible. And that’s just an easy way for me, because you won’t do that again because you can’t. Simple as.

Luke’s overall narrative to this point has set the scene. He is not only the moral crusader (in his abhorrence of heinous sexual violence), he is also the innocent victim (of his step-father’s disdain and his mother’s blame).

As Riessman (2008) highlighted, one of the points of a narrative is to persuade the listener that the events are genuine and real. As we are drawn in to Luke’s story, into his world, it would be easy, at least for some, to agree with his general assessment of sex offenders, and to adopt his attitude, especially within the confines of a prison. As Katz (1960) indicated, the functions of attitude are to minimise penalties and maximise rewards. In this vein, one can imagine Luke’s attitude as being pervasive, part of the hegemony of men in prison.

12 This lad (Luke’s victim), him and ten of his mates, had gang raped a young white girl … (OR)

Luke’s account included some classic ingredients of a story. He introduced characters, especially the heroes, villains and victims. His colourful language attempted to engage the listener, to present the story as one worth listening to. There is also a moral point to his tale. This point, of course, is the justification of a horrific act. Yet by closer examination of his account, it is possible to see how the themes consistent with data from the study (many participants viewed at least some rape as a race issue, and most participants did not mention rape without reference to offences against children) are weaved into the overall narrative. They become part of the story, albeit as secondary to the main point, but accepted as norm. My short experience of the narrative approach has shown me that it may not reveal new data, but it does give an insight into where that data fits into the narrative, i.e. the context. Professor Riessman re-iterated this point several times. She did not discount traditional methods of qualitative analysis, but warned that the fragmenting and coding of data can often be edited out of context. The coding of Luke’s account revealed the themes of rape as an issue of race and rape as related to offences against children, but it did not reveal the context. Luke employed both themes as taken for granted, persuasive tools, knitted into his narrative. I agree with Professor Riessman, that narrative analysis is useful in complementing traditional qualitative research.

Our final thoughts

As both pieces document, attending the workshop was an important experience, which inspired and gave both of us the confidence to employ narrative analysis in our doctoral research. As we reflected together on our methodological decision-making process, it was clear that despite our different professional backgrounds and academic experiences, our attendance at the workshop and the opportunity to engage practically with a methodology was invaluable.

We had both read about narrative analysis before attending the workshop, but felt that we particularly benefitted from the classroom learning experience. As a number of studies have highlighted (O'Malley and McCraw, 1999; Rae and Livingston, 2007), there is value in online and distance learning. However, the pedagogical benefits of such approaches are best when used as a complement to traditional classroom learning and we certainly felt that this was the case in this instance. We both commented on how we felt that Professor Riessman brought to life her work using narrative, which provided us with a greater insight than simply reading her text.

We also commented on how our professional knowledge and shared academic interest in critical reflexivity was compatible with narrative research methods, and that this connection was something we wanted to explore further in our studies. We were reminded of the work of Taylor and White (2000), a piece we were both familiar with from our social work degrees, which observes that reflexivity goes beyond ‘reflection in action’ (thinking on your feet) and ‘reflection on action’ (a later analysis of events), by examining the knowledge base of the knower. As detailed in both our pieces, we recognise that reflexivity as part of our data collection and analysis will be essential and that an important aspect of the ‘who’ in performance and dialogic narrative analysis is the ‘self’ (Riessman, 2008).

Coming together to write this article has also made us consider how fortunate we were to have had the opportunity to attend the course, and it highlighted the importance of gaining practical experience and bringing academics from around the world together to share knowledge and expertise. As academic institutions in the UK deal with continued financial constraint, future workshops such as this could become less viable, which would be a significant loss to the development of future academics.

Finally, during the workshop, Professor Riessman frequently declared to the group that we were the future narrative analysts, that we should support each other, form groups and share ideas. Together, we hope to be the early formation of one such group and look forward to expanding our numbers, along with our newly developed knowledge and passion for narrative analysis.