Using Narrative in Research
- Christine Bold - Liverpool Hope University, UK
Serving as an introduction to narrative methods and narrative analysis, Christine Bold's new book provides students, researchers, and other professionals with an introduction to the theory and practice of narrative approaches in research. This book provides clear coverage of the informing theories and principles that underpin narrative traditions and offers the reader guidance on the main methods of collecting and analyzing narrative data.
This book does everything that a methods book needs to do. It is practical, yet sets out the theory and history behind the approach, and it looks explicitly at design, ethics, data gathering, data analysis and writing as an ongoing process of narrative research. Bold's text deals comprehensively with conceptual issues within narrative research and is driven throughout by a range of real research specific examples of narrative analysis in action.
This is an ideal text for any student, researcher or professional interested in understanding and using narrative in research and analysis; it practical, example-driven coverage is ideally suited to those new to the field.
My experience of getting politicians to heed research findings taught me the power of the killer statistic and the good anecdote. So a book that seemingly would explain the latter - albeit dressed up as 'narrative' - had an appeal. But Bold here offers more than that...And it must be admitted that most of her own experience, and the examples she uses to support her argument, relate to research on professional practice and/or by practitioners...That makes the book all the more relevant to social research.
William Solesbury
SRA News
This text on using Narrative in Research will be a very useful adjunct to core texts in teaching narrative research methods to post graduate students. The strength of Bold's approach is her systematic and comprehensive description of key narrative research approaches. She provides a clear outline of each approach with examples of data collection and analysis, including some of the pitfalls that can be encountered using different narrative methods. Thus, her text has advantages in offering a basic reference point for what is an often confusing field of research methodology.
Great text for those undertaking narrative research at the end of their UG degree
The book covers issues relevant to narrative research in a clear fashion. It is written in a way that is accessible to students.
Really like this book, well written. Just it is a bit marginal as a method as yet.
Clear comprehensive guide to those engaging in narrative research - the section on analysis has been found particularly helpful
Useful text, but a bit too specialised for our module
Clearly written and structured text containing lots of examples, tailored towards analysing narratives in education. Not particularly suitable for teaching narrative research to communication and public relations students, even though I quite liked its scholarly approach.
Communicating academic perspectives of using narrative in research, by writing in the first person, I feel, opens new doors of understanding for research students and their mentors.
The book provides valuable ideas and insights into the use of narrative research. The book is particularly useful for Master and doctoral students whose studies focus on life histories and qualitative accounts of complex phenomena which are not amenable to more traditional means of data collection.
