ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to guide you through the research stories that produced the four life stories of this book. The structure of this chapter is different from the previous one. Here we consider different stages of the research process from four particular methodological positions. Our aim is to give some specific responses to the question commonly posed by those new to life story research: ‘How do you do life story research?’ Typically, perhaps, we want to throw in a disclaimer from the start. By attempting to explicitly account for the use of qualitative methods, the research stories we present below may present a vision of method that boasts a simple, smooth, deliberate, linear and unproblematic process. This is often far removed from the messy reality of life story method/ologies. In the final section of the chapter, we bring back into focus the researcher’s own reflections on the doing of life story research: thus exposing some of the dilemmas and problematics of this approach to research.
