ABSTRACT
It is the research question-what it is you, the researcher, wish to know-that influences your choice of research method. As a qualitative research method, narrative inquiry serves the researcher who wishes to understand a phenomenon or an experience rather than to formulate a logical or scientific explanation. The object of narrative inquiry is understanding-the outcome of interpretationrather than explanation. Narrative inquiry changes the question the philosopher Richard Rorty identifies as the epistemological question that has historically preoccupied Anglo-American philosophy, from “How do we come to know the truth?”to “How dowe come to endow experience withmeaning?”(cited in Bruner, 1986, p. 12).
