ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses six distinct methodological approaches to the use of narrative in research – narrative interview, naturalistic story-gathering, discourse analysis, case study, action research and meta-narrative systematic review. Examples of research based on narrative interview include Scott Murray's study of end-of-life care based on the narratives of people dying from lung cancer or heart failure, and the author's team study of the experience of diabetes in Bangladeshi patients. Narrative interviews are qualitative data, and on one level they can be approached using any mainstream method for analyzing text. A naturalistic approach enables the collection and comparison of multiple stories about a single issue or event. There are many theoretical variants of and methodological approaches to discourse analysis in the academic literature. A classic research study in discourse analysis is Eliot Mishler's analysis of doctor-patient consultations, in which he contrasted the 'voice of the lifeworld' with the 'voice of medicine'.
