Narrative Interview

A narrative interview is an interview that is organized to facilitate the development of a text that can be interpreted through narrative analysis. Narrative analysis is guided by a theory of narrative, and these theories of narrative vary in the influence of the reader, the text, and the intent of the author on interpretation. For this reason, the content and structure of a narrative interview will depend both on the theory of narrative being used in the analysis and on the research question. That being said, there are some commonalities among all narratives that will facilitate interviews for use in narrative analysis.

Informants often relate experiences in narrative format; that is, they select and order events in ways that both reflect their own meanings and convey those meanings to others. The content and structure of the narrative contains implied meanings that are as important to understanding the narrative as the overt meanings—and perhaps more important. Narrative interviews provide informants with many opportunities to select and order events themselves rather than to put events into a preordained structure. For this reason, narrative interviews are often organized temporally, in the manner of a life story or as in life history research. Questions such as, “When did you first notice …” or “How did you begin …” allow respondents to set the perimeters of the temporal context they find relevant. Decisions about relevant and irrelevant content are made during the course of the interview, both by the informant and in collaboration with the researcher, but no information is a priori ruled out, for any event or interpretation can contribute to the meaning of a story.

Narrative interviews can use semi-structured or unstructured formats depending upon the research question and the goal of the analysis. Questions should be sufficiently open-ended to encourage participants to explain themselves fully, but it is not necessary that every question elicit a story. Often narratives are constructed by the researcher from component parts offered by the informant across the interview or interviews. Questions that are closed (i.e., require a yes or no answer) or that offer a set of fixed choices (e.g., always, sometimes, never) do not facilitate the development of narratives. However, questions that begin, for example, “Tell me a story about …” may intimidate informants who do not normally think in those terms. Narrative interviews, thus, require artful design, with questions carefully ordered to build on previous questions. Narrative interviews are also facilitated by the use of neutral probes that elicit information about actions and explanations. Questions such as, “How did it happen that …” or “What did you do then?” elicit the thinking that underlies the connection of the events or experiences selected for the informant's story. Revealing those connections is the primary goal of the narrative interview.