Narrative Research

Comment

Comment by Dr. Swati on August 19, 2010 at 9:13am

What is the difference between narrative research and case study?

Comment by Janet on August 16, 2010 at 11:05am

Hello again,

When I'm attempting to sort out my thoughts, I use a tool called CMap.

http://cmap.ihmc.us/

It's a concept mapping tour that was developed by the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. There are many such tools, but I use this one because it is free and runs on any operating system.

I've uploaded some examples of how I have used it here...

http://66.39.100.64/personal/research/

There are lots of examples on the main IHMC website...

http://cmap.ihmc.us/

best..janet

Comment by Ellen Ramvi on August 16, 2010 at 10:46am

Hi, Dr Swati, have you thought about Institutional ethnography?

Comment by Roy Williams on August 16, 2010 at 9:47am

Hi, Dr Swati, let me too ask you to define your question more narrowly.

Perhaps you can clarify which of the following you are most interested in:

1. Where do these strategies come from?
What problems were these strategies designed to address?
Whose problems were these strategies designed to address?

2. Where are these stategies going?
What interest groups (political, financial, cultural) are drviing these stratetegies?
What experts (both in committees and in reference texts) are driving these strategies?

3. What effect are these strategies having?
On epidemiology?
On expenditure and budgets?
On the status of individuals or institutions (ministries, research organisations)?

Researching just one of these in one State could occupy you for some time. All three, across all 35 States, well ... that might take a quite a few years.

Comment by Tom Wengraf on August 16, 2010 at 9:41am

Nobody would be saying "Do uncritical analysis", so I wouldn't worry about this.The main thing is (a) what data that already exists are you interested in using (like published data)?; (b) what data about whom or what does not exist that you would like to collect?

I get the feeling that you are trying to address in each post TOO MANY UNORGANISED QUESTIONS. As a result, each answer sets your mind spinning like a top in a way that isn't helpful. You need to develop one or more clear 'proposals' and then set out (or send out) a coherent proposal to think about. I'm afraid that I for one will not be able to say anything very useful until you can put forward at least one version of a coherent proposal where the questions you raise have been given at least one set of temporary provisional answers for me to think about. If you have a supervisor or consultant, they should be able to help you move in such a direction. Best wishes..

Comment by Tom Wengraf on August 16, 2010 at 9:29am

Dr Swati, your last email makes a further point critical. What level of depth and scope are you funded for? If you are a self-funded PhD student, you might be able to explore at most the health communication strategies (you haven't specify whose to whom through what medium) of 2 contrasting states out of the 35. If you are funded by some Indian federal agency with a colossal 3-year grant, you might cover many more. You still need to specify the (state) organisation(s) whose 'pre-existing health communication strategies' you wish to study.

Health is a very diverse field. You can never cover all the fields of health with which a State Health Ministry (or equivalent) might wish to communicate. You can therefore study which are the aspects of health that a given 'strategy' focuses upon and which they tend to underplay or ignore. You can then choose to study examples of either or both of the highlighted or underplayed 'health areas'. Having made such choices, you can then focus on the 'medium and mechanisms of communication to whom' particular communication flows (saying what to whom) are addressed, and the particular groups that are intentionaly or unintentionally not being addressed by such flows. Were you wishing to study the impact of communication flows and non-flows, you would need use some form of impact study, measuring impact by focus groups and perhaps narrative interviews for 'impact-relevant population categories'. If you wanted to measure impact more behaviourally, you might need different sorts of longitudinal (and probably statistical) data about behaviour change. Etc.

Depending on what data you have the funds and access to collect, you could then worry about "cultural values, beliefs and society structure" and any other conceptual framework (see chapter 2 of my textbook) that you feel would be relevant.

The first question, though, is -- given your 35 states -- what type of level and scope of research data-acquisition and interpretation are you likely to be funded for, and therefore what must be the limits of your ambitions.

Comment by Janet on August 16, 2010 at 9:24am

Hello again,

I've taken your last post, broken it up a bit and asked some questions that may help to clarify your project... see below...

Dr.S. In India we have 35 States which are highly culturally diverse.
J.H. How are these states culturally diverse?
Dr.S. I want to analyse the already made communication strategies for health communication
J.H. What data do you have that needs to be analysed?
Dr.S. As well as want to study cultural values
J.H. What aspects of cultural values are you interested in?
Dr.S. Beliefs
J.H. Ditto with beliefs?
J.H. What are these beliefs? In what way are they associated with with health and communication strategies?
Dr.S. Society structure which differentiate the culture and also matters a lot for the success or failure of any communication strategy.
J.H. What are the characteristics of social structure that are important to communication of health messages?
J.H. What are the characteristics of social structure that are important to uptake of health services generally?

...best...janet

Comment by Tom Wengraf on August 16, 2010 at 9:13am

Short thought about Janet's thought about the importance of the research question being asked, with which I completely agree. Chapters 3 and 4 of my textbook 'Qualitative research interviewing: biographic narrative and semi-structured methods' (Sage 2001) deal with models of research design and the move from research topics to research questions to semi-structured interview questions (and the logic would cover other sorts of quantitative and qualitative data as well). You might find it useful, Dr Swati, to have a look at these chapters particularly since the book also covers the elicitation of (research interview) narratives and the interpretation of qualitative data, including data from the narrative interviews.

Comment by Tom Wengraf on August 16, 2010 at 5:19am

Who or what would be the 'actor' having a 'strategy'? (if an organisation, what type of organisation? Communicating what about whose health to whom? Through what medium or media? The 'strategy' as alleged in words, or he 'strategy as inferred from observed and documented practice?) If you start to specify such questions, then people might be able to help. Are you interested in 'evauating' the strategy or strategies of whoever the 'actor' is? What is your own 'evaluation strategy' - what data from whom or what would you collect and how would you use it. Michael Patton's work on qualitative evaluation might be hekpful...

Comment by Janet on August 15, 2010 at 10:35pm

Hello,

the best place to start when deciding what methods to use, is with the question. The nature of the question really determines the nature of the data gathering approaches. Once these are settled, then there are a variety of ways to analyse the data... hth... best...janet

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