- Summary of Article Purpose & Research Questions
- Philosophy and Bias
- Narrative Overview
- Discussion of the Method
- Analytic Procedures
- Suitability
- Quality and Trustworthiness
Philosophical Underpinnings and Theoretical Perspectives
- Account of a story or action
- Participants experiences of self-harm as contextual focus
- Causes, functions and effects identified through telling story
Narrative Research
Oral History Narrative Approach
Life Story Interview
"I am interested in hearing about the life experiences of young people who self-harm. I would like you to tell me the story of your life and all the experiences and events that seem important. "
METHODS
How the adolescents told their stories
Follow Up Interview
When do you self-harm?
When did you start to self-harm? What was happening around this time?
Why do you think you (and other adolescents) self-harm?
Structure and coherence: Adolescents had difficulty structuring their experiences temporally, and describing the meaning and emotional experience behind the events.
Integration: The adolescents in the study were able to describe seperate events, however seemed to have difficulty linking the events.
Resolution: There appeared to be a lack of resolution in the adolescents stories.
Defended aspects of stories: The adolescents had difficulty recalling specific self-harming incidents, what occurred after the self-harm, and also underlying difficulties.
Validity
- Prolonged engagement & persistent observation
- Triangulation
- Peer review or debriefing
- Negative Case Analysis
- Clarifying Researcher Bias
- Member Checking
- Rich, thick description
- External Audits
- Verisimilitude
- Utility
Young people's stories of self−harm:
A narrative study
Kerry Hill and Rudi Dallos
Philosophical Underpinnings
Methodological Underpinnings
- Participant Recruitment
- 6 adolescents recruited from charitable organization (UK)
- Data Collection
- Semi-structured interviews
- Narrative Approach
- Causes, effects and functions
- Themes identified
Common themes identified in relation to affect/ evaluation
- People just don’t understand, self-harm is my way of coping; it doesn’t mean that I’m weird or crazy
"it’s the way that I’ve taught myself to deal with things ... it’s the only way that I can mentally cope with anything. I mean like have tried other things but they haven’t worked and I think that other people want me to stop but at the moment I think that it’s the best thing for me to do, there’s nothing else that I can do"
- Talking is difficult, so I keep it all inside
‘I don’t know just kind of just the short way round of feeling better’ and ‘because ... I don’t know. It’s not like I have to think everything through. It makes me feel happier quicker, I know it’s a bit weird but when I do it kind of like, I get to a point, well just after I finished it, then I just feel like fine, like I don’t really think about it’.
- Putting the anger inwards
“oh well I’ll hurt myself then, I am not hurting you, not hurting anybody else”
Reliability
Researcher Bias and Stance
- No disclosure of bias but does address power imbalance
References
Baerger, D. R., & McAdams, D. P. (1999). Life story coherence and its relation to psychological well-being. Narrative Inquiry.
Creswell, J. W. (2012). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches (3rd
ed.). Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Hill, K., & Dallos, R. (2012). Young people’s stories of self–harm: A narrative study. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 17(3), 459-475.
Loh, J. (2013). Inquiry into Issues of Trustworthiness and Quality in Narrative Studies: A Perspective. Qualitative Report, 18(33).
McCormack, C. (2004). Storying stories: a narrative approach to in-depth interview conversations. International journal of social research methodology,7(3), 219-236.
Transcribing tape
Intercoder Agreement
PURPOSE: The researchers collected the stories of six adolescents who have engaged in self-harm in order to examine their attempts to make meaning of their self-harm and life experiences. They hoped that an analysis of content of the adolescents stories, as well as how they were described would lead to further understanding.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS:
"how [do] adolescents who are struggling to communicate their feelings in ways other than self-harm make sense of their experiences. What effect does this have on their ability to process and understand difficult life events and what are the clinical and developmental implications"?
Presentation Outline
Analysis
Quality and Trustworthiness
Versimilitude
“the quality of seeming to be true or real”
Validity
- Prolonged engagement & persistent observation
- Triangulation
- Peer review or debriefing
- Negative Case Analysis
- Clarifying Researcher Bias
- Member Checking
- Rich, thick description
- External Audits
- Verisimilitude
- Utility
(Creswell 2012, Loh 2013)
- Usually focuses on one or two individual stories
- Analysis may be thematic, dialogical/performance, or structural
- Types: biographical, autoethnographical, life history, oral history
- Often contain turning points; occur within specific times/places
- Often "restoried" to present experiences/events chronologically
- Explores the individual’s understandings of their own story in their daily contexts.
- Data collected by interviews, observations of the individual, photographs, etc.
- More than one method can be employed in data collection.
(Creswell, 2012)
Suitability of Approach
Data Analysis
Structural and Thematic
Is the Narrative approach suitable ? YES
- Oral history gathered from 6 adolescents
- Examined meaning of experiences
- Explored the time period of behaviour
- Focused on story content and structure
- Organic flow of narrative was restoried
(Creswell, 2012)