Course description
Health and illness involve much more than biological functions in the body. The stories we tell about our body express and shape how we understand, interpret and experience ourselves, our health and illness, as well as the cultural and social contexts in which we live. They impact when we experience ourselves as ill, our decision-making in relation to illness, our expectations to treatment and when we define ourselves as no longer ill but healthy. For this reason, qualitative methods, sometimes in combination with quantitative methods, are increasingly used in health research in order to understand people’s experiences. However, qualitative methods in health research are often limited to a thematic analysis of patient interviews, such as individual interviews or in focus groups. Only rarely do researchers focus on how the experiences are narrated and what impact narrative forms may have on the interpretation of the data.
Although narrative theory was originally developed in the humanities, in the past decades, narrative analysis has increasingly informed research in health sciences. After all, many kinds of text can be viewed through a narrative lens, including oral, written, and visual materials. Moreover, compositions of field notes made after lengthy periods of observation can be narratively organized. Similarly, interview participants tell stories when they narrate their experiences. And researchers also construct stories from their data.
Narrative analysis refers to a family of methods for interpreting various types of data that have a storied or story’s form in common. Attention to sequences of action distinguishes narrative analysis from other kinds of qualitative analysis. The researcher is interested in how a speaker/writer assembles and sequences events and how they use language and/or actual or imaginary visual images to communicate meaning. In narrative analysis, the researcher interrogates intention and language – how and why incidents are storied, not simply the content to which language refers. For whom was this story constructed, and for what purpose? Why is it configured that way? What cultural resources does the story draw on, or take for granted? Are there gaps that might suggest counter-narratives? (Riessman, 2008).
The present PhD-course will provide:
1) a review of central definitions of narrative and narrative characteristics. The term “narrative” contains many meanings and is used in a variety of ways by different disciplines.
2) an introduction to different analytical approaches to narratives, such as thematic narrative analysis (focus on “what” is spoken/written), structural forms of analysis (focus on “how” a story is told), performative analysis (focus on the interaction in which the narrative is told), interpretative visual analysis, and small story analysis.
3) an introduction to tools that may be helpful during the process of analysis, for example NVivo
4) feedback on participants’ own projects that involve narrative analysis.
The lecturers on the course are associate professor Anita Wohlmann, SDU, Associate Professor Cindie Maagaard, SDU and professor MSO Anette Søgaard Nielsen (SDU, course leader)
Intended learning outcome
The participants will be able to: 1) define what a narrative is and explain how to distinguish narratives from other types of data, 2) assess which kinds of research questions lend themselves to narrative analysis, 3) identify and critically assess various approaches to narrative analysis, and 4) perform narrative analysis
Teaching methods
The course will consist of lectures, exercises, and practical work, as well as group discussions. The participants will be expected to work with their own material.
Course Fee
The course is free of charge for PhD students enrolled in Universities that have joined the Open market agreement and NorDoc.
For other participants there is a course fee of
DKK 3300
EUR 401