A Narrative Approach to Qualitative Inquiry

INTRODUCTION When selecting a research design, such as quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods, Patton (2002) suggested reflecting on the purpose of the inquiry and the types of answers you seek.¹ Qualitative methods allow the researcher to study issues in depth with data collection often occurring through open-ended questions permitting “one to understand and capture the points of view of other people without predetermining those points of view through prior selection of questionnaire categories”.¹ Results include a wealth of detailed information about a small number of people; therefore, leading to an increase in the depth of understanding of these select individuals.

As Creswell (2013) stated, “Those undertaking qualitative studies have a baffling number of choices of approaches”.² Qualitative approaches of inquiry are diverse and can be numerous depending upon how they are classified as some classification schemes include 20 plus approaches.² Regardless of how they are classified, the traditional 5 approaches are represented, in some fashion, in all classification schemes. These include case studies, ethnography, grounded theory, narrative, and phenomenology. This article will provide the reader with a better understanding of narrative approach or narrative inquiry.

Narrative inquiry is the approach of which I have the most knowledge and the most experience with as it was the approach I selected for my doctoral research study. Narrative inquiry is a form of qualitative research in which the stories themselves become the raw data.³ This approach has been used in many disciplines to learn more about the culture, historical experiences, identity, and lifestyle…