Interpretive Research
The idea of imagination is where narrative inquiry and storytelling converge within narrative methodologies. Within narrative inquiry, storytelling seeks to better understand the “why” behind human action. Story collecting as a form of narrative inquiry allows the research participants to put the data into their own words and reveal the latent “why” behind their assertions.
“Interpretive research” is a form of field research methodology that also searches for the subjective "why." Interpretive research, using methods such as those termed “storytelling” or “narrative inquiry,” does not attempt to predefine independent variables and dependent variables, but acknowledges context and seeks to “understand phenomena through the meanings that people assign to them.”
Two influential proponents of a narrative research model are Mark Johnson and Alasdair MacIntyre. In his work on experiential, embodied metaphors, Johnson encourages the researcher to challenge “how you see knowledge as embodied, embedded in a culture based on narrative unity,” the “construct of continuity in individual lives.”
Read more about this topic: Narrative Inquiry
Famous quotes containing the words interpretive and/or research:
“The conclusion suggested by these arguments might be called the paradox of theorizing. It asserts that if the terms and the general principles of a scientific theory serve their purpose, i. e., if they establish the definite connections among observable phenomena, then they can be dispensed with since any chain of laws and interpretive statements establishing such a connection should then be replaceable by a law which directly links observational antecedents to observational consequents.”
—C.G. (Carl Gustav)
“... research is never completed ... Around the corner lurks another possibility of interview, another book to read, a courthouse to explore, a document to verify.”
—Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973)