Rob O’Connor
‘the research process is not so much a
means to an end but an integral part
of that end’ (Lohan, 2000 p. 182).
 Background to the research
 Aims
 Research design
 The use of narrative enquiry
 Biographical Narrative Interpretive Method
 The role of the Interviewer
 Benefits of method
 Challenges of method
 Conclusion/questions/discussion
 Researchers biography
 Research Question: How do separated fathers represent their
experiences of parenting in Ireland?
 Rationale: Change
1. Wider gender order (Connell, 1995; Tovey & Share, 2000)
2. Socio-demographic family (Binchey, 2004; Giddens, 1992)
3. Fathering culture (Dermott, 2008; Featherstone, 2009)
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Research ‘dislocation’ or ‘detachment’ (Sprague &
Kobrynowicz, 2004) l
Lack of accessibility eading to a ‘sterile, irrelevant discussion
without connection to social life (Alcoff, 1993, p. 715).
 To investigate how separated fatherhood is represented in
Irish legislation and social policy.
 To examine the positions of separated fathering in
relation to dominant constructions of masculinity and
family.
 To discover how separated fathers construct their own
self identities as fathers.
 To develop the use of Narrative and BNIM in research on
separated fathers.
 To explore the ‘form’ of the narrative told by separated
fathers.
 To make recommendations for future policy/practice
development.
 Address the gap, how fathers themselves feel about
fathering?
 No theoretical positioning on fathers (Marsiglio, 1993;
Richards, 1982)
 Feminist Research Approach (process as well as result )
1.
Interviewee as Expert/ Valuing the Personal (Harding,
2004; Brooks, 2007).
2.
Challenge Interviewer objectivity/power (Letherby, 2003)
3.
Reflexivity (locating the self, Riessman, 1993)
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Narrative
Biographical Narrative Interpretive Method (BNIM)
 Purposive Sample: which is a sample ‘selected purposefully to
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permit inquiry into and understanding of a phenomenon in
depth’ (Patton, 2002, p. 46).
15 Separated Fathers aged 20-55
National Support Organisations
Local Projects
Snowballing
Difficult Group to Access!
 ubiquitous throughout society (KY Lai, 2010).
 less contrived method
 Recognises participant expertise as narrator (Elliot,
2005)
 Focus on lived experience & interpretation (Riessman,
1993)
 Acknowledges interviewer influence (Hardy, Gregory
& Ramjeet, 2009)
 Structure
When telling a narrative some aspects are illuminated
and some excluded and this is a conscious choice
(East et al, 2010).
 Meaningful
Life is given meaning and becomes comprehensible
by expressing it thorough narrative (KY Lai, 2010).
 Identity Construction
‘in the telling, in the talk, substantial identity work was
going on’ (Byrne, 2000, p. 152).
 Social
‘Communities are woven together by narratives that invigorate their
common understanding of good and evil, happiness and reward, the
meaning of life and death’ (Christians, 2008, p. 206)
 Focus on the life experiences, worthy of research
 ‘Biography is seen as an alternative narrative, the voice of the
non-professional’ (Chamberlayne et al, 2000)
 Person must be an expert in their own life as subject, lead
 Fatherhood constructed through lived experiences
 Lends itself best to principles of subjectivity and participation
 Berlin
Quatext
group: Fritz Schütze built upon
phenomenological and interactionist work of Gabriele
Rosenthal, Wolfram Fischer-Rosenthal and others as part of the.
Brought to the U.K. and expanded upon by Chamberlayne and
also by Wengraf.
 Feminist Phenomenological Interviewing (Reinharz, 1992)
 ‘methods or techniques are not allowed to determine the
research situation but are adapted to the ongoing activity’
(Daly, 2000, p. 63).
 gaining access to ‘people’s ideas, thoughts and memoirs in
their own words rather than in the words of the
researcher’ (Reinharz, 1992, p. 19).
 The subtleties within the speech itself
 focused on gathering the life story and lived experiences
of an individual and apply a direct framework to achieve
this (Wengraf, 2009).
 Single Question Used to Induce Narrative
(SQUIN) (in every day language, Narrativised)
 deliberate vagueness, or ‘pro-subjective
vagueness’ (Wengraf, 2001, P. 124)
 Interview Stage 1 –SQUIN & Topic notes, 5-6
markers
 Interview Stage 2 – Info on topics (same words &
order)
 Interview Stage 3 – Qs from 1&2 and theoretical
purpose
 Story facilitator
 Active Listening ‘listening around and beyond words’
(DeVault, 2004, p. 233).
 Non-Directional support ‘neutral probes’ (Hesse-Biber,
2007, p. 126)
 ‘the researcher must stay on his or her toes and listen
intently to what the interviewee has to say, for the
researcher must be prepared to drop his or her agenda
and follow the pace of the interview’ (Hesse-Biber, 2007,
p. 132).
Less ‘artificial fragmentation’ (Elliot, 2006)
Less intrusive & judgemental
Interviewee framework (Patton, 2002)
less manipulated, Best self, Hawthorne Effect (Goffman,
1959)
 ‘when people tell their life stories they can often be
concerned to offer a kind of coherent narrative to others,
somehow moving over the breaks, disappointments and
displacements’ (Seidler, 2006).
 Not unguided - tangible, clear, auditable framework
(Wengraf, 2009)
 Shed light on social norms & beliefs, assumed and
therefore manipulated less
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 Too much rich data to be manageable.
 Data so in-depth no room for generalisation/relativist vacuum Lohan,
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2000/validity. Neutrality vs Objectivity
Frye (1998, p. 43) ‘has never been anything but an anthology, a collection of
tales unified, like any yarn, only by successively overlapping threads held
together by friction, not riveted by logic. There is no reason to predict or
require that it must forever hold together at all’.
Requires certain amount of training on part of interviewer.
Single question can still appear contrived as does not follow ‘normal’
conversation.
Iterative approach can prove challenging
Power Parity?
Situating the ‘I’
 1. What counts as an explanation/theory in
qualitative research?
 2. How to locate the personal in:
a) analysis
b) writing
 3.Who is the research for?
in
 How is qualitative data judged to be credible
 Need for some social facts?
 Trustworthiness & Authenicity vs. Objectivity &
Subjectivty (Patton, 2002).
 A strong positivist tradition was, and some would
argue still is, present in Irish research (Byrne &
Lentin, 2000).
First Person
Third Person
 Ownership
 Objectivity
 Patton (2002, p. 64)
 The voice of academic
conveys ‘the personal
voice of qualitative
analysis’.
rigour
Research needs to be creative and innovative in order to shake up
the order and present new insights through methodological
variations