Nygren & Blom. 2001. Analysis of Short Reflective Narratives.

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2001; 1; 369 Qualitative ResearchLennart Nygren and Bjorn Blom

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A B S T R A C T This article describes and discusses a method foranalysing and working with short reflective narratives. The method isinspired by the interpretation theory of Paul Ricoeur, and applied toshort written stories where social work students reflect on situationsfrom their field studies – situations they experienced as critical orproblematic. The article starts with a discussion about the need todevelop complementary methods in narrative research. This isfollowed by an argument for written narratives as an alternativeresearch approach. A pilot study of 14 narratives from social workstudents containing critical or problematic events is then presentedwith a focus on the analysing process. The analysis is evaluated asfocused and manageable, easy to combine with quantitative analysesand it appears to generate findings in a form that is easy to publish. Itprovides a shortcut to a deeper understanding of both the narrativeand the narrator. On the negative side, the method using writtennarratives has potential risks of ‘over-interpretation’, and the loss ofthe ‘midwife’ effect that can appear in an oral interview.

K E Y W O R D S : knowledge, meaning units, narrative analysis, Ricoeur,social work, text interpretation

An approach to developing narrative research

In this article our purpose is to demonstrate and discuss a method foranalysing short reflected and written narratives. Over the last decades,narrative analysis has gained increased attention as an effective approach inhealth and social sciences (Coffey and Atkinson, 1996; Mishler, 1995).Disciplines such as education, nursing science and social work share a stronginterest in applied research, and narrative studies are frequently used todescribe and understand the complexity of the processes where peopleinteract or work with other people (Scott, 1989). In our view, narrativeanalysis is an approach that is well suited to the exploration of how people

Analysis of short reflective narratives: amethod for the study of knowledge in social workers’ actions

L E N N A R T N Y G R E N a n d B J Ö R N B L O MUmeå University, Sweden

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make sense of their experiences (Clandinin and Connelly, 1994). However, inaddition to the interest in analysing sense-making, narrative analysis alsoenables the researcher to study how people order and tell, or rather structuretheir experiences (Coffey and Atkinson, 1996).

We have the impression that most social research that uses narrativeanalysis is based on the assumption that the best quality data are obtainedthrough research interviews with open questions (Mishler, 1986; Riessman,1993). Whilst we agree that a good research interview is a useful tool forconstructing meaning, we also consider the role of the interviewer as veryimportant in that process (Mishler, 1986).

An approach where interviewees are asked to reflect and then write down(short) narratives instead of telling them orally is a significantly different butcomplementary method. It has a similar purpose in its search for themeaning given to people’s experiences but is more focused. The method ofanalysing written narratives presented in this article could be seen as a wayof accelerating the process of developing field texts into research texts(Clandinin and Connelly, 1994).

This approach is also based on the assumption that the respondents’written narratives constitute an interpretative step that changes the qualityof the data for the analyst in a fruitful way. Written narratives produced by ahomogenous group (as in this case) provide a more direct focus on therespondents’ way of defining and understanding an event. This is achieved byasking respondents to write down the story and then make an initialinterpretation of what they have written.

There are many ways of analysing the research texts that emanate fromcollecting narratives. Mishler (1995) identifies three main models ofnarrative analysis: (1) models which emphasize reference and temporalorder: the ‘telling’ and the ‘told’; (2) models which focus on textual coherenceand structure; (3) models where the interest lies in ‘narrative functions:contexts and consequences’. Our approach borrows thoughts from all threemodels. By applying the thinking of the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur(1976, 1981, 1984, 1985, 1988), we have adapted a concept of therelationship between the telling and the told where the analytical process isbased on his ideas of a distinction between chronology and narrative. Butsince we deal with ‘real’ experiences of social work students, we also feel thatour analysis gains value from its relevance to human action in certaincontexts. At the end of this article we evaluate this Ricoeur-inspired model ofnarrative analysis in relation to social work research.

The complex knowledge base of social work

Social work in today’s modern world demands knowledge of many differentkinds. In international scientific debate there is no consensus about whatkind of knowledge is at work in the actions of social workers (Nygren and

Qualitative Research 1(3)370



Soydan, 1997). What is the role of theoretical knowledge in the moment ofaction, when a child is separated from its parents, when a dialogue is openedwith a drug abuser, or when the client is told how much money she or he willget? To what extent is it a question of personal talent, creativity or charismathat is crucial to what will happen? Is knowledge applied in a prescriptive orinstrumental way, or does it take the shape of a ‘mass’ or a matrix ofknowledge – a more or less conscious background against which socialworkers reflect their sensory impressions?

The disagreement on this issue can be represented as a fight between thosewho believe in a rational, instrumental application of knowledge and thosewho argue that social work is a creative, artistic activity (Reamer, 1993).Between these two extremes there are many possible combinations andvariations. One combination is the concept of practice wisdom wheretheoretical knowledge, experience and creativity amalgamate into somethingpresumably better – however more mysterious – than knowledge, namelywisdom (see Goldstein, 1990). The issue about the function of knowledge indifferent kinds of action is crucial in education where people learn how towork with people. Social work education, for example, is supposed to preparestudents for critical reflection. A well-known dilemma is how to make aproper balance between different kinds of knowledge. Is it preferable toeducate social workers who have a high theoretical potential so that they willbe more flexible when situations change? Or, for the same reason, would it bebetter to focus on what social workers actually do in practice?

The arguments in this field of conflict are still based on relatively vagueconceptions. Therefore it is promising to see the increasing interest innarrative approaches in social work research. Conceptualizing social workpractice is needed since social work is a highly communicative and complexpractice. There are many arguments for the study of narrated experiencesand our view of social workers’ work as narratives is not unique (Goldstein,1990; Hall, 1998). Goldstein (1990) argues for narrative theory as a possiblepractice theory in social work:

By revealing the meaning-laden character of social behavior and itsinterpersonal and environmental contexts, the narrative form not onlyoperationalises the precept ‘start where the client is’, but offers a sound basis forongoing dialogue and relationship (p. 39).

This prescription for using narratives to ‘start where the client is’ has anobvious parallel in the ambition to search for knowledge in people’s actions(Nygren and Soydan, 1997). The use of histories, including narratives, insocial work research and evaluation is proposed by Martin (see Shaw andLishman, 1999). Shaw (1996) argues that social work evaluation based onlife stories ‘brings together the participatory aspect from observation methodsand the interactive character of qualitative interviews’ (p. 141). This article isa step on the way towards the further development of complementarymethods for the analysis of narrated experience from social work practice.

Nygren and Blom: Analysis of short reflective narratives 371



The written narrative: a way of reflecting meaning

A common argument for working with narratives is that storytelling is a wayfor storytellers to give meaning to their experiences (Manning and Cullum-Swan, 1994; Riessman, 1993). Apparently, the most prevalent approach is toask the respondent to verbally narrate situations or events. The standard roleof the interviewer is to listen and document. The respondent is then oftenasked to confirm the transcription of the interviewer.

An alternative approach is to ask the respondent to write down narratives.Thus a relevant question is to ask what is won or lost in comparison with the verbal approach. The difference between speaking and writing is a classic issue that philosophers and linguists have struggled with for centuries.In Phaedrus, Plato had Socrates say that writing is inhuman, since it tries to establish what can only exist in the mind, outside the mind (Ong,1982).

It is possible to assume that storytelling becomes differently expressed if therespondent is also asked to write down the story. An extreme standpoint canbe exemplified by Derrida (1976), who argues that writing is a quite differentperformance from the spoken word and that the written text, as a result of itsstructural character, does not represent anything outside itself, i.e. Derridaoffers a critique against the idea that it is possible to identify a connectionbetween what is said and what is written. In this article a more realistic viewis preferred following, for example, Ong who describes writing as a‘technologization’ of the word (Ong, 1982). This implies that the story, whenit is written, is separated from its author but that the text itself will continueto exist even if the author disappears or changes opinion. The meaning of thenarrated events is distanced from the author’s experience and what is writtencan, within a few moments, be totally obsolete in comparison with theauthor’s later experiences. On the other hand, the meaning of an event isstructured through the writing procedure and its authenticity is elucidatedboth for the author and the world. In Ong’s words: ‘Writing introducesdivision and alienation, but a higher unity as well. It intensifies the sense ofthe self and fosters more conscious interaction between persons. Writing isconsciousness-raising’ (p.179).

This higher level of consciousness can be called into question. Conscious ofwhat? What ‘reality’ is the written word referring to? Maybe it is in thespecific act of writing or speaking that this consciousness is created. It ispossible to assume that the written word – or, more generally, the use ofsymbols – is a way for humanity to create a more qualified meaning ofexperiences in relation to the spoken word. A person who speaks, ‘hears’ heror his own words and is usually in some kind of interaction with anotherperson. When you write, you see your own words and you interact withyourself (and this interaction also includes more or less conscious concep-tions of other persons as future readers of the text). Both that which can be




uttered verbally and that which is written become objectified experiences andare thus distanced from the person who tells the story.

The crucial difference between speech and text in this context is probablythe ontological constancy of the written word. A written text is a medium forstorage, usually more durable than what the human memory remembers ofwhat has been said. Speech is fleeting and what someone has said at onemoment can be forgotten the next. The written word is permanent to a higherdegree. The author can return to her or his text and ‘see’ what she or he justthought, and then continue to write with reference to the preceding text. Averbally presented story does not give the same opportunity. The written wordmakes it possible for the author to continually switch between the parts andthe whole of the storytelling, and also between what is written and the notyet written without facing the risk of losing parts of the story. The writer of astory is not dependent on memory to be able to do this switching between thedifferent aspects of the story.

If this idea of the difference between speaking and writing is correct, aplausible conclusion is that a person who writes has more potential in themoment of the storytelling to understand her- or himself, compared withsomeone who tells the story verbally. A reasonable assumption is that anarrative written down by the storyteller is a more reflected expressioncompared to a transcribed interview. However this cannot lead us to theconclusion that written stories are always better research materials thanverbal interviews – it depends of course on the purpose of the research.

A possible statement, emerging from this discussion, is that the writtenword refers to who the author was at the moment of writing. Maybe it ispossible to understand Ong’s idea of a higher level of consciousness in thefollowing way: an increased understanding of the earlier being of the self notonly increases the consciousness of the present self, but also the conscious-ness of future prospect for the self.

The dialectics of understanding and explanation

In western thinking, explanation and understanding are often considered ascontradictory. A project for the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur has been toabolish this contradiction (1976, 1981). Ricoeur posits that, before reading atext, we can take two possible attitudes: explaining or understanding. Toexplain is to uncover, through a structural analysis of the internal relationsof the text, the meaning and the scope of suggestions. To explain a narrativeis to grasp its skein of movements, the fugue-like structure of interlacedactions (Ricoeur, 1981: 156). Understanding is, conversely, to catch or getthe hang of the whole chain of part-meanings in a fused way: that is to findthe meaning of the text.

Both concepts – explanation and understanding – for Ricoeur, are includedin the superior concept interpretation. Interpretation is the dialectics between




explanation and understanding. In this way, understanding precedes,accompanies and encloses the explanation. On the other hand, theexplanation develops the understanding in an analytical way (Ricoeur,1981).

Ricoeur (1976, 1981) describes the dialectics between explanation andunderstanding as a first movement from understanding to explanation andthen as a second movement from explanation to ‘learned’ understanding(depth interpretation). In the first phase, understanding is a naive grasping ofthe meaning of the text as a whole. The second phase means that the depthinterpretation generates a more sophisticated and ‘learned’ way of under-standing, with explanatory procedures and with a moment of handicraft –an ars interpretandi. In the beginning the understanding is a guess. At the endit satisfies what Ricoeur conceptualizes as dedication. The explanatory,structural analysis is a necessary stage between the two.

In our judgement, Ricoeur provides a more explicit argument for theimportance of the dialectics between explanation and understanding thanother hermeneutical approaches, both in terms of epistemology and in termsof the concrete process of interpreting texts. For the social scientists this canbe developed into an analysis where the different moments of theinterpretation process are under control. Both the scientist and the reader ofthe analysis can see, in explicit terms, how the analysis relates to the originaltext.

With the help of Ricoeur’s interpretation theory, there seems to be thepossibility, on an empirical basis, of understanding the meaning of socialworkers’ stories about turning points and critical events, and the way theydescribe and reflect upon the function of knowledge in these situations.

Even if it was not Ricoeur’s intention that his interpretation theory couldbe used for researchers’ interpretations of social workers’ stories, one argu-ment for using his thinking in this way is supported by several successfulattempts to adapt his theory for the analysis of stories produced by staff(mainly nurses) and patients in health care (Åström et al., 1994; Rasmussen,1999; Söderberg, 1999; Udén et al., 1995). In addition to the differences intarget groups, these studies also differ from our own study in that they arebased on narrative interviews and are thus produced in a direct interactionbetween interviewee and interviewer.

Social work narratives: a pilot study

The basic idea for this study is to use the narrative character of social workactions to search for the knowledge content in critical and problematic eventsoccurring during the field studies of social work students. Swedish socialwork students were asked to write a story in the last semester of their course(preceded by a whole semester of field studies including learning how to workdirectly with clients) and given the following instructions:




Write down a ‘narrative’, a compressed story, where you describe a situationfrom your practical training in which you can describe the presence ofknowledge/’unknowledge’ in relation to client/s.1

What kind of knowledge was it?From what source did it come (supervisor, colleagues, earlier theoreticalstudies, earlier experiences, etc.)?In what way was that knowledge working in the situation described?

The stories were used as a pedagogical tool, as a basis for verbal presentationand discussion in the classroom, but the written narratives were collected byus for research purposes. In this article a random sample of 14 narratives areanalysed (n = 145). We are aware that the fact that data were collectedwithin an educational framework influenced how the students responded tothe task given. For this reason, the quality of data can be questioned but it isstill our judgement that the approach gave good enough data for theevaluation of the method that is the focus of this article, (see also Blom andNygren, 1999).

We separately read the 14 narratives with Ricoeur’s (1976) interpretationtheory in mind. In the first step, the narratives were naively read. Thisreading resulted in the identification of categories covering how the studentsformulated the knowledge content in the situations they had described.

These categories were labelled and memorized by using simple codes: forexample, ‘type of story’, ‘type of co-actors’, ‘mentions explicit source forworking knowledge’, ‘useless narrative?’ etc., but also things like ‘apparentlyinfluenced by the preceding lesson on theory of knowledge’ and ‘effects ofreflection’. These codes created columns in a matrix where the rows consistedof the information from each narrative.

The purpose of the naive reading is to ‘get a sense of the text as a whole’(Ricoeur, 1976). The procedure adopted was to stop after each naive readingand formulate an open and preliminary answer to the question: Whatmeanings are expressed by these stories? The answers, generated from the 14narratives, were ordered using the following frame of reference:

• Different types of knowledge were important for the students in thesituations described, from book knowledge to an approach that can belabelled ‘unknowing’ which implies an (often) conscious openness for theunpredictable.

• The effect of the presence of a certain type of knowledge varied fromparalysing to generating a breakthrough in the process of talking withclients.

• The specific character of the situation seemed to be of importance for thefunction of the knowledge that was referred to.

The naive reading was followed by a careful structural analysis thatsometimes needed several steps, sometimes not, see Table 1 for an example. Inthe structural analysis the aim was to identify meaning units in the text, and




these units varied in size from one word to whole paragraphs. In the processof the structural analysis, the textual elements isolated in the codingprocedure were put together with other elements (segmentation thatgenerated horizontal relations between elements). Further, connections weresearched for between elements and the naively understood whole, wheredifferent elements were ordered hierarchically ‘within’ this whole (and oftenmodified this whole) (Ricoeur, 1976:84). What appeared was a dechron-ologization (in Ricoeur’s terminology ) of the narrative that gave anopportunity for uncovering the narrative logic underlying the narrative time.‘To explain a narrative is to get hold of its symphonic structure of segmentalactions’ ( p. 85).

The purpose of the structural analysis is usually to generate a matrix thatis much more detailed and logical than one that emerges from the naivereading. The matrix is given a schematic form describing (at least ideally) ahierarchy of actions correlated with a hierarchy of actors (Ricoeur, 1976:85).

Finally, the naive whole generated in the first reading of the narrative wasbrought together with the themes from the structural analysis in order to‘ground’ an interpreted whole. The process can be described, in theterminology of Ricoeur, as a way of proceeding from the guessing mode ofthe naive reading to the explaining (but not interpreting) mode of thestructural analysis, and then to an in-depth interpretation. The whole isreformulated in narrative form in order to present the reader of the analysiswith a readable version of this in-depth interpretation.

By framing the result of the naive reading, a strategic choice has alreadybeen made – the option exists to go through the procedure case by case fromnaive reading to structural analysis to interpreted whole, and then weigh upthe ‘wholes’ of all individuals into a general naive whole. Instead the choicehere was to weigh up the results of the naive reading of all 14 narratives intoa common frame of reference, and then let the various themes generatedfrom all cases in the case-by-case structural analysis merge into that framefor the creation of a new interpreted whole. In other words, the social workstudents were considered as a collective, or as carriers of the discourse beingstudied. The aim was not to research why student A reflects one way whilestudent B reflects another.

Mari – an example

In this section we have chosen to present Mari’s (false name) narrative,followed by comments on how the elements in Mari’s story were related toeach other, partly to the wholeness of the naive reading, and how the themesgenerated by the structural analysis were matched against the rest of theindividually generated themes, in the construction of the interpreted whole.




M A R I ( N A R R AT I V E N U M B E R 7 )

I spent my field studies at a ‘youth team’ where one works with young boys andgirls aged between 13 and 19. There were certain clients that you contactedyourself if they didn’t show up at the office at the time appointed. The client Iworked mostly with was one of those. A girl, 16 years old, whom I choose tocall Lisa. Lisa rents a small flat, which I, among others, helped her get. She hasno telephone and is therefore rather difficult to reach. Sometimes I went to herhome when she didn’t come to the office at the time we had appointed.

It was quite likely that she wasn’t there, or that she had a big party with a lot ofdrunken youths. You never knew what you could face. Lisa is a girl that allsocial workers who have met her describe as difficult to get in contact with. Shetalks very little and is also very quiet.

Once I went alone to Lisa, to see her without a special purpose, just to see if shewas all right. By then we had met each other a couple of times and had startedto have a good relationship. But I had also ‘learnt’ from my earlier talks withher, and from my colleagues, that she didn’t talk much and that she didn’t wantto tell much about her life. (My pre-understanding). When I arrived, shebecame happy. Normally she tries to hide her face in the hair, but this time shedidn’t, and I felt that she was beaming forth an openness I hadn’t seen before.We sat down on the sofa, in her small flat filled with cigarette smoke –everything seemed grey in there. I asked her how she had been doing since thelast time we met. She was short in her answers as always. And I didn’t saymuch myself. While we sat down I decided to try giving her a little more timethan in previous talks. I wanted to give Lisa more room than before, so we satquiet and silent for several minutes. Suddenly she started to talk. She opened upmore and more, and at the same time I carefully tried to get nearer withquestions. I also stressed that she didn’t have to answer if she didn’t want to.She showed me an incredible confidence, and for the first time I reached her. Itfelt unbelievably good. The meeting took more than two hours and because ofanother meeting I had to break things up, but nevertheless I felt that Lisawanted me to stay longer.

I think the reason I reached Lisa that day was that I managed to ignore the pre-understanding I had got from my colleagues and my earlier talks with her. Isimply decided to give her time, something I felt I hadn’t been inclined to trybefore. I tried to put myself ‘outside’; I let her lead the meeting so that it couldtake any form.

Stage one in our analysis, the naive reading, was done in the following way:first the story was read straight through, we then wrote down ‘naive memos’,i.e. short notes to help our memory. Naive memos that we extracted from thisstory were, for example:

• The situation has the character of ‘whim’, a spontaneous visit, withoutany alternative action given beforehand (would this have been possible ifthe purpose had been a two-hour-long conversation with the explicit aim toget Lisa to talk?).

• Shows the importance of opening a ‘space’, defined by the client.




• Deliberately unknowing, experimenting by letting the silence open analternative relationship.

• Clear dramatizing in the narration. ‘Suddenly . . .’

These short memos were then put together with the other 13 cases in order togenerate the more general frame of reference following the idea that waspresented earlier in this article.

After having constructed the ‘naive’ frame of reference, the second step ofanalysis started, i.e. the more time-consuming structure analysis. During thisphase the text was read several times with the purpose of sorting out theunits of meaning in the text (cf. Pålsson and Norberg, 1994; Söderberg andNorberg, 1993). These units varied in size from a single sentence to part of, ora whole, paragraph. Units and codes are illustrated in the chart below. In thiscase we have done a stepwise structural analysis, where each step had acertain focus. This is illustrated by the second, third and fourth columns inTable 1. The first column in the table is about the key situations and actionsthat appear in the narrative, the second deals with the actors and how theyare referred to, while the third is where we sorted by reflective aspect, i.e.where the narrator changed mode from telling the story into evaluating it.We have used both in-vivo codes and more condensed codes (especially in thefourth column). The latter is perhaps a bit unfaithful in relation to Ricoeursince it makes explicit an interpretative dimension that may provoke his ideathat the structural analysis generates explanation but not interpretation(Ricoeur, 1976).

The codes in the right columns were then ‘put out on the table’ and thustaken out of chronological order, together with the codes from all narratives.After that, the codes were sorted with the help of the searchlight generatedby the naive reading. In Ricoeurian words one could allege that the codes andtheir structure have given an explanation to the stories, but that we still haveto interpret the stories to form a whole. What we observed here was, forexample, that the ‘how/who’ column gave material for an interpretation ofthe student as active and Lisa as passive, until the turning point in item 6,after which Lisa is talked about as active. This was also recognized as apattern in other narratives.

The shift from this stepwise structure analysis to an interpreted whole isdifficult to describe. The depth interpretation comprises a moment of ‘aha – itcan be seen in this way’. The overview generated by the naive reading, incombination with the systematic coding of the structure analysis, forms thebasis for a new story. The 14 narratives comprise a number of story types. Toillustrate this point, one of these can briefly be formulated like this(structured form):

• Conditions: social work students are confronted with the task of trying‘one more time’ with a client that colleagues had difficulties in makingprogress with. This extra attempt is conditioned by the circumstance that




the social work student has ‘time’ and that the supervisor as well as thestudent regards it as a learning opportunity. The impression is that theattempt is ‘under control’ insofar as the client and the student presumablyhave quite a lot in common, regarding age and sex. The meetings that arereferred to imply a positive relationship that has already begun.

• Situations: the meetings are often situated in the client’s home, with onlythe client and the social work student present. Little time pressure.

• Main stories: the meeting with the client and the student is initiallycharacterized by a wait-and-see attitude. When a new space is offered, the


TABLE 1. Examples of meaning units and codes from Mari’s narrative

Preliminary unitsof meaning ‘What-codes’ ‘How/who-codes’ ‘Reflective codes’

1.A girl, 16 years old, Girl, 16 years I choose to call herwhom I choose to call Lisa.

2.Lisa rents a small flat, Rents a flat I and others which I, among helped herothers, helped her get.

3.She has no telephone Hard to reach Because of thatand is because of thatrather difficult to reach.

...4.While we sat down I Sat down We sat, I decided, Strategy: give more

decided to try giving giving her time, Relates tohere a little more time earlier talksthan in earlier talks.

5.I wanted to give Lisa Sat quiet, time I wanted to give Give roommore room than before, her, We sat quiet Strategic silencedue to that we sat quietand silent for severalminutes.

6.Suddenly she started Sudden talk She started Turning pointto talk…

7.I think the reason I I acted, She was Tentativereached Lisa that day reached, I explanation,was that I managed to managed to ignore, Actively ignoringignore the pre- I had got, My talks pre-understandingunderstanding I had got with herfrom my colleagues and my earlier talks with her.

8.I simply decided to give I gave her, I felt Reduction ofher time, something I explanation: give felt I hadn’t been inclined time, Strategy to try before. compared to earlier

9.I tried to put myself I tried complicating the ‘outside’ strategy

10.I let her lead the meeting I let her lead modulating, to take any form. leaving the control



client chooses to use this by talking, and there is a change in the way shetalks about herself. It is not the same relationship between the client andthe student after this change, compared to previously. The studentdescribes a positive development for the client after this: in the short term,when it comes to the continuation of the talk (he or she didn’t want to stoptalking), and in the long-term (it led to more and more open-hearted talks). . .

• Strategy: the student chooses to experiment and offers the client some‘room’, a blank space, makes herself ‘unknowing’, ignores previousknowledge, lets the time work. . .

• Reflection on knowledge and the consequences of knowledge: the studentidentifies various types of knowledge in this story type. Above all, it isreferred to as a purposive strategy, i.e. the experiment is not madeblindfolded. Instead it is made against a gathered background of know-ledge that is merely mentioned (either it is not completely conscious or therespondent chose not to write about it) but can be regarded as aconglomerate of theory, the student’s own earlier experiences, etc.

There are other story types among the 14 narratives. An example is the typeof story that describes the intervention as conditioned by legal demands, orby ‘knowledge’ emanating from journals and files of the agency and fromcolleagues. In these stories the acting is more straightforward and thepossibility and the motives for creating an ‘empty space’ are not used.

Summing up: some arguments for and against the method

In this pilot study we have illustrated a method of working with narrativeswhich brings closer the question about how knowledge ‘works’ inproblematic meetings between social workers and clients. Naturally, similarquestions in other fields can be analysed in the same way (doctor–patient,husband–wife, etc.). One purpose of this study was to find out what kind ofknowledge social workers experienced/believed was effective in thesemeetings and what significance the conditions, the situation, the acting, etc.is given by the narrators – in this case a number of social work students.Thus, the narratives have something to say about the tacit understandings ofwhat constitutes a competent (student) social worker’s account (Martin,1999). What are the strengths and weaknesses of the chosen method thatcan reasonably be identified from this pilot study?

The following points are positive experiences from the method:

• The empirical material is more structured, as well as more reflective, thantranscripts from interviews. The higher degree of reflection implies thatthe story is more ‘understood’ by the narrator. Thus, the material can beassumed to say much about the narrators’ self-conception, something thatis important in research on identity, life-stories, etc.




• The method is time-saving for the narrators as well as for the interpreters.The saving of time is obvious during the data collection and, compared tothe interview, the time-consuming transcription can be left out. Theanalysis can be speeded up, but partly this is the result of delimitinginstructions. Presumably it is easier to make digressions from the subjectwhen interviewing even if the interviewer provides similar delimitinginstructions. Given the limited space for writing in this study, it is mostlikely that the writer would focus on essential matters. Another aspect ofthis is that the narration is less controlled by people other than the writer(some control is however present in the form of the instructions).

• Short written narratives offer opportunities for presenting more empiricalmaterial in reports – for example in the form of a whole story as in thisarticle.

• The approach gives a good opportunity for quantifying data regarding theunits of meanings in the stories, as well as the story types, in a largerdatabase (cf. Blom and Nygren, 1999). This is to a great extent aconsequence of homogenized instructions, but also a function of a morespecified approach.

Partly as a mirror image of the positive experiences, there are also observedlimitations or problems with the method:

• The short stories have an inherent risk of ‘over-interpretation’. Thenarratives are not always that exhaustive. One aspect of this is that thenarrator can feel limited – the form makes it difficult to develop circum-stantial reasoning. The shortness of the stories can lead to a superficialself-reflection. The writer does not have textual space to penetrate his orher own story and self-reflection is restrained because unexpressed ordropped aspects only exist as thoughts and are not written down.

• The ‘midwife effect’ that an interviewer can have disappears. The writingimplies a dialogue with oneself or between author and text. An inter-viewer can make a narrator talk about things the solitary writer might notpay attention to. Further, the method requires that the narrators are adeptat writing. Some people would rather talk than write. However, becausethe opposite is also true, it is hard to tell if this implies any significantdisadvantages in comparison with interviews.

• Despite the structured approach, central moments which cannot bedescribed or routinized still remain. There is no easy way to answer thequestions about how the naive reading ‘is done’, or how the compilation ofnaive reading and the parts from the structure analysis ‘is done’. Thesemoments include elements of the ability to make associations,impulsiveness and creativity. Phenomenologically, this compilation isexperienced as a series of very fast switches from cognition (seeing thewords in front of oneself) and a kind of scanning of an inner world ofknowledge and experience.




• The method is difficult because discipline is demanded. The researcher hasto be constantly aware of what she or he is doing, for example to beconscious of how and when to use different kinds of codes. In-vivo codesand interpreted codes imply that the analysis takes place on different levelsof abstraction. This, in turn, becomes problematic when the material is tobe arranged hierarchically.

• The consumption of time can, in spite of the gains during the datacollection, be underestimated. The temptation to collect many narrativesin order to get data for a quantitative analysis leads to difficulties when, forexample, all meaning units from the structural analysis are ‘put on thetable’ in the qualitative analysis.

• The demands for a well-elaborated theory of knowledge are far-reaching.What kind of knowledge is obtained through this method? When can it beassumed that ‘the meaning’ of the texts, in Ricoeur’s terms, is uncovered?The question of validity necessitates an advanced theory of knowledge,where the interpreter has to be knowledgeable enough to be able to take astand on questions about how one looks upon the concepts, as well as therelations between episode, writer, text, reader and interpretation.

In spite of these obstacles, the pilot study reveals great potential for thismethod. There are, of course, several reasons for refining and furtherdeveloping all steps in the analytical procedure. This concerns everythingfrom the question of what kind of research questions the method can beappropriate for, through the formulation of better instructions to thenarrators, a more careful choice of samples, and more consciously madeprocesses in the steps from naive reading, to depth interpretation and choicesconcerning forms of presentation.

Consequently, this method does not represent a simple ‘instrument’, butthen it is not intended for use in measuring simple phenomena. By contrast,it seeks to contribute to the understanding of meaning in complex socialprocesses.

N O T E

1. The task was preceded by lessons where different conceptions of knowledge werediscussed, e.g. the concept of ‘unknowing’ as a conscious way of being open forthe unpredictable or rather to release oneself from one’s ‘knowing’. A reason forthis was an ambition to draw the students’ attention to the idea that knowledge isnot by definition the same as ‘theory’ or book knowledge (Blom, 1999; Morén,1992).

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L E N N A RT N Y G R E N is a Professor of Social Work at Umeå University, Sweden. Hisresearch interests are Swedish and international social policy, local welfare andknowledge production in social work. He has been the director of the social work PhDprogram in social work at Umeå University since 1991, and is a referee for bothSwedish and international social work research journals.Address: Department of Social Welfare, Umeå University, S-901 87 Umeå, Sweden.[email: [email protected]]

B J Ö R N B L O M is an Assistant Professor of Social Work at Umeå University, Sweden. Hisresearch interests are theory development in social work, knowledge and action insocial work and evaluation of social work practice. His doctoral dissertation was onmarket orientation of personal social services.Address: as Lennart Nygren.[email: [email protected]]




Nygren & Blom. 2001. Analysis of Short Reflective Narratives.

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