The result of this collaboration can be highly recommended for anyone who has resolved the 'epistemological obfuscations' to their own satisfaction and who is looking for a text that will provide practical guidance on how to collect and analyse qualitative data. Consequently, the focus of the book is maintained and the whole can be read as a coherent account of the principal issues in qualitative research. Rule 2 In qualitative research, strata and function variety precedes variety of representations. Rule 3 Characterizing variety of representations has priority over anchoring them in existing categories of people. This is a useful framework for qualitative research, regardless of how experienced a researcher one may be, and the chapters that follow build upon those principles.
Narrative interviewing' is the process of eliciting 'stories' from respondents.
Stories about 'some significant event in their life and social context'. Actually, the 'rules' of this mode of interviewing do not differ markedly from qualitative interviewing in general, but they are worth repeating here. Like all research methods, narrative interviewing begins with sound preparation and with the development of what the authors term 'exmanent' questions, that is, those to which the researcher wishes to find answers, as distinct from the 'immanent' issues that emerge from the respondent in the course of the interview. Following the explanation of the purpose of the research, requesting that recording be allowed, and how the interview will proceed, the researcher then presents the topic to be explored. Why' questions are to be avoided, only questions that elucidate what happened in the event described.