While conducting a methodological review of narrative inquiry as a technique to create meaning from heaps of data, both qualitative and quantitative it quickly became apparent that narrative inquiry is a much broader and deeper and diversified field than I originally thought. It is such a rich area that it deserves some detail research in order for me to find the appropriate method to apply to my particular research situation. A cursory review of the literature discovers at least 20 different techniques with various distinctions that are available to the qualitative researcher.
Here is a partial listing of just some of the different strategies and perspectives that a narrative inquiry can offer the qualitative researcher:
* recording the experience of living the story as it occurs
* interviewing the storyteller to compare their story with factual data
* Language experts who analyze the forms and modes of the storytelling independent of content
* Constructivists looking for methods of sense making and storytelling
* deconstructionists looking to uncover the textual meaning
* cultural storytellers looking to integrate storytelling in the larger culture
* organizational developers comparing the nature of culture to the nature and power of storytelling
* dramatists interested in the performance aspects and knowledge creation aspects of the act of storytelling itself
* ethnographers looking to create a rich description of the storytelling environment
* the Boje school of antenarrative which questions the validity of storytelling and grand narrative as a truth-hiding process
* pragmatists looking to assess the effect of a change in storytelling style on various dimensions of performance
* mixed methodists looking to use narrative to infer meaning from quantitative data
* Post positivists looking to validate storytelling through confirmation by quantitative data