DESIGN EMPLOYMENT

WHEN SHOULD YOU EMPLOY NARRATIVE RESEARCH?

According to Joyce (2015), narrative research has a long history within the nursing progression and health sciences, and is utilized to acquire knowledge and understanding of the patient experience per Bailey & Tilley, 2002 and Hall & Powell, 2011. By employing narrative research design, researchers seek to gain understanding by listening to individuals’ stories (Joyce, 2015). Joyce goes on to add, "it is necessary to understand health experiences and the patient’s story to meet the demand for high quality personalised services, providing patients with information and choice", and narrative research can assist in that endeavour as suggested by the Department of Health (DH) 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012).

EXAMPLES OF NARRATIVE RESEARCH IN THE LITERATURE:

To get a better idea of how narrative research can be used, check out the following articles that employ narrative research as their methodology:

1. This article looks at the importance of humour in the nurse/patient relationship and uses interviews with four Registered Nurses to examine this topic. The narrative research method was chosen, "because of its ability to capture human interaction and experience," (Haydon and Van Der Riet, 2014).

2. This article uses narrative research to explore the validity of "Connecting Conversations", a narrative method that examines quality of care in nursing homes from the resident's perspective. Validity is examined in terms of face validity, content validity and construct validity (Sion et al., 2020).

REFERENCES

Haydon, G & Van Der Riet, P (2014). A narrative inquiry: How do nurses respond to patients’ use of humour? Contemporary Nurse, 46:2, 197-205, DOI: 10.5172/conu.2014.46.2.197

Joyce, M. (2015). Using narrative in nursing research. Nursing Standard, 29(38), 36-41. Retrieved from https://eprints.lincoln.ac.uk/id/eprint/15097/1/15097%20036-041_NSVol29wk38.pdf

Sion, K., Verbeek, H., Aarts, S., Zwakhalen, S., Odekerken-Schröder, G., Schols, J., & Hamers, J. (2020). The validity of connecting conversations: A narrative method to assess experienced quality of care in nursing homes from the resident's perspective. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(14), 5100. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17145100