Transforming Transcripts Into Stories: A Multimethod Approach to Narrative Analysis

Abstract

Stories are essential realities from our past and present. As the primary sources of data in narrative research, interview transcripts play an essential role in giving meaning to the personal stories of research participants. The pragmatic narratives found in transcripts represent human experience as it unfolds. Analyzing the narratives found in interview transcripts thus moves beyond providing descriptions and thematic developments as found in most qualitative studies. Crafting stories from interview transcripts involves a complex set of analytic processes. Building on the first author's personal experience in working on a doctoral thesis employing narrative inquiry, this article presents a multimethod restorying framework to narrative analysis. A step-by-step progression within the framework includes choosing interview participants, transcribing interviews, familiarizing oneself with the transcripts (elements of holistic-content reading), chronologically plotting (elements of the story), use of follow-up interviews as a way to collaborate (an important procedure in narrative inquiry), and developing the story through structural analysis. It is hoped that this article will encourage other researchers embarking on narrative analysis to become creative in presenting participants’ lived experiences through meaningful, collaborative strategies. This article demonstrates the fluidity of narrative analysis and emphasizes that there is no single procedure to be followed in attempting to create stories from interview transcripts.