Situating Stories: Using the 'Interpretive Panels' and the 'Four Foci Analytical Tool' in the Biographical Narrative Interpretive Method to better understand our interviews
Mauthner and Doucet (1998) argue that data analysis is a fundamentally subjective,
interpretative process which is culturally, socially and historically embedded. As
researchers, while we are ‘creating, interpreting and theorising research data’ how can we ensure that we are fully cognisant of our own personal, political and intellectual autobiographies as researchers and make explicit where we are located in time and space in relation to
research participants’ to ensure that we tell the story of the research and not the story of ourselves or our time and place. Mauthner and Doucet argue that as researchers, ‘our biases and beliefs may be extremely difficult to uncover or even to notice’ without a practical method of doing so. Thus, the analysis of biographic narratives must contain a systematic examination and explication of our beliefs, biases and social location as researchers (Harding, 1992).
The Biographic Narrative Interpretive method provides a number of ways of doing this – this paper will discuss two of these – ‘interpretive panels’ and the ‘four -foci thinking device’. In this paper I explore the assumptions behind these tools for
analysis in the BNIM method and reflect on the data analysis processes.