Life Story Research: Methods, Focus, and Contributions
Life Story: A Qualitative Research Method
The life story method is based on biographical data, focusing on the individual’s experiences and life trends.
Focus of the Life Story
The primary focus is on a single person’s journey.
Key Aspects of a Life Story
The most important elements are the individual’s life journey and the trends within it.
Is Life Story Research Scientific?
Yes, it is based on empirical data, objective documents, photos, monuments, and personal experiences.
Contributions of the Chicago School
The Chicago School established the scientific category for life stories, emphasizing objective and empirical aspects, both qualitatively and quantitatively. This approach was recognized worldwide as a science.
Methods for Life Story Research
There are two main methods:
- Direct Method: Involves direct contact with the person being investigated.
- Indirect Method: Relies on information from others about the person being investigated.
Key Points to Consider
Eleven key points to consider when analyzing life stories:
- Spaces: Places that hold significance in the person’s experience.
- Intensity: Transition or break points that have marked the person’s life.
- Duration: Cycles and stages of life.
- Proximity: The distance between the present and the remembered situation.
- Meaning: Symbolic aspects of an experience that cause changes over time.
- Significance: Effects and consequences of impactful events.
- Social Membership: How the individual joins collective experiences and social training.
- Awareness: The process of maturation and re-semantization of experiences.
- Fitness-Emotive: Presence and absence in personal history and the informant’s discursive process.
- Sensory: How senses coordinate to evoke and express memory contents.
- Expressive Channels: Gender and narrative models that evoke memory.
Biography vs. Autobiography
- Biography: The story of a person’s life, written by another person, from birth to death.
- Autobiography: The story of a person’s life, written by the same person, from their past to the present.
Process for Qualitative Life Story Research
The process involves three main stages:
- Planning: Selecting the person, informants, inquiry methods, creating subject guides, fact sheets, gathering recording equipment, and developing a work program and schedule.
- Action: Conducting fieldwork, direct interviews, and compiling information.
- Analysis: Classifying material, writing chronologies, transcribing information, and finding the direction and purpose of the communication.
Ethnography
Ethnography is a qualitative research method where the researcher is involved in the group or society being studied.
Feature of Ethnography
The main feature is the study of social groups.
Multidisciplinary Nature of Ethnography
Ethnography is multidisciplinary because it uses insights from psychology, sociology, philosophy, and anthropology, as well as methods from phenomenology, hermeneutics, and discourse analysis.