a clear and structured approach, thematic narrative analysis was adopted to identify any patterns of themes from interview transcriptions. The following section details this approach.
5.10 Thematic Narrative analysis
‘Narratives are based on life and life is expressed, articulated and modified in stories’ (Josselson & Lieblich 1993:9). The stories or narratives of the mothers in this study were considered by identifying patterns or themes within what they said. This provided an understanding of the experiences of the women as a cohort, as the individual narratives were linked by common themes within their experiences of being part-time PhD students. The analysis of the interviews for a narrative study usually requires the stories of each woman told separately (Kohler Reissman 2008). However, as the purpose of this thesis was to understand all of the women’s experiences collectively, it was felt that an interpretivist study would be more appropriate so that the lived experiences of the women could be combined together to provide a universal essence of experience (Cresswell 2007). Structural narrative analysis can provide insights that may be missed if the interpretation of narrative concentrates on ‘what’ is said without heed to how the speaker organizes the content (Kohler Reissman 2008). Narrative analysis considers the story as a whole rather than thematic narrative analysis which is looking at component themes across a number of cases, considering what is said rather than the wider context of how, to whom or why (Kohler Reissman 2008). Although this study will explore individual women’s experiences, it is expected that their narratives will not be confined to meaning for the individuals but will provide possibilities for group belonging and collective action. (Kohler Reissman 2008). Therefore, this study will adopt thematic narrative analysis to provide an ‘experience-centered approach’ (Squire 2008:42).
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It is acknowledged that interpretivism is not only a description, but it is also seen as an interpretive process; therefore, it is acknowledged that the researcher made their own interpretation of the meaning of others’ lived experiences (Cresswell, 2007). Thematic Narrative analysis considers the patterns of themes from the narratives, focussing on what is said rather than the context, audience or structures of speech (Eriksson& Kovalainen 2010; Kohler Reissman 2008). Themes should therefore focus on the essential, ‘making the phenomenon what it is’ (Manen 1990:107). This study is considering the experiences of mothers studying for a PhD and in acknowledging there was a possibility of similar experiences, the researcher felt that identifying themes across the individual narratives would provide a hermeneutic circle ‘where the part is interpreted in relation to the whole and the whole is interpreted in relation to the part’ (Smith et al. 2010:92). This increases a depth of understanding as one moves from parts of an experience to the context overall then back to the experience (Laverty 2003). This supports the work of Kohler Reissman (2008) who suggests that stories can have effects beyond their meanings for individual storytellers, ‘creating possibilities for social identities, group belonging and collective action’ (2008: 54) and reflects what Bruner (1986) refers to as paradigmatic reasoning, the analysis of narratives. This analysis of narratives results in descriptions of themes that remain across stories, ‘making categories out of common elements’ (Polkinghorne 1995:5) as opposed to narrative reasoning or narrative analysis, which takes descriptions of happenings and configures them into a story ‘analysis of narratives moves from stories to common elements and narrative analysis moves from elements to stories’ (Hatch & Wisniewski 1996: 12). Thus, the women’s stories are in line with paradigmatic reasoning, as the analysis provides themes that fit across all of their narratives, linking their experiences with common threads. ‘For those of us who have the privilege, courage and tenacity to stay the course, may our narratives be revealed to inspire and enhance education for women’ (Chan 2003:479).
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Themes can be defined as concepts, trends, ideas or a distinction that emerges from empirical data (Eriksson & Kovalainen 2010:219). Manen (1990) suggests a theme gives ‘control and order to research and writing’ and may be understood as the ‘structures of
experience’ (1990:79). He details what he considers a theme to be:
1. Theme is the experience of focus, of meaning – one must consider the true meaning of what has been said
2. Theme formulation is at best a simplification – often when arriving at themes there is a tendency to summarise the notion with the potential to lose some of the meaning
3. Themes are not objects one encounters at certain points in the text
4. Theme is the form of capturing the phenomenon one tries to understand – a theme is therefore an aspect of the structure of the lived experience
(Manen 1990: 87).
In considering the various approaches to thematic narrative analysis, Manen (1990) identifies three that he feels are most appropriate for the consideration of lived experience. The first tries to capture the fundamental meaning of the text as a whole, the second is a detailed reading considering each sentence, the third is selective reading that requires the text be read several times whilst considering the statements of phrases that reveal something about the experience being described. The difficulty with the third is that it opens the researcher up to subjectivity as they are then determining what they consider to be meaningful in the narrative. As the researcher has already highlighted her position within an autoethnographic account of her own experiences, the level of subjectivity has already been acknowledged. This final approach is one that the researcher felt most appropriate for the women’s narratives as they talked about different aspects of their experience which could then be segmented and considered as part of their overall experience. This is in keeping with a ‘case-centred’ approach that considers different segments within the narrative that relate to different aspects of the women’s overall experience (Kohler Reissman 2008).
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Due to the time that manual processing of transcriptions can take, the researcher considered utilising the computer aided data analysis (CADA) package NVivo to aid in the identification of key themes and subsequent narratives that reflected such themes. The advantages were clear, CADA is accurate, reliable, efficient, convenient and saves time (Denzin & Lincoln 2000; Sarantakos 2005). However, having trialled the NVivo software, the researcher found that it distanced her from the women’s words and lacked a ‘closeness to the data’ (Denzin & Lincoln 2000). Having to immerse herself in the transcriptions, reading them over and over, the researcher felt she could identify themes through the women’s descriptions of situations and feelings that a computer program may have missed due to the differences in language and examples provided by the women. These subtleties in language and emotion expressed by the women could be detected in the recordings and in the transcriptions yet a computer may not pick up on such human ‘data’. The researcher could not have fully understood the subtle nuances of the women’s experiences if she had relied solely on a computer program. Her experience is supported by Sarantakos (2005:359) who argues that CADA programmes provide an artificial approach as ‘the evidence of the data is not accessible to machines’. Sarantakos also highlights how a structured approach adopted by CADA is ‘exactly what qualitative methods should offer a path away from’ and they demonstrate their use for many theoretical approaches without distinction in their methodologies.
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