Dialogical narrative analysis

Dialogical narrative analysis (DNA) was the analytical perspective used to make sense of the data for the empirical results chapters seven to nine. A DNA is concerned with not only the story told by participants, but also the work that stories do for and to people. As Frank (2010) contends, DNA “studies the mirroring between what is told in the story – the story’s content – and what happens as a result of telling that story – its effects” (pp.71-72). Thus, the principle analytical concern with DNA is the appreciation of stories as actors in people’s lives (Frank, 2010, 2012). Therefore, through DNA, stories are examined for what is said, the narrative resources used to help structure storytelling, what stories do and the reasons why a person chooses to represent their life using a particular story (Smith, in press).

The method for carrying out a narrative analysis purposely lacks a prescribed set of steps that should be followed meticulously (Sparkes & Smith, 2014). Indeed, Frank (2010) describes DNA as “movement of thought” that asks questions of the data in analysis as “some methods are more useful for the questions they offer than any procedures they prescribe” (pp.72-73). Therefore the method of DNA should be understood as a heuristic guide rather than a set of procedural and prescriptive guidelines. Drawing upon this approach to analysis encourages movement of thought, as for Frank, “Analytic or interpretive thought that is moving is more likely to allow and recognise movement in the thought being interpreted”

64 (2010, p.73). Moreover, as Smith (in press) illuminates, “Movement of thought can take the analyst in unexpected and fertile directions, breathing fresh life into moribund concepts, encouraging theoretical curiosity, and provoking new ways of seeing in the process” (p.12). Thus, adopting DNA as a heuristic guide and method of questioning can spur imagination and inspiration that in turn can lead to new insights and understanding of SCI and PA.

Making sense of the data through DNA involved various analytical stages. It was an iterative and cyclic process that began alongside data collection and continued throughout the writing up stage. The process began during data collection and transcription. As Smith (in press) notes, transcription is much more than a technical exercise, it is part of the analytic process. I took notes of the stories that appeared to be emerging throughout data collection and transcription. This was the start of the period of indwelling. Indwelling further involved immersing myself in the data by reading and re-reading interview transcripts and field notes and attempting to understand the participants point of view from an empathetic position (Maykut & Morehouse, 1994). The next stage involved (loosely) coding the data in the interview transcripts and field notes with conceptual comments. To identify the types of stories being told and narrative themes and thematic relationships in the data, it was important not to over-code and break the stories apart. Indeed, as Smith (in press) explains, the purpose of a narrative analysis is to “keep the story intact in order to preserve and examine the wealth of storied detail contained in it” (p.8). That said, identifying stories in the data first involved deciding what is a story. As illuminated in the above section on thematic analysis, not all textual data is a story. Stories are a tale people tell, where “one thing happens in consequence of another” (Frank, 2010, p.25). Moreover, stories also include characters, a complicating action or point of view, and a plot. However, they are very rarely articulated as “fully formed” narratives (Frank, 2010). Therefore, operating with this working understanding of stories I tried to identify both individual stories (e.g. participants’ stories developed in the interview transcript) and the larger narratives operating within the environment and culture in SCI centres and at Neurokinex that were noted during observation.

To start the analytical process, Smith (in press) suggests the following strategies for getting to grips with stories identified in the data. Firstly this involved focusing on the content of the story to identifying narrative themes and thematic relationships. This focus addresses the whats of talk to answer questions such as “What are the common themes or threads in the story?” Secondly this involved identifying the structure of the story to focus on how the story

65 is put together and identify the types of narrative resources drawn upon in each story. To further address the effects that these stories had on the participants, they were considered in light of a set of dialogical questions. Drawing upon Frank (2010, 2012) and Smith (in press), examples of the dialogical questions used include: resource questions (What narrative resources do the participants draw upon to shape their subjective experiences of SCI and PA?); circulation/affiliation questions (Who do the participants’ stories connect them to?); identity questions: (How do participants tell stories to explore whom they might become?); function questions (As “actors”, how do the participants’ stories shape their actions?); and interpretation questions (What details may have been expected but were omitted?).

To explore these questions I drew upon writing as a form of analysis (Richardson, 2000). As Sparkes and Smith (2014) explain, writing is not a mopping up activity to be competed at the end of a research project. Rather, analysis happens in the process of writing because in doing so one can progressively discover ideas and recognise the actions of stories. Moreover, according to Frank (2012):

The analysis of the selected stories takes place in attempts to write. The research report is not post hoc to an analysis that is completed before writing. Rather, reports emerge in multiple drafts that progressively discover what is to be included and how those stories hang together. In DNA, stories are first-order presentations of life, and writing about stories is a second-order act of narrative representation (p.43).

My analysis of the stories told by the physiotherapists regarding their management of hope and expectation in SCI rehabilitation, and the stories told by the clients and trainers at Neurokinex about their experiences of ABR, evolved gradually and progressively. Thus, writing was a process of representing these stories with theory and revising these stories and theories as required (Smith, in press). However, it is important to note that these final accounts do not ‘finalise’ the participants’ lives by offering the last word on who or what they may become (Frank, 2012). As Sparkes and Smith (2014) contend, “this means respecting in analysis that stories always, like human lives that are spun through them, have the capacity to change and that as long as they are alive, bodies telling stories have not yet spoken their last word” (p.132). The use of DNA also allowed me to build a typology of stories concerning ABR as I was able to identify types of narrative that people were drawing upon to construct their experiences. For Frank, building a typology does risk “putting stories into boxes, thus allowing and even encouraging the monological stance that the boxes are more real than the

66 stories, and the types are all that need to be known about the stories” (p.119). On other hand, a typology construction:

Allows recognising the uniqueness of each individual story, while at the same time understanding how individuals do not make up stories by themselves… A typology of narratives recognises that experience follows from the availability of narrative resources, and people’s immense creativity is in using these resources to fabricate their stories (p.119, emphasis in original).

Building a narrative typology in chapter nine allowed me to identify the different underlying plots of stories of ABR, the consequence of telling these stories, and how hopes and expectations were managed in this context. The observational and reflective data recorded from my immersion at Neurokinex served to complement the data collected during interviews with participants. In particular, the typologies in chapter nine were conceptualised through both the substance of the stories told by participants, and the activity of storytelling I observed in the everyday practices and interactions at the centre (Gubruim & Holstein, 2009). For example, two of the narrative types were clearly identifiable in the participant’s stories of their hope and expectations of ABR. The third narrative type was only conceptualised after returning to Frank’s (2010, 2012) dialogical questions concerning interpretation and further analysis of the data in my field notes and reflections. This is not to say that the observational data conflicted with the data collecting during interviews. Rather, the field notes served to identify a narrative thread through observation that was silenced from the everyday conversations in interview (see critical reflections: Box 9.2 in chapter nine and methodological implications in chapter ten).

4.7 Representation

The four empirical results chapters (six to nine) outline what was found in this thesis in relation to the research questions. These results chapters are presented in chronological order starting with formal SCI rehabilitation that occurs within a SCI centre before turning attention to PA upon discharge from this context into the community. Therefore chapters six and seven, which address physiotherapists’ beliefs and values regarding PA in SCI rehabilitation and how they manage hope and expectation in this context, are presented first. Then the experiences of ABR for people with SCI and the trainers at Neurokinex are presented in chapters eight and nine.

67 All empirical chapters are written in the style of a ‘disrupted realist tale’. A traditional realist tale is the dominant means of representing qualitative findings and is characterised by experiential author(ity) (researcher/author absent from finished text); the participant’s point of view; and interpretive omnipotence (theoretical account of the story) (Sparkes & Smith, 2014). Together, these characteristics operate to faithfully represent the participants’ point of view whilst drawing upon theories and concepts to explain the findings. As Sparkes (2002) explains:

The realist conventions connect theory to data in a way that creates spaces for participants’ voices to be heard in a coherence text, and with specific points in mind. When well constructed, data-rich realist tales can provide compelling, detailed, and complex depictions of a social world. (p.55)

A realist tale is written in traditional academic prose and framed by the voice of a disembodied author (Sparkes & Smith, 2014). However, as Sparkes (2002) suggested, the traditional realist tale can be modified to bring to light the author’s role in the construction of the text. With this in mind, I present my interpretive role in the research process and construction of findings by including a series of critical reflections – taken from my reflexive journal – throughout the empirical chapters. These critical reflections are extracts from my reflexive journal that illuminate my analytical thinking at various stages in the research project. Thus, my realistic tale is disrupted as I position myself as a reflexive qualitative researcher throughout the empirical chapters.

The empirical chapters seven to nine that were analysed through a narrative lens, additionally drew upon the standpoint of a story analyst. As Smith and Sparkes (2008) contend, there is a difference between a story analyst and a story teller. On the one hand, story analysts conduct an analysis of the narrative whereby “the researcher steps outside or back from the story and employs analytical procedures, strategies and techniques in order to abstractly scrutinise, explain and think about its certain features” (p.21). On the other hand storytellers “move away from abstract theorising and explaining toward the goals of evocation, intimate involvement, engagement and embodied participation with stories” (p.21). Storytellers therefore present their research through creative analytic practices such as autoethnography, ethnodrama and fiction. As a story analyst however, I was concerned with the context of the story, the where’s (place), the when’s (time), whilst addressing additional

68 questions of what (in relation to content) and how (the story is told in a certain way) (Gubrium & Holstein, 2009).

To address the whats and hows of storytelling, Gubruim & Holstein (2009) suggest using a technique called analytical bracketing. When conducting a DNA, analytical bracketing first involves bracketing the storytelling scene to bring the content of the story into focus (Frank, 2010). Exploring the content of the story allows questions to be answered regarding what is being said in the story, whilst temporarily putting aside empirical matters such as how the stories were told and how the stories were structured (Gubruim & Holstein, 2009). The next stage of a DNA brackets the content of the story and brings the storytelling back into the analysis as the hows of talk are examined alongside the work that these stories do to and for people (Frank, 2010; Smith & Sparkes, 2014). Chapter seven is presented as a complete dialogical narrative analysis as the questions of how physiotherapists manage hope and expectations and what strategies they draw upon are examined. Chapters eight and nine turn attention to the experiences of ABR by participants with SCI and their trainers at Neurokinex. Through this process of analytical bracketing, chapter eight focuses upon the content of the stories to answer the what questions (e.g. What were the barriers to exercise? What did people do to overcome these barriers? What facilitated continued engagement with ABR?). Chapter nine examines the hows of talk and identifies the types of narratives that were drawn upon to scaffold and structure the stories of ABR. Together these two chapters address the stories told by participants and the effects of telling these stories.