The Narrated, Nonnarrated, and the Disnarrated

Abstract

While analyzing the narratives of children receiving pediatric oncology treatment and their parents, we encountered three ways to look at their narratives: what was narrated, nonnarrated, and disnarrated. The narrated refers to the actors (characters) and events (scenes) individuals decided to include in the narration of their experiences, the nonnarrated are everything not included in narration, and the disnarrated are elements that are narrated in the story but did not actually take place. We use our reflection to illustrate how an integrative analysis of these different forms of narration can allow us to produce a holistic interpretation of people’s experiences of illness. This approach is still in the early stages of development, but we hope this article can promote a debate in the field and lead to the refinement of an important tool for narrative analysis.

The Unbreakable Bond: The Mental Health Benefits and Challenges of Pet Ownership for People Experiencing Homelessness

“…With the smaller number of participants, the researchers therefore addressed the data as a narrative of their unique experiences, rather than as data that could be generalisable. Narratives are an important form of data as they represent experiences that are storied and shared in a way that allows for flexibility and individualisation for the story-teller (Vindrola-Padros & Johnson, 2014). By recounting experience in-depth, narrative research enables an understanding of values and an informed interpretation of rationale underpinning actions.…”

Evaluating Complex Health Interventions With Randomized Controlled Trials: How Do We Improve the Use of Qualitative Methods?

“…Although many social scientists would take an interest in describing the health perceptions of a particular population, when placed in relation to intervention evaluation this type of rich description is often perceived to be most valuable for designing the intervention itself. A diverse range of qualitative methods are available to do this early formative work, including participant observation (Dahlke, Hall, & Phinney, 2015; Peacock, Khumalo, & McNab, 2006), spiral walks (Ngwenya et al, 2018), audio diaries (Mupambireyi & Bernays, 2018), life history interviews (Harris & Rhodes, 2018), narrative interviews (Vindrola-Padros & Johnson, 2014), and illustrated story cards (Karnieli-Miller, Nissim, & Goldberg, 2017). The Broad Brush Survey method described by Bond et al (2018) in this special issue of Qualitative Health Research outlines a comprehensive means of providing rich description of the social context to inform trial design decisions early on using participatory qualitative methods.…”

“An Active, Productive Life”: Narratives of, and Through, Participation in Public and Patient Involvement in Health Research

“…In medical sociology, narrative approaches have been widely employed for understanding experiences of illness ( Thomas, 2010 ) and treatment ( Vindrola-Padros & Johnson, 2014 ), and how identities are constructed through narration of ongoing relationships between the “body, self and surrounding world” ( Hydén, 1997 , p. 51). Narratives have also proved valuable for exploring the representation of experiences and identities among marginalized groups such as care-leavers ( Evans, 2019 ).…”

“…In medical sociology, narrative approaches have been widely employed for understanding experiences of illness (Thomas, 2010) and treatment (Vindrola-Padros & Johnson, 2014), and how identities are constructed through narration of ongoing relationships between the "body, self and surrounding world" (Hydén, 1997, p. 51).…”