Narrative Analysis
An approach that studies the stories people tell, focusing on how accounts are structured and what they reveal about experience and identity.
Narrative analysis studies the stories people tell about their lives and experiences. Instead of fragmenting transcripts into codes, it often keeps accounts intact and asks how a story is structured, how events are sequenced and given meaning, and how the teller presents themselves and others. Analysts may focus on the content of stories, their form, or the context in which they are told. Interviews that invite extended accounts are the most common data source.
In a thesis, narrative analysis fits questions about how people make sense of change, illness, careers, or other lived experience over time. Because it preserves whole stories, it supports rich, person-centered findings chapters, but you must explain how you selected and interpreted narratives so the analysis reads as systematic inquiry rather than retelling.
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