The structured narrative interview

In this study, Greimas’s work on narrative structure is used to improve a
specific practice: the research interview. In the social sciences, narrative
interviewing often consists of collecting data from which a narrative is then
constructed through analysis afterwards. In the interview method presented
here, the interviewer instead prompts the interviewee to construct a
narrative. We introduce the method, contextualize it by comparing it to
previous and contemporary interview methods, and illustrate it with a
small, sociolinguistic study: students (n=12) from a humanities faculty and
a science and engineering faculty at a Dutch university were interviewed
about experiences with the use of different languages than the language of
instruction in an international learning environment. The method allowed
for smooth data collection, due to its narratively structured questioning and
consequent rich data. Moreover, using narrative structures to guide the
interview also facilitated easy analysis and comparison of the stories.