Life Stories are a very interesting method for collecting data. However, it should be used as a complement to other methods.
History
Life Stories have been explored since very early times. Then, they belonged to orality. Their value was perceived as educational to new generations. Yet, there are written registers that go as far as Ancient Rome, often used as sources to study history.
From a more scientific point of you, they are used by:
- Sociology: identify the situation and behaviors the individual faces, connecting them with the context in which the person is involved;
- Anthropology: micro-processes of social exchange, from the individual with the society and culture. Understanding the space where each individual creates their own existence.
- Psychology: to understand the space of the happening, the interpretation the subject gives to it, and its value.
Goals
Life stories are vital to understanding the processes of construction and reconstruction of the identity – as an individual, as a group, as a class in a particular social context. They are a mean for the individual to explore the process of self-formation – telling their story helps them to focus on unsolved conflicts, increases their self-esteem, and preserves their identity.
They are beneficial when working with an adult population. The exercise of looking back at your life and chronologically ordering the happenings is pretty insightful. It helps us understand and give meaning to what we lived. It leads the subjects to overcome their fears and personal conflicts.
Benefits
Life stories as a research method are helpful to compare different trajectories and strategies the subjects lived through.
Conceptualization and reconceptualization allow you to reformulate theories and create hypotheses that consider the relationship between the subjects’ beliefs and the social interaction they maintain.
A life story allows us to figure the relationship the individual has with their history. It will let us know how the external happenings were lived internally, according to the individual emotions and mental representations.
It is also a shared process between the subject and the investigator, enriching the final result. Some subjects will put all the interpretation work on the shoulders of the investigator. Yet, most will be an active part in this process, giving their significance and interpretation to their actions. This could be a fascinating and informative process as well.
Despite these advantages, you should be very careful with privacy issues. You must respect your narrators’ wishes and their right to confidentiality. If relevant, you can identify a story with a person’s characteristics. Also, the narrator’s desire for something to be omitted – names, places – must be respected.
Types of Life Stories
In a more broad sense of the word, a life story is a very rich report full of happenings, feelings, and memorable moments. As an investigator, you can be interested in the life story as a whole or specific moments.
- Report about a specific event in the person’s life
- Biographic sequences of important moments, providing a personal chronology
- Biographic interviews about professional or familiar life. The interviewer organizes the events to articulate the relationship between them. Useful when you’re looking for the history of a specific context
- Self-presentation – a brief life story the subject provides about his life
- Social life story – interviews where the subject tells, compares and evaluates the happenings in their life. How did those happenings contribute to their social being?
- Biographic reconstruction – the investigator does a reconstruction from different documents (journals, notes, letters…) and stories
- Autobiography – the narrator writes a part, or the total of his biography (the narrator sequences, organizes, and analyzes it)
Models to explore life stories
Due to the importance and numerous possibilities in working with life stories, there are three models to explore them.
1. Biographic Model
A third party makes the analysis, interpretations, and syntheses. It reassures greater objectivity. The psychologist or researcher is responsible for the interpretation without the subject’s intervention.
2. Autobiographic Model
The subject telling the story finds sense in what is being said. They give the happenings a value and interpretation. Finally, the subject analyzes the story by himself.
3. Joint Model
It depends on experienced adults. It intends to find an explanation of the implicit knowledge they have. The individual understands the sense of what they lived. The story isn’t a mere enunciation of facts. Instead, it demands the investigator to analyze the coherence of what is told.
This is, in fact, the most used model in an investigation. It allows you to reach a final interpretation by the analyzes of two different points of view. It is a more dynamic life story and allows a deeper evaluation of it.
Life Stories as Method
Life Stories are an important qualitative research method. They are rich in information, and there are plenty of ways to collect and treat the data. Yet, there are boundaries and limits to be respected.
As a researcher, you must make your subjects feel safe. That’s how you get more of each technique to reach your goals.
Psychology in our World 