Abstract:

This dissertation presented an emerging inquiry about how a qualitative interview informed by narrative practices might provide significant local knowledge drawn from family members of individuals with traumatic brain injury. Narrative interviews were conducted with families of individuals with a traumatic brain injury. The research sample contained four families totaling four adult women, one adult male and seven children. Individual interviews were conducted in the context of the family and reflecting team. In other words, each family member and their participating family members witnessed the interview process as well as the reflecting team group discussion.

Narrative inquiry was used as its own evolving form of qualitative inquiry, drawing from the narrative research methodology developed by Polkinghorne (1995) and modified by Chase (2005). A combination of the methods paradigmatic analysis and narrative analysis were utilized first to draw themes from the narratives of the participants and later to consider the ways in which the participants were organizing the events of their lives and taking action, as well as the social implications of their experiences (Bruner, 1986; Chase, 2005; Polkinghorne, 1995). Four themes emerged from the data: incalculable changes, life as uncertain, identity and struggles to create meaning and understanding. During the analysis of the data, a social constructionist lens was applied to the transcripts of the participants' narratives to attend to the cultural messages about normalcy and operations of social control that were subjugating.