Among the numerous forms of biographical research in education, five types are often noted: scholarly chronicles, intellectual biography, life history writing, memoir biography, and narrative biography. These orientations may take the form of articles, vignettes, chapters, monographs, and full-length books. One need not draw fine distinctions among these different approaches, however, and each orientation offers particular strengths for the presentation of the biographical subject. Realms are crossed continually as the intent and purpose of the biographer become more clearly defined during the research process. Ultimately, biographers while engaged in their research are constantly examining their interpretive voices as much as the lives of their biographical subjects.
The scholarly chronicle is the most fundamental (and common) type of biographical research with its focus on the historical portrayal of an individual life. This basic research orientation constitutes telling the subject’s story in chronological order with emphasis upon the development of a quest plot (life pattern-stages) and the description of acts of recognition (or notoriety) as the biographer marches through the life of the biographical subject. The scholarly chronicle is often viewed as synonymous with biography; however, this research orientation is markedly different from other forms of biographical inquiry.
Another genre, intellectual biography, forsakes the need for basic chronological structure and develops a narrative of a life through the conceptual analysis of the subject’s motives and beliefs within the world of ideas. Those who write intellectual biography have overcome the interpretive angst of other educational researchers, what Rollyson (2005) has deemed “the biographical apologia,” who include pages of interviewee narrative and rich description but who refrain from interpreting motives and feelings. In contrast, the intellectual biographer recognizes and accepts the invasive yet justifiable analysis and overcomes the intrusive nature of inquiry with care resulting in self-reflective thoughtfulness and insight.
A third form of biographical research is defined as life history writing (and the narrative study of lives) with strong allegiance to the social science research traditions of oral history and narrative discourse and, specifically, great devotion to theoretical constructs from sociology and psychology. Case study paradigms emerge as life history writers address issues of generalizability, social interaction-social structure, and reliability and validity as well as the biographical quest of any study of a life. This research genre has taken many forms in the field of education, perhaps resonating most in the area of teacher education with the narrative study of teachers’ lives scholarship and, to a lesser degree, with the first-year teacher research that also remains loyal to aspects of intellectual biography (Goodson, 2008; Bullough, 2008).
In recent years a fourth genre, memoir biography (still distinct from autobiography and memoir) has begun to appear in the field of curriculum studies. Attention is devoted to the researcher’s motives in relation to the biographical subject and with emphasis upon the stylistic presentation of the biographer’s reflections and insights in relation to the factual account of the life. An interpretive narrative of the writer, alongside the presentation of the biographical subject, becomes part of the research. A life story is being told, yet in relation to the transactional experiences of the biographer that in turn influences and foreshadows similar experiences for the reader.
A fifth type, narrative biography, represents a dynamic portrayal of a life without the need for absolute facticity or a comprehensive account from birth to grave. Neither is this style burdened by the ultimate interpretation of the subject that must be accepted by the reader. Facts are recognized and some interpretations are accepted as being more significant than others; however, the biographer, though consciously aware of his or her personal emotions and reactions to the subject, acknowledges that the telling of the story is primarily defined by the subject in relation to the reader.
No definitive listing of biographical types can ever be constructed since, fortunately, new forms—content and process oriented—are continually being conceived and explored. Other more content-related designations include feminist biography (Alpern, et al., 1992; Ascher, et. al., 1984; Wagner-Martin, 1994) and black biography (Backscheider, 1997), all with emphasis upon identity and the restoration of the “invisible” subject.
Biography’s relationship to autobiography, memoir, and narrative research in education is well developed and will continually be redefined (Denzin, 1989; Epstein, 1991; Rollyson, 2008) Yet, with the emerging interest in biographical inquiry and with some growing interest in prosopography (group biography), little consensus of terminology exists; for example, it should be noted that while some qualitative researchers view the term as accurate, there are dramatic differences between biography and autobiography—much more than any slash or solidus can convey.
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Qualitative Research: What is it?
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What is qualitative research?
"Qualitative research is a type of research that explores and provides deeper insights into real-world problems. [1] Instead of collecting numerical data points or intervene or introduce treatments just like in quantitative research, qualitative research helps generate hypotheses as well as further investigate and understand quantitative data."
"Qualitative research at its core, ask open-ended questions whose answers are not easily put into numbers such as ‘how’ and ‘why’. [2] Due to the open-ended nature of the research questions at hand, qualitative research design is often not linear in the same way quantitative design is. [2] One of the strengths of qualitative research is its ability to explain processes and patterns of human behavior that can be difficult to quantify. [3] Phenomena such as experiences, attitudes, and behaviors can be difficult to accurately capture quantitatively, whereas a qualitative approach allows participants themselves to explain how, why, or what they were thinking, feeling, and experiencing at a certain time or during an event of interest."
Qualitative Study - Steven Tenny; Grace D. Brannan; Janelle M. Brannan; Nancy C. Sharts-Hopko. This article details what qualitative research is, and some of the methodologies used.
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Quantitative vs Qualitative Chart Chart showing examples of quantitative vs. qualitative research.
Qualitative research is the naturalistic study of social meanings and processes, using interviews, observations, and the analysis of texts and images. In contrast to quantitative researchers, whose statistical methods enable broad generalizations about populations (for example, comparisons of the percentages of U.S. demographic groups who vote in particular ways), qualitative researchers use in-depth studies of the social world to analyze how and why groups think and act in particular ways (for instance, case studies of the experiences that shape political views).
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Biographical Research
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This chapter provides an introduction to the depth and range of Biographical Research. It is clear that Biographical Research is firmly established within the social sciences, becoming part of the ‘mainstream’ in research practice. What is apparent is the increasing extension of interest in forms of ‘personal documents’ and the varied types of ‘interview’ and its analysis being developed. The chapter outlines some areas for creative developments in the field arising from the impact of digital technologies within society. It argues that Biographical Research needs to recognise forms of ‘individual consciousness’ in the experience of ‘everyday life’. By suggesting surrealist and synthaesthetic methodologies the chapter may stimulate new interpretive approaches to understand ‘lives on the move’.
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Much has been written about the field of biographical research. Comprehensive states of the art and field mappings have enabled researchers, throughout the years, to understand the main trends of an evolving arena of knowledge production in people’s lives and their subjectivity. However, these important exercises of taking a step back to observe the field are generally based on more traditional approaches that tend to focus almost exclusively on its nucleus and main protagonists. By developing an extensive literature analysis, which provided the grounds to put in place a profile-oriented qualitative approach, we were able to shed some light on the different zones that characterise the complexity of the field (including peripheries and margins). A quantitative study of 1270 references published between 1918 and 2019, within the sociological disciplinary field, allowed us to identify three profiles of publication: precursors, engineers and explorers. In this article we depart from this tripartite configuration of the field to internally analyse the main characteristics of each profile, their core features and inner diversity. Through this in-depth qualitative analysis of the texts from each profile, we can observe the processes of institutionalisation and legitimation of the field, its inner dynamism and creativity in the development of approaches and methods, as well as the creation of specialisation trends.
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More than meets the eye: traditions, nucleus and peripheries of the biographical research field
The Practice of Papers: Irish Modernism, the New Journalism, and Modern Periodical Studies
The Historiographical and Cultural Impact of Thomas Paine: A Quantitative Approach
For the complete description of the procedures and the analysis of the main results please see Caetano et al. ( 2021 ). We would like to thank Anabela Pereira and João Baía for the organisation of the database, as well as for the collection and coding of the references.
The dimensions were interpreted and labeled according to the discrimination measures and contributions of each variable to each of the two dimensions.
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This work was supported by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (PTDC/SOC-SOC/29117/2017).
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Caetano, A., Nico, M. & Abrantes, P. Shedding light on the biographical research field: profiles of publication. Qual Quant 57 , 5313–5332 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-022-01596-2
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Accepted : 11 December 2022
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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-022-01596-2
Biographical research through the looking glass of social distancing: Reflections on biographical interviewing and online technologies in pandemic times
Department of Social Sciences, Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, UK
This paper asks critical questions about biographical interviewing during the coronavirus disease 2019 era and the age of social distancing. How do we ‘do’ biographical research when we are more physically distant from interview participants than ever before? What kinds of challenges and issues emerge when doing biographical research in online spaces? How do we form rapport and strong trusting bonds with interviewees in the current context? This paper provides a critical commentary on these questions, focusing on the limitations and possibilities of online interviewing during pandemic times.
Introduction
In biographical interviewing, building rapport and trust with participants, through direct face-to-face interactions, is critical. However, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) calls into question the continuity of co-presence research as researchers increasingly adopt online interviewing. The mobilisation of digital inquiry is by no means new ( Fielding et al., 2017 ); nonetheless, the need for social distancing (SD) means that video conferencing is being more frequently utilised in qualitative research ( Dodds and Hess, 2021 ; Lupton, 2020 ). This presents serious challenges in how we ‘do’ biographical research, how we forge trusting bonds with participants whilst negotiating unprecedented social and temporal distancing.
As the switch from co-presence to mediated presence happened rapidly, researchers must question if it is still possible to do biographical research in a pandemic under the same theoretical principles? What kinds of opportunities and challenges emerge? Is it ethically permissible to do research that frequently evokes complex, negative emotions when we are more physically distant from interviewees than ever before? We reflect on these questions by highlighting some possibilities and challenges to biographical research during COVID-19.
Transforming research realities during COVID-19: New entanglements and Social Distancing
New COVID realities have been transforming our research praxis, creating novel emotional and physical entanglements, and changing our understandings of non-human impacts on human sociability. As a result, researchers face serious challenges with regards to accessing and communicating with participants. Unlike pre-COVID times when we could explore people's lived spaces, we are substantially limited in where, when and how we do our research. In these challenging contexts, mobile technologies are the most viable solution to qualitative interviewing. Digital communication was widely used in research pre-COVID, so its possibilities and limitations are already identified ( Fielding et al., 2017 ; Jenner and Myers, 2019 ). Nevertheless, ongoing research in pandemic contexts that switch to technological data collection faces different challenges from studies that originally plan on applying digital methods.
How far can we reach? The hazards of biographical online interviewing
Building rapport, empathy and trust are central to our ethical commitments. However, these processes may be more difficult online, when our exposure to body language, and the specificities of research encounters, is limited. Even in video interviews that more closely resemble face-to-face interviews, we usually can see only people's faces and upper bodies, which narrow our observation of the rich palette of participants’ gestures and postures ( Seitz, 2016 ). The same is true for interviewees, regarding their interpretation of our body hexis . Network connection problems can also impact negatively on interactional flows ( Howlett, 2021 ), causing ‘disruptions’ in narrations, which can adversely impact data reliability and analysis.
The situation is more complex when doing ethically sensitive research ( Seitz, 2016 ). While ethical protocols regulate our research encounters in virtual and face-to-face settings, we are limited in what we can do if a participant becomes upset while reliving traumatic memories, with which they cannot cope. Extant literature makes practical suggestions on what researchers can do to alleviate emotional harm. However, these strategies, formulated pre-COVID do not account for SD. It can be more difficult to display empathy online and even when researchers are empathetic their emotional displays may be limited due to weak internet or if they switch cameras off.
In face-to-face interactions, we are able to see what surrounds us and what may affect the encounter. In online interviews, we can only see what participants and their electronic devices permit us to observe. With audio interviews, we are not able to see anything at all. We cannot ensure that the interview location is the most suitable place to share intimate matters and that there is no one else in the room, which raise concerns over privacy issues. Anonymity and confidentiality are problematic in recorded video interviews, as participants are exposing more than their voices; they share the privacy of their homes and other private spaces ( Lobe et al., 2020 ). Even if we ensure anonymity and confidentiality, participants may feel they are at risk of revealing intimate aspects of their experiences that they may not want us to know about.
Access to online platforms is also critical ( Deakin and Wakefield, 2014 ). The use of videoconferencing may further exclude populations with limited or no internet access, as well as individuals less familiarised with social networking apps and software. This implies alternative ways of contacting people, for example, through telephone or even postponing research.
Closing doors, opening windows: The possibilities of online interviewing
Despite being, in some contexts, a forced alternative, online interviewing should not be exclusively regarded as negative. Recent accounts from the field suggest that researchers and participants build strong, empathetic relationships. During a lockdown, interviews take place at participants’ homes. The fact that researchers are not physically present, but instead are in their own homes can have two interconnected positive effects. First, it can reinforce the informal, relaxed nature of the interview, making interviewees feel more comfortable to share intimacies with researchers ( Jenner and Myers, 2019 ). Second, it may be pivotal to developing more symmetrical relationships between researchers and participants ( O’Connor and Madge, 2017 ): they are both confined to their homes, experiencing the pandemic's impacts, albeit in different ways, and they are both partially exposing the privacy of their living spaces. Domestic environments may also have important triggers, facilitating narrative flows which could allow researchers to observe biographical elements that would remain concealed using audio interviews ( Howlett, 2021 ). Videoconferencing enables participants to share biographical materials with us, including photographs and videos. Messaging applications can extend contact with participants through exchanging short messages (saying hello, showing concern) which can strengthen research relationships in and across time.
There are several ethical issues in conducting interviews during COVID-19. Researchers may consider it ‘risky’ to interview people in such circumstances, considering that participants may have contracted the virus or family members may have passed away. However, in the face of crises, people tend to be more reflexive as they lose major points of reference, inciting personal reflection on everyday life events ( Caetano, 2019 ). This can manifest in biographical interviews, as people make sense of current contexts. Instead of being a burden, interview encounters can be enjoyable moments of sharing and unburdening. Similarly, the negative limitations of domestic confinement can positively affect research because some people (e.g. youth, retired, unemployed persons) may have greater availability to share their experiences, with fewer constraints.
Which biographical research?
The issues addressed in this paper will incite further discussion as this pandemic continues to unfold. In the immediacy of this moment, however, researchers need time to process and step back ( Nico, 2021 ), remaining mindful that there are many ways of adapting biographical research, whilst staying faithful to core principles of biographical interviewing (e.g. rapport, trust, empathy). Nonetheless, the changed context requires the increased reflexivity on our part to monitor our practices, as an epistemological surveillance tool ( Bourdieu, 2004 ). We must be aware of the implications of SD to data collection; what videoconferencing enables us to observe and what is hidden from view.
We face unprecedented challenges as researchers. There is no way of knowing now if, in the long term, the increased adoption of online platforms becomes an established trend, or how the pandemic might change biographical research in other ways. For now, we can only testify how novel and creative biographical research is ( Caetano and Nico, 2019 ; Moran et al., 2019 ), enabling us to adapt methodological toolkits to understand biographies in new ways in increasingly complex realities.
Declaration of conflicting interests: The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding: The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
ORCID iD: Lisa Moran https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6437-9732
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COMMENTS
Biographical research is a qualitative research approach aligned to the social interpretive paradigm of research. The biographical research is concerned with the reconstruction of life histories and the constitution of meaning based on biographical narratives and documents. The material for analysis consists of interview protocols (memorandums), video recordings, photographs, and a diversity ...
Biographical research in education may be conceived in many different ways; however, typically the topic constitutes the study of a single life, focusing primarily upon an individual who in some way is affiliated with the professional field of education, broadly conceived (Garraty, 1957; Oates, 1986). Other research methodologies are often ...
The biographical research, which focuses on biographical identity or biographical structuring (Fischer-Rosenthal 2000, 114ff.), assumes that the link between structure and individuals could only be understood sufficiently by analysing the development of the individual personality in the life course. Thus the excessive analysis of the single case is
While many books and articles guide various qualitative research methods and analyses, there is currently no concise resource that explains and differentiates among the most common qualitative approaches. We believe novice qualitative researchers, students planning the design of a qualitative study or taking an introductory qualitative research course, and faculty teaching such courses can ...
Qualitative research is a methodology for scientific inquiry that emphasizes the depth and richness of context and voice in understanding social phenomena. 3 This methodology is constructive or interpretive , aiming to unveil the "what," "why," "when," "where," "who," and "how" (or the "5W1H") behind social behaviors ...
Qualitative research design is continually evolving. It is not only more established in disciplines beyond the traditional social sciences in which it is a standard choice, but also just as impacted by the changes in what data, technologies, and approaches researchers are using. This Handbook takes readers through the foundational theories ...
If biographical research is practiced as a historically oriented method, we believe it can be described as the only qualitative method of empirical social research that allows for a decidedly historical and inherently process-oriented approach (see also Rosenthal, 2012). With its process orientation, it can reconstruct social change over long ...
As a qualitative research method, biographic narrative interpretative method (BNIM) explores the stories or narratives from interviewees' lives (Wengraf, 2001).BNIM is considered a reflexive and psychosocial methodology, drawing in part on the German tradition of in-depth hermeneutics and the long-standing, but sometimes marginalized, sociological research on biographical experience ...
Qualitative research is the naturalistic study of social meanings and processes, using interviews, observations, and the analysis of texts and images. In contrast to quantitative researchers, whose statistical methods enable broad generalizations about populations (for example, comparisons of the percentages of U.S. demographic groups who vote in particular ways), qualitative researchers use ...
Chapters. Chapter 1: Discovering biographical narrative research. Chapter 2: Theoretical approaches to biographical narratives. Chapter 3: Interview process and ethics. Chapter 4: Autobiographical narrative interview method. Chapter 5: Narrative ethnography. Chapter 6: Logical systems, qualitative comparative analysis and quantitative coding.
The biographical method stands as a significant approach within personality psychology research, utilizing an individual's biographical data as a window to look into their mind and at their behaviors. It is a method frequently employed in this field. A biography serves as a structured narrative that chronicles the life journey of an ...
PDF | The chapter reviews three different approaches to biographical methods, the biographical interpretive method, oral history and narrative analysis.... | Find, read and cite all the research ...
They see "biographical work" "as part of the ongoing, interactive process through which identities are taken up". Their article "Biographies in talk: a narrative-discursive research approach" is based on analyses of "biographical talk" from postgraduate Art and Design students and their "identity work".
Firstly, biographical research allows us to understand an individual's life in its broader social context. Every decision in the biography, whether about migration or participation in armed conflict, is an outcome of both individual motivations and social circumstances.
Biographical research may take a range of forms and may vary in its application and approach but has the unified and coherent aim to give voice to individuals. The central concern of this collection is to assemble articles (from sociology, social psychology, education, health, criminology, social gerontology, epidemiology, management, and ...
Qualitative research is a type of research that aims to gather and analyse non-numerical (descriptive) data in order to gain an understanding of individuals' social reality, ... Biographical research is concerned with the reconstruction of life histories, based on biographical narratives and documents.
This chapter provides an introduction to the depth and range of Biographical Research. It is clear that Biographical Research is firmly established within the social sciences, becoming part of the 'mainstream' in research practice. What is apparent is the increasing extension of interest in forms of 'personal documents' and the varied ...
Biographical Network has been critical in encouraging and developing the use of biographical methods in varied adult education contexts such as higher education, community education, the workplace as well as informal learning in the family and elsewhere. The 'turn' to biographical methods brought subjectivity centre stage in the research ...
This article presents a new literature analysis of the field of biographical research, focusing on the internal characterisation of each one of the three profiles by means of an "integrative literature analysis" (Snyder 2019) resulting from the qualitative and relational understanding of the texts.
Abstract. This case study is in process, begun in 2008, in which I am currently collecting data for an authorized biography. It outlines what has recently been a shift in the role of researchers, especially during interviews, from one of structured questioner to a more collaborative role, that of conversational partner.
Biographical Research. Brian Roberts. Open University Press, 2002 - Social Science - 212 pages. "Roberts is certainly successful in conveying a sense of the rich diversity of biographical research. This is a book based upon a formidably wide-ranging bibliography together with his own, by no means insignificant, contributions to the field ...
Through life history and biographical research they can gain insights into what motivates people to engage in adult learning for social and personal change. Looking at examples taken both from the literature and from four different research studies that the author has engaged in during recent years, some of the benefits, challenges, and ...
The mobilisation of digital inquiry is by no means new (Fielding et al., 2017); nonetheless, the need for social distancing (SD) means that video conferencing is being more frequently utilised in qualitative research (Dodds and Hess, 2021; Lupton, 2020). This presents serious challenges in how we 'do' biographical research, how we forge ...
The research findings suggest that researchers may encounter various challenges when conducting qualitative social work research with older adults, despite the fact that a prior educational background in social work provides an advantage. It is anticipated that the visibility of qualitative research experiences with older individuals will ...
This study stems from an international project with the mission of providing innovative didactic orientations to guide the logic of scientific research (research practice) and the logic of scientific text (scientific writing), specifying concrete routes for reflection and action (Deroncele-Acosta, 2022).Given this, especially for the guidance of research at the master's and doctoral level ...