Résumé :
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Recently the argument has been made that much qualitative health research suffers from a form of'reductionism'in which interview extracts, abstracted from context, are taken to represent subjective perspectives ; and that there is a search for'core meanings'that ignore the multiplicity of possible interpretations that can be attached to the data. Proponents of this view propose an alternative postmodernist mode of analysis focusing on the meanings readers see in a text. The author argues that this critique goes too far : qualitative researchers need to develop methods of analysis which avoid fragmentation of interview accounts, while still retaining a concern with cultural meanings. Narrative analysis preserves the contextually constructed character of the interview account and, through attention to content and sequencing allows researchers to expolore cultural meanings available to both narrator and recipient. The method of narrative analysis is illustrated with data from a study of women's experiences of personal crisis in a South Wales town.
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