Narrative analysis
Narrative analysis is a qualitative method that studies the stories people tell about their experiences: how they structure them, what they emphasize and what meaning they draw. It treats each account as a whole story rather than a set of coded fragments.
How it works
Where thematic analysis cuts transcripts into passages and groups them across people, narrative analysis keeps each person's account intact. The analyst looks at the plot (what happened, in what order), the turning points, the characters, the tone and how the teller positions themselves: as the hero who solved a problem, the victim of a process, or a bystander.
Comparing narratives across participants can then produce a typology of story types. Because stories are interpretations shaped by the teller's perspective, the method is suited to questions about how people make sense of an experience, such as a diagnosis, a career change or a large purchase.
A worked example
A mortgage lender analyzes 20 first-time buyers' accounts of getting a loan. Three story types emerge: the "obstacle course" (9 buyers), the "guided journey" (7) and the "leap of faith" (4). Every obstacle-course story turns on the same moment, an unexplained document request, which the lender redesigns first.
Related
Automate this in Pulse
Pulse keeps each interview whole as a transcript with its recording, letting a narrative analyst follow a customer's story in order instead of in coded fragments.