S. Gudmundsdottir, THE TELLER, THE TALE, AND THE ONE BEING TOLD - THE NARRATIVE NATURE OF THE RESEARCH INTERVIEW, Curriculum inquiry, 26(3), 1996, pp. 293-306
Narrative structures are readily available in our culture and people a
utomatically draw on them in most meaning-making activities. The resea
rch interview is one of many such activities. Narrative structures inf
luence how informants remember their experience and subsequently tell
researchers about it in an interview. Researchers also draw upon narra
tive structures because they hear and understand in narratives. Inform
al or implicit interpretation as opposed to explicit interpretation ar
e discussed. The ''iceberg'' metaphor is used to describe the two kind
s of interpretation. The tip of the iceberg is explicit interpretation
, which is what researchers write in their research reports. The bigge
st part, however, is informal interpretation. It is out of sight and u
sually unexamined because it is built into the strategies researchers
employ to make sense of data.