I realised this morning that my interest in the wider scope of learning in vivo (learning from real-life experiences), combined with my interest in qualitative research, led to a focus on Life-story Interviewing, Narrative Research and Life Course Research.
In the forward of a publication on methods of life course research (Giele & Elder 1998) Anne Colby states about crafting life course studies that any point in a person's lifespan must be viewed and the consequence of both past experiences and future expectations. The researcher, she indicates, must both specify the research problem and understand how to organise the data, by using key concepts such as events, timing, impact of the period, and the distinctive experience of the particular cohorts.
Giele and Elder (1998), in their preface, states that the publication focuses on how one does life course research—the art and method of appropriate research design: how to collect life history data; the search for meaningful patterns; analyses of longitudinal data in qualitative form; conceptualisation of age, period and cohort; locating of research participants (respondents) to undertake follow-up surveys; the organising of life events' data; and the recording of data on a retrospective or prospective calendar.
In the introduction, the life course mode of enquiry, to part one of the publication, Giele and Elder (1998: 2-4) suggest a number of general principles:
- Bidirectional focus on social change—the the life events as well as the transitional rates of an individual or group
- Location—of time and place includes history, social structure and culture (p. 9)
- Linked lives—the interaction of individuals with societal institutions and social groups (p. 9)
- Human agency—embodied in the active pursuit of personal goals and the sense of self (p.10)
- Timing—the chronology of events of an individual's life that combines simultaneously that of personal, group and historical markers (p. 10)
- Transitional rate—is a comparative technique for assessment of change in individuals or groups at two different times
- Sociology of age—age, structure (constituent) and the dynamics of ageing as explications of differences in consciousness and status, bringing about social change
- Paradigm shift—a replacement of older deterministic and stage concepts of human development through many technical and theoretical steps
Giele, J.Z. & Elder (Jr.), G.H. (Eds.) 1998. Methods of life course research—qualitative and quantitative approaches. Thousand Oaks: SAGE
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