Narrative research is essentially the study of stories that can include historical accounts, fictictious novels, fairy tales, and autobiographies. Stories can be told by people about their experiences or about others as part of an everyday dialogue. Narrative researchers take those stories and study them in order to solicit from others through interviewing and written story requests. This could be described as the “storying” process. During the 1970’s the reformist movement came to light. According to Bell J. (2002) “narrative researchers stated evidence such as personal descriptions of life experiences, could serve to issue knowledge about neglected, but significant areas that discussed the human experience” (p.207-217). Some of the challenges with narrative research is the notion of validity or believability. Since the basis of research is someone’s story, it can be disputed in terms of the facts. Is there a validation process of this knowledge that is gathered? As someone gives a …show more content…
Question one aligns with narrative research in the study. It will be important in this research to listen to doctoral students and their stories. The assumption is that the commonalities in these stories for doctoral students will validate the argument that doctoral persistence should be studied an understood by universities’ in order to impact their attrition. The narrative research will prove that doctoral students share similar concerns and suffer similar set-backs when it comes to doctoral persistence. The motivation driving the subject matter is to impact doctoral persistence by learning the key factors that create obstacles during their doctoral programs and proposing solutions to those potential road blocks. The significance to this problem can be costly to the individual student and the university. The intent is to show through a narrative process of research that the students share the same fears and similar challenges when completing their