__smbhome.uscs.susx.ac.uk_dm50_Desktop_Sharland et al Life History Narratives IJSRM Final Accepted Jan 2017.pdf (1.33 MB)
Assembling life history narratives from quantitative longitudinal panel data: what’s the story for families using social work?
journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-09, 04:33 authored by Elaine SharlandElaine Sharland, Paula Holland, Morag Henderson, Meng Le Zhang, Sin Yi Cheung, Jonathan ScourfieldEmbedded within quantitative longitudinal panel or cohort studies is narrative potential that is arguably untapped but might enrich our understanding of individual and social lives across time. This paper discusses a methodology to assemble the life history narratives of families using social work by drawing on quantitative data from the British Household Panel Survey. It explores whether this person-centred approach helps us to understand the counterintuitive results of a parallel multivariate analyses, which suggest that families using social work fare worse than similar others over time. Our findings are tentative, due to the experimental use of this narrative method and the limits of social work information in the dataset. Nonetheless, the life histories presented bring to light complexities, diversity and the non-linear pathways between families’ needs, support and outcomes that the aggregates obscure. We conclude that reconstructing families’ lives in this way, especially in the absence of complementary longitudinal qualitative data, affords the wider opportunity to interrogate and better understand the findings of quantitative longitudinal studies.
History
Publication status
- Published
File Version
- Accepted version
Journal
International Journal of Social Research MethodologyISSN
1364-5579Publisher
Taylor & FrancisExternal DOI
Issue
6Volume
20Page range
667-679Department affiliated with
- Social Work and Social Care Publications
Full text available
- Yes
Peer reviewed?
- Yes
Legacy Posted Date
2017-01-04First Open Access (FOA) Date
2018-07-26First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date
2017-01-04Usage metrics
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