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Assembling life history narratives from quantitative longitudinal panel data: what’s the story for families using social work?

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posted on 2023-06-09, 04:33 authored by Elaine SharlandElaine Sharland, Paula Holland, Morag Henderson, Meng Le Zhang, Sin Yi Cheung, Jonathan Scourfield
Embedded 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 Methodology

ISSN

1364-5579

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Issue

6

Volume

20

Page range

667-679

Department affiliated with

  • Social Work and Social Care Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2017-01-04

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2018-07-26

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2017-01-04

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