Self-Narrative Elicitation in Counseling: An Exploration of the Usefulness of Selected Interview Methods

Abstract

An important element of many forms of counseling is the narrative articulation of the client experience. This article aims to define self-narrative elicitation methods, to explore their use in counseling, and to present a quantitative empirical examination of narrative interview instructions. It examines whether the self-narrative inclination and selected situational factors influence the narrativity level of the utterances when elicited by different types of self-narrative instructions. The results show that the utterances produced by three different types of instructions (open-ended question; photo-elicitation; life-as-book metaphor) do not differ in narrativity level. The narrativity of utterances measured micro-analytically on the lexical level remains independent from the external factors (sequence, topic, type of instruction). Given the level of narrativity and length of response, the three instructions are close to each other. At the same time the narrativity is significantly influenced by self-narrative inclination. It is worth acknowledging personal features that can change the way the story is told in interviews and thus affect the counseling practice.