Qualitative interviews can be used for all kinds of purposes, and narrative inquiry would be one of them. The key issue is that are multiple approaches to narrative analysis, so you should decide which version best suits your goals before you decide how to collect your data.

I did a narrative study. What it is, is taking the interview questions and combining them to make a "story." You will have interviews whether face to face or video chat etc. Narrative is the design, you interviews is the mode you will use to capture your data. What kind of analysis will you use while capturing your data, and after? Will you already have themes, or will you allow themes to emerge while you interview. What kind of analysis is it?

I don't really know the subject. But what I understand from my readings is :

Narrative inquiry is a method of research on the narratives of individuals and groups: stories, story of experiences. This method seems to me to collect stories of varied natures (oral story, novel, poem, report...) and then to make an analysis. This method is rather used for inquiry on experiences, perceptions, emotions, perspectives of individuals or groups of people.

Interviews are used to collect data in qualitative research. Researchers ask (more or less open or closed) questions to one or several people and record their answers (recorder, peaper...) to then analyze them.

Narrative inquiry: collecting stories to analyze them.

Interviews: asking questions, record them for analysis.

Maybe more answers in this book (I haven't read it, but maybe one day) :

Clandinin, D.J., & Connelly, F.M. (2000). Narrative inquiry: Experience and story in qualitative research. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

If anyone has a book reference please share. I day when I will read on this subject it could help me!

Thank y'all for providing these amazing answers! Really appreciate it.

Interviews are a kind of data collection. That is not all there is to research design. In fact, different kinds of data collection can be used for virtually every sort of qualitative approach. You can do virtually all of them through primary documents. You can do virtually all of them through observation. Some ARE better suited for particular approaches than others, but don't confuse data collection with the entirety of research design.

Regardless of the approach, looking for stories can be very helpful. They are often quite compact and dense with meaning. They can be useful to present when sharing findings. I find them useful in my work because they work as illustrations of ideas that my participants do not know how to explain more abstractly or generally. They demonstrate their thinking or values. And then I use further questions and followups to unpack those things that I am most interested in. I don't need a lot of stories to have a deep and thoughtful conversation that is aimed at revealing what they truly think. But I am not doing narrative inquiry. What I do is really grounded theory.

You should think about the the kind of project you want to do. They kinds of big research questions you care about, and the way that you think answers/findings should look. Then, look at the different qualitative approaches and figure out which one(s) really resonate with what you think research is. The ones that feel more foreign...they are taking an approach that doesn't mesh with what you want.

I don't do biography. I don't do journalism. I'm not truly interested in case study, or even multiple case study. The kinds of things that I do are grounded theory, sometimes with quite a bit of phenomenology. Sometimes, I'm doing more like program evaluation, instead. But grounded theory is really my home. The kinds of questions I am asking and the kinds of findings I want to produce? For ME, it's grounded theory.

And, yes, I love interviews. But I also look at artifact/documents. And I do some observation. Depends on the project. Those are different forms of data collection.

Wenyang Wei Narrative studies are a lot of fun and closely related to Phenom studies since both in essence are dealing with "Lived experiences." With Narrative studies you are supposed to be embedded with your participants for a bit and you must use the word stories in your chapters. I wish you the best. Look up Data analysis for Braun and Clarke (2013) and Percy, Kostere, and Kostere (2015) for three types of data analysis. Please cross reference for more current information. Best wishes to you!

The guidance/illustrations as per the following publications may further help, namely:

The main distinction between the conventional qualitative interview and a narrative interview is that the interviewer employs methods that aim to direct the informant’s story as little as possible, or the interview situation aims to be so everyday in its nature that people produce their narrative spontaneously and naturally. The advantage of a narrative interview is that narration requires of an informant more than just answering. In fact, the informant has to describe all the relevant events in order to produce a comprehensible story (Aarikka-Stenroos, 2011, p. 43).

An interview is two persons seeking knowledge and understanding in a common conversational endeavor (Czarniawska, 2004, p. 47).

In the narrative interview, the informant is asked to present the history of an area of interest, in which the interviewee participated, in an extempore narrative .... The interviewer's task is to make the informant tell the story of the area of interest in question as a consistent story of all relevant events from its beginning to its end. (Hermanns 1995, p. 183 in Flick, 2010, p. 177).

A narrative interview is an interview that is organized to facilitate the development of a text that can be interpreted through narrative analysis. Narrative analysis is guided by a theory of narrative, and these theories of narrative vary in the influence of the reader, the text, and the intent of the author on interpretation…..(Given, 2008, p. 545).

• Aarikka-Stenroos, L. (2011) Reference Communication and Third Actors in the Initiation of Business Rekationships. Turku: Turku School of Economics.
• Czarniawska, B. (2004) Narratives in Social Science Research: Introducing Qualitative Methods. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.
• Flick, U. (2010) An Introduction to Qualitative Research. Fourth edn. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.
• Given, L. M. (2008) The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Methods Volumes 1&2. California: SAGE Publications, Inc.
• Stuckey, H. L. (2013) Three types of interviews: Qualitative research methods in social health, Journal of Social Health and Diabetes, 1, 2, pp. 56-59.