One of the aims of this book is to outline a method-in-practice, to show how it is possible to construct in-depth case histories from a qualitative longitudinal archive. This chapter introduces the field of biographical methods, formulating some of the challenges of working with repeat interviews, and explores the boundaries between primary and secondary analysis that are a feature of longitudinal research. It then outlines the design of the original Inventing Adulthoods study, before describing and evaluating the analytic strategies employed in producing the case histories presented in Chapters Four to Seven.

Biographical methods

There has been a resurgence of interest in biographical methods, reflected in the publication of several volumes that seek to map the field (Chamberlayne et al, 2000; Miller, 2000; Plummer, 2001; Roberts, 2002). In each, the authors or editors refer to a ‘biographical turn’, commenting on the movement of such methods from the margins towards the centre in social science, paralleling the process through which the examination of the self has become a key feature of the modern world and of social policy and practice.

The terms ‘biographical methods’ and ‘life-history research’ encompass a wide range of approaches, defined most simply through a common methodological starting point – the collection and analysis of biographical or autobiographical accounts. This includes a number of research traditions, often with distinct aims, fields and methods of enquiry. Several attempts have been made to formalise these differences – for example Miller (2000) suggests a typology of realist, neo-positivist and narrative positions, yet admits that most researchers take elements from each. Roberts (2002) takes a more descriptive approach, focused on disciplinary boundaries, distinguishing auto/biographical, life-history, oral-history and literary approaches. Bertaux and Thompson (1997: 14) demarcate an Anglo-French tradition which seeks to document the past (and in which they situate themselves) from a German approach (associated with the work of Gabriele Rosenthal (1993, 1998) concerned primarily with subjectivity. Common to each typology is a distinction between realist and constructionist positions – the question of the relationship between the life that has been led and the story that is told.

Proponents of biographical methods distinguish them by virtue of their facility to engage with temporal processes.