An Exploration of Body Experience Stories Using Narrative Analysis with Adults

This narrative analysis collected drawings and stories through unstructured interviews to gain insight into themes of body experiences. The overarching research question, “What types of body experience stories and drawings are shared in an unstructured interview?” aimed to gather preliminary data on narrative and visual aspects of body experience drawings. Analytic coding facilitated inductive and deductive engagement with data through a bottom-up approach that analyzed, identified, and situated narrative themes directly within text. The narratives were coded as Bounded and Unbounded based on the verbal framing of time. Self-reference claims were coded as Self-Portrait, Concrete Object, or Symbolic. Graphic indicators included full and partial self-portraits, a central image, and environmental imagery.