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Narrating or storytelling is a fundamental practice for human survival and a means for finding meaning in experiences and for enhancing self-understanding. The use of story has been present in nursing since its origins. Biographical narrative has rarely been used as a research method in nursing, and there are no examples conceptualizing biographical narrative research methods within a unitary science perspective. The purpose of this paper is to describe one specific narrative methodological approach—the biographical narrative research method—and to link the method to the science of unitary human beings as a means of creating a unitary understanding of the storied nature of human-health experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a time of heightened bigotry and racialized violence, it is critical for social workers to engage in anti-racism practice. What leads White individuals to embrace this framework is less explored in scholarship. This paper presents data from an exploratory narrative inquiry with 10 White helping professionals in the Northeastern US who adopted an overtly anti-racism approach in their work. Narrative is a "cultural tool" through which individuals make sense of themselves and circumstances within context (Dauite et al., 2015: 48). Narrative inquiry involves uncovering the stories embedded within the overt stories told. With focus on pivotal childhood experiences, the themes taken up in this paper include the influence of family of origin values about race, exposure to racial difference, and experiences leading to the adoption of anti-racism tenets. The themes emerged as participants reflected on the self-discovery of racialization; initial exposure to racial inequity; and the impetus for them to become active in efforts to counter White supremacy. The paper aims to add to research on the engagement of White individuals in anti-racism efforts, an essential task for US social work as a predominantly White profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participatory research methodologies have expanded the opportunities for critical, emancipatory and democratic health and social work research. However, their practical application in research with vulnerable participants has historically been challenging due to ethical, practical and theoretical concerns. Individuals who are homeless are typically seen as 'hard-to-reach', transient, 'hidden' and even chaotic participant populations. Unsurprisingly, examples of the use of innovative participatory research techniques with those groups have been relatively scarce. This paper aimed to address this gap by discussing the application of one such technique – the mobile phone diary in research with multiply disadvantaged homeless adults. Diary methods are situated within the qualitative research on health, illness and social marginality, and the enhanced capabilities of the mobile phone diary are highlighted. The author illustrates the application of the mobile phone diary in his participatory research on the everyday life narratives of adults with serious mental illness (SMI) who were homeless. The process of designing the mobile phone diary is detailed. Following this, participant testimonies of their use of the mobile phone diary are presented. They demonstrate the participatory and inclusive nature, as well as the cathartic and empowering potential, of this technique. The methodological contributions and challenges and the theoretical generativity of the mobile phone diary method are discussed. The mobile phone diary is a feasible approach for eliciting evocative, contextualised and nuanced accounts of the lived experience of homelessness, social isolation, coping and recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: The social work profession emphasises the development of the personal qualities of social workers in addition to requiring them to possess the necessary professional values, knowledge, theories and practice skills. Until now, we have tended to rely on the perspective of social work professional bodies, educators and employers to assess the personal qualities of social workers. We have seldom inquired about the views of service users on the qualities of social workers, thus disregarding their perspective. This article focuses on identifying the important qualities of social workers from the perspective of service users. Findings: This paper reports on qualitative research on the personal qualities of social workers that service users value in Hong Kong. It draws on a diverse range of service users with direct experiences of the services provided by social workers. A total of 47 service users from 7 core social welfare service settings and 32 service units participated in an in-depth qualitative interview. Six significant personal qualities of social workers from the service users' perspective are identified and discussed. Applications: The findings have several implications for examining directions for development of the social work profession, the relationship between service users and social workers, effective ways to develop the personal qualities of students in social work education and ways to resolve the dilemma between service users' expectations and the existing mode of social work service delivery. Issues of particular relevance to Hong Kong are highlighted in discussing these implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Home and belonging are emerging areas of social work research. Very few studies in the social work discipline critically examine how home is broadly experienced or understood. Whilst the notion of home is contested, social work researchers can explore meanings of home in their quest to understand how social workers can contribute to developing a sense of community and belonging. This article presents the findings of an intersectional qualitative study that explored meanings of home in a capital city of Australia, drawing implications for social work. A thematic analysis of 13 semi-structured interviews found that home was experienced as both a material and emotional place. Home was associated with (1) the material security of housing, including homeownership and the safety of suburbs and neighbourhoods; (2) a connection to multiple homes and the making of home in migration, such as when re-settling in a new country; (3) belonging to a family, including emotional connections to lost family members or acknowledging a supportive family and (4) religious, ethnic and cultural self-expression. This paper argues that researching meanings of home is relevant to social work as a discipline that espouses human rights and social justice because a sense of home is central to the politics of belonging to a safe community and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we describe our approach and philosophical methodology of teaching and doing phenomenology. The human science seminar that we offer involves participants in the primary phenomenological literature as well as in a variety of carefully engaged writing exercises. Each seminar participant selects a personal phenomenological project that aims at producing a publishable research paper. We show how the qualitative methodology of hermeneutic phenomenology requires of its practitioner a sensitivity and attitudinal disposition that has to be internalized and that cannot be captured in a procedural or step-by-step program. Our experience is that seminar participants become highly motivated and committed to their phenomenological project while involved in the rather intense progression of lectures, workshop activities, readings, and discussions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social work scholarship concerned with mixed-race and queer identities is growing and ever-changing, yet often treats race and sexuality as separate experiences independent from context and environment. In addition, in studies of mixed-race people, the legacy of the Black-White/US-based multiracial paradigm and the history of such research using race as the only or primary analytic has left a dearth of studies that seek to understand mixed-race experiences within geographical, transnational and intersectional contexts. In this paper, we extend previous work focused on situational and contextual multiracial identities through an interview-based study of a sample of 12 queer and mixed-race individuals. We employ a narrative analysis to explore how emergent themes of geography and migration are salient to self-making processes of participants. Findings include: (1) diverse geographic and migration histories among participants; (2) interviewees’ use of discursive strategies that draw upon experiences of geography and migration within the narrative structure; and (3) the critical role of geography and migration in expanding and changing participants’ identity discourses and in shaping individuals’ identity and sense of community. Ultimately, this work serves as a call for on-going attention to how geography and migration, as well as intersectional and transnational perspectives, add depth and texture to studies of queer-mixed people while also offering specificity to social work’s broader commitment to context and environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pain narratives encounter the problem of verbalising private and internalised experiences. Words appear to fall short of giving meaning to the feelings and impact of pain. In this paper we report on how people describe their low back pain and the way in which they claim to present this to clinicians. In the research interviews they need to establish themselves as believable narrators and provide accounts of how they legitimise their pain in clinical encounters. As a result, the interviews provide complex and layered narratives of pain and its representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]