Living with anorexia: Joint narratives of couples’ experiences
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Living with anorexia: Joint narratives of couples’ experiences in the United Kingdom
IRAS ID
294265
Contact name
Suchika Kumar
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Birmingham
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 6 months, 30 days
Research summary
The overall aim of this qualitative study is to understand the joint narrative or “story” of couples where a female partner has a diagnosis of anorexia nervosa. The narrative explored would allow for an understanding of the role anorexia plays in their lives and how this narrative drives their behaviour and how they engage with each other. Four to eight couples will be recruited from an eating disorder service to participate in the study. Each couple will be jointly interviewed for a total of 1.5 to 2.5 hours. The data will be gathered using largely unstructured interviews, as is aligned with narrative research (Jovchelovitch & Bauer, 2000). Each couple will be given a prompt and asked to narrate their story and will do so largely uninterrupted by the researcher. Further questions may be asked once the narration has been completed. Both partners from each couple will then be individually interviewed for 0.5 to 1.5 hours. During this, each partner will be asked if they would like to add anything to the joint interview, and if so, will be allowed to narrate these additions uninterrupted by the researcher. Each partner will also be asked questions from a semi-structured interview designed to reflect on the joint interview. The interviews will be transcribed and coded in line with Schütze’s six-step proposal for analysing narrative interviews (as cited in Jovchelovitch & Bauer, 2000), with elements of Eisikovits and Koren’s (2010) dyadic interview analyses (which includes looking at overlaps and contrasts in accounts between both members of the dyad) woven into Schütze’s six-step proposal.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, interviews may be conducted either face-to-face or via video call, depending on the circumstances at the time of data collection.
REC name
Social Care REC
REC reference
21/IEC08/0030
Date of REC Opinion
9 Dec 2021
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion