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Article published In: Narratives as Social Practice in Organisational Contexts
Edited by Dorien Van De Mieroop, Jonathan Clifton and Stephanie Schnurr
[Narrative Inquiry 32:1] 2022
► pp. 9–35

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Narrative evaluation in patient feedback

A study of online comments about UK healthcare services

ORCiD logo with link | Lancaster University
ORCiD logo with link | Lancaster University | Xi’an Jiaotong University
ORCiD logo with link | Birmingham City University
 | Lancaster University
 | Lancaster University
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 23 August 2021
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.20098.bro
Abstract
This study examines how patients use narratives to evaluate their experiences of healthcare services online. The analysis draws on corpus linguistic techniques, specifically annotation, applying Labov, W., & Waletzky, J. (1967). Narrative analysis. In J. Helm (Ed.) Essays on the Verbal and Visual Arts (pp. 12–44). University of Washington Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar framework to a sample of online comments about the NHS in England. Narratives are pervasive in this context, being present more than absent in the patients’ comments, but are particularly prominent in comments which evaluate care negatively. Evaluations can be accomplished through all the structural elements of the narrative, including in combination with one another. However, the presence and ordering of these elements does not seem to be influenced by the type of evaluation given (i.e. positive, negative or more neutral). As mediated social practice, the narratives are shaped by the technological affordances and social dynamics of this context, for instance in the placement of particular structural elements and the design of narratives for particular “imagined” audiences.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
  • 3.Data and analytical approach
    • 3.1Data
    • 3.2Analytical approach
  • 4.Analysis
    • 4.1Abstract
    • 4.2Orientation
    • 4.3Complication
    • 4.4Evaluation
    • 4.5Resolution
    • 4.6Coda
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • References
References (32)
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