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The Family Interaction Test A Preliminary Study of a Method for Interpreting Narratives about the Family
Author(s) -
Kaye John,
Wood Andrew,
Stinson Sharon
Publication year - 1992
Publication title -
australian and new zealand journal of family therapy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.297
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1467-8438
pISSN - 0814-723X
DOI - 10.1002/j.1467-8438.1992.tb00895.x
Subject(s) - verisimilitude , narrative , meaning (existential) , test (biology) , psychology , projective test , social psychology , empirical research , epistemology , perception , narrative inquiry , sociology , psychoanalysis , literature , art , psychotherapist , paleontology , philosophy , neuroscience , biology
The Family Interaction Test is a narrative projective method designed to elicit children's perceptions of family life and patterns of interaction by way of stories around particular themes and events. Drawing on a post‐modern interpretive approach, the paper proposes that traditional psychometric research methodologies underpinned by the logico‐empirical paradigm are inappropriate in the study of narrative meaning. It is argued that practitioners, rather than seeing themselves as separate from the story teller and thus objectifying the ‘true’ meaning of the narratives, can instead enter into a discourse with the story teller as a way of testing hypotheses and thus establish the verisimilitude of story meanings. The results of a preliminary clinical study using this methodology with the Family Interaction Test are presented and discussed.