324 ANALYZING DATA
enough stories such that one is hearing similar accounts coming from different storytellers, sug-
gestive that wider patterns of beliefs and judgments are being revealed. In addition, enough sto-
ries should be examined to assure that variations in accounts and views reflect the diversity of
people and places under study. As more and more stories are collected and heard and as the first
iteration of the interpretive-analytic process proceeds, the researcher will recognize the initial
signs of patterns and variation.
In sum, “good” research stories provide details about events, settings, and the interaction,
relationships, and feelings of the characters. Details about events, settings, and characters often
present conflicting, ambiguous portraits, but each nuance helps guide interpretation. Although
narrated as empirical observations, the details included in a story represent the storytellers’ inter-
pretations, not necessarily replicable observations. By probing the meaning in story details, re-
searchers frame their interpretations based on the storytellers’ interpretations, yielding a variegated
analysis derived from the interweaving of insider and outsider interpretations.A PRACTICUM FOR DOING FIELD-BASED
STORY RESEARCHThere are many ways to engage in story-based research.^5 In our research, in addition to imagining
a pedagogy of story-based research, we engaged in a series of pragmatic steps to put our ideas
about field-intensive story collection and analysis into practice. This practicum is the subject of
attention here.^6 We note, however, that telling a story about our story-based research makes the
process appear more orderly than it was. Field-based story research is always improvisational.
Engaging in street-level inquiry required a chain of permissions that followed agency hierar-
chies down to the street level. Organizational advocates for our project, often current or former
students holding positions in these agencies, provided initial contacts with key administrators and
later served to provide us legitimacy as we approached key personnel in street-level work sites to
carry out our project. We based our fieldwork in work units: police patrol units working shared
shifts or geographically bounded areas, often called beats; classroom and specialized teachers
who composed the eighth-grade team of an urban middle school; and vocational rehabilitation
counselors in branch offices. At the street level, we first asked the work units for collective per-
mission to do fieldwork in their workplaces, but group acceptance could not stipulate or require
that all members of the group would be willing to be interviewed and provide stories. Once we
were assured at the collective level that we would be welcome in the work setting, we asked
individuals if they would willingly agree to participate in the interviews and story collections. In
all settings, all or nearly all workers agreed to participate.STORY COLLECTIONOnce all the permissions were secured, we engaged in intensive participant-observation, seeking
to establish trust among front-line workers and learn the nuances of the work, their discursive
practices, and the organizational environments of their work sites. This early phase of field im-
mersion allowed us to calibrate how to word interview questions that would flesh out our back-
ground knowledge. For example, after some trial and error, we discovered that the word “justice”
is loaded, especially for police officers, and its use in any protocols prompted workers to repeat
official agency positions rather than firsthand, personal accounts about their decision making. We
found that “fairness” and “unfairness” captured the meaning we were after in asking about “jus-
tice,” but those terms fit the everyday world of patrol officers, teachers, and vocational rehabilita-