Measuring narrative identity: rater coding versus questionnaire-based approaches.

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Cognitive Science
• Social Psychology

Background:

• Narrative identity, the way individuals construct stories about their past, is typically assessed by independent raters.
• Emerging self-report measures aim to simplify this assessment, but their alignment with traditional methods is unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare narrative identity components measured by self-report (Awareness of Narrative Identity Questionnaire - ANIQ) with those assessed by independent rater coding.
• To determine if different methods evaluate the same underlying construct of narrative identity.

Main Methods:

• Participants' self-generated narratives of their past were coded by independent raters for temporal, causal, and thematic coherence.
• The same narrative components were measured using subscales of the ANIQ self-report measure.

Main Results:

• ANIQ subscales showed no significant correlation with their corresponding rater-coded dimensions.
• ANIQ subscales were largely unrelated to other rater-coded narrative dimensions.
• Exploratory factor analysis indicated ANIQ subscales formed a distinct factor separate from rater-coded variables.

Conclusions:

• The findings suggest that the ANIQ and rater coding of self-generated narratives assess different aspects of narrative identity.
• There is limited empirical overlap between self-report and rater-coded assessments of narrative coherence.