Retelling, Reliving, and Remembering: Using Narrative Inquiry Method to Explore the Lived Experience of Being Left Behind After Missing

Every year 35,000 missing person reports are made in Australia, yet little is known about the experience of being left behind. Hope is a significant trope within media narratives in the search for a missing person, but what does hope mean? Further, what does hope mean when the person remains missing? In exploring the experience of hope for Australian families of missing people, the study presented here facilitated meaningful opportunities to listen to lived experience narratives. Storytelling, utilising a narrative inquiry framework, is a powerful tool used to build rich, layered understandings of the experiences of ambiguous loss. While previous research studies have centered upon individual interviews to gather data, this is only one portal for potential data collection. The study expanded this engagement of narrative inquiry method across three platforms, in-depth interviews, a virtual focus group, and then through an invitation for individuals to clarify their participation and experiences via Skype-based interviews. This methodological approach offered the researcher the opportunity to explore the stories in two ways: (1) by observing the ways in which participants spoke of their experience of hope through public and private narratives and (2) then more broadly between each other (within the group.) This presentation will explore this innovative research design and reflect upon the validity and strengths of this qualitative methodology to extract complex and unique data.