Supercodes Reflected in Titles Battered Women Accord to Their Life Stories

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate a new method of analyzing life story interviews. According to this method, interviewees are asked to title their life story at the end of the main interview. These titles are analyzed as texts by the researcher, in order to identify the central storyline. Comparison of storylines enables us to define the supercode of the interviewee's life stories. In this article, the author uses titles that battered women give to their life stories to demonstrate the process of analyzing titles, and discusses the advantages as well as the limitations of this method.