Abstract

This poster focuses on the different ways —the combined methodology— I used to obtain data for my doctoral research on the experience and management of chronic illness in Spain of adults who are in the prime of their lives, and how I analyzed them. The lived experience of chronicity was explored through illness narratives in a multi-sited ethnography: interviews conducted in the homes of the participants; observation of a therapeutic group in a hospital and in a mutual help group in a patients' association; informal ethnography; autoethnographic books and scientific articles, secondary analysis of other published material; and several digital narratives about personal or collective experiences with diverse chronic conditions located on the Internet. The goal was to show the cultural circulation of meanings attributed to chronicity and the socio-cultural constructions of several chronic illnesses, which was achieved through a thematic analysis. For this purpose, a microsocial sample was chosen according to its significance and theoretically (not statistically) representative ethnographic value concerning the common denominator of a shared experience of chronicity. This combined methodology, which includes ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ narratives, oral and written narratives, and primary and secondary data, challenges us to rethink our concepts of data and our methodological approaches to the ethnographic field.