ARTICLE10.1177/1049732304272914QUALITATIVE HEALTH RESEARCH / March 2005Lee, Poole / FINDING MEANING IN CHRONIC ILLNESS An Application of the Transactional Model to the Analysis of Chronic Illness Narratives

The authors ’ aim in this study was to describe the chronic illness experience and its relation-ship to the concept to finding meaning. They conducted interviews using a narrative approach with 15 adults experiencing various chronic illnesses and analyzed narrative data using a combination of holistic-content and categorical-content approaches. The three major categories were the context of the chronic illness experience, personal reactions, and coping efforts. These categories were best interpreted in terms of a transactional model. The authors categorized finding meaning under cognitive coping strategies and described it as a strategy that was part of a larger coping repertoire