Narrative analysis: Attending to the poetic structure of interview transcripts to understand the tourist experience

Research interviews present researchers with an opportunity to gain unique and in-depth insights into participants’ everyday experiences. The process of transcribing audio files and manipulating written transcripts is central to making sense of findings gained through interviews. The data in this dataset are provided by Dr Ria Dunkley and are drawn from fieldwork studying ‘thanatourism’, also known as ‘dark tourism’, two terms used to describe the phenomenon of visiting sites of death and atrocity, that are used within tourism studies literature interchangeably (Foley & Lennon, 1996; Seaton, 1996). Her study explored the motivations and experiences of those who visit thanatourism sites. The data are provided to demonstrate an analytical approach for in-depth interviews. Presented here is an excerpt from an interview transcript, transcribed verbatim from an in-depth interview conducted following a tourist’s visit to a thanatourism site. The dataset includes four versions of this excerpt to demonstrate the nine stages of poetic structure narrative analysis (Gee, 1991; Reissman, 1993). The research aims of the project were to explore people’s motivations for and experiences of visiting sites of death and atrocity that have become tourism attractions. This dataset will be useful for individuals interested in how narrative analytical approaches can be applied in practice