Introduction
The biographical method
One of the most commonly used approaches in qualitative research is the biographical method (Rubio and Varas, 2004). However, and despite its high contribution to the scientific field over time, it has not been exempt from limitations, which have hindered the development of its full potential (Peacock and Holland, 1993) to these days. It is composed of a wide variety of vaguely defined techniques (Pujadas, 2002), which leads to conceptual confusion. Additionally, there are different orientations depending on the disciplines that use it (Bertaux, 1980), translating into divergent and disjointed results.
In this sense, it is necessary to reach a deep understanding to have an overview of the performance of this method, explain the key concepts, differentiate closely related or similar concepts, determine the characteristics that define different techniques as well as the traits that differentiate the use of such techniques by the different disciplines. This involves identifying the main research streams, emerging and underexplored areas, as well as knowledge gaps and lacunae. This knowledge will allow us to guide academia and to identify the necessary methodology for each investigation, while at the same time suggesting theoretical, contextual, and methodological opportunities and solutions to advance knowledge in this field.
Given the dispersion of the biographical method and to define a systematic approach to its use, we consider pertinent to focus the analysis on a particular technique rather than on the method as a whole: life stories.
Life stories
The birth of the life story technique is related to the origin of the biographical method, in its beginnings the main tool of this method was conceptualized with the term life histories (Rubio and Varas, 2004). However, the term life stories soon emerged (Pujadas, 2002). Both terms coexisted during the first years of their existence and to a certain degree there is still an indiscriminate use of both terms interchangeably (Cordero, 2012).
The present study follows the trend that supports the term life story instead of life history when addressing research in the field of social sciences. First, there is no clear delimitation of the term life history with respect to its use in natural sciences (Nettle and Frankenhuis, 2019). Therefore, we consider that productions that have been developed around this term are not always related to the object of study. Second, the term life story, from its beginnings, has been oriented to the investigation of human experience (Cornejo et al., 2008), which is consistent with the focus of this research. However, we do look at the singular (life story) as well as the plural (life stories) of the word story because different authors use the terms differently to refer to this technique depending on the number of stories studied.
Once the field that will be the object of study has been delimited, it is necessary to identify divergences in the literature with regard to the use of the technique within different disciplines: anthropology and sociology, on the one hand, and psychology, on the other hand, from which two different visions of life stories have been developed (Peacock and Holland, 1993). The former disciplines conceive the technique as a tool for the collection of ethnographic material. Scientific works in these disciplines have been more oriented toward uncovering the bases of functioning of sociocultural systems than toward the analysis and understanding of individual trajectories (Hernández-Hernández et al., 2020). From psychology, the life story is conceived mainly as a vision of the subjective experience of the narrator (Peacock and Holland, 1993). In this subjectivist approach, the life story is understood as an expression or projection of the psychological dispositions and dynamics of the subject; therefore, it is used as a window to the psyche (Peacock and Holland, 1993).
This perceived differentiation in the disciplinary use of the technique is the starting point of this study, as it highlights the need to understand the production of knowledge generated with its use to explain if the characteristics differ or converge depending on the perspective from which this concept is projected.
Systematic literature reviews are among the most useful vehicles for advancing knowledge and promoting research (Elsbach and van Knippenberg, 2020). These can take various forms (Paul et al., 2021) Among them, we consider that the most appropriate methodological approach for conducting this study is bibliometric analysis.
Bibliometric analysis applied to life stories
The continuous increase in scientific production has made bibliometric studies increasingly important (Madrid Martín et al., 2017). The ability to handle large volumes of scientific data and produce a high research impact (Donthu et al., 2021) has led to them being widely distributed across all disciplines (Serrano et al., 2019). And become increasingly prolific in high quality academic forums (Paul et al., 2021; Mukherjee et al., 2022). Furthermore, unlike other types of reviews, bibliometric reviews are objective and not prone to error because they are based on automated quantitative data and tools (Lim et al., 2022; Mukherjee et al., 2022).
Despite the huge scientific output on life stories and the need to establish reliable knowledge, research on life stories thus far has been unrelated to the application of this method. Addressing this work is therefore indispensable today. Bibliometric research presents unique opportunities to contribute to theory and practice (Mukherjee et al., 2022). Thus, following Lim et al. (2022) we could say that reviewing the literature on life stories is a necessary, important, relevant, and urgent task.
It is necessary to make a general assessment of this field of knowledge with the aim of reaching an in-depth knowledge of the production disseminated through life stories. This effort will allow us to go deeper into the definition of this technique, as well as to establish the idiosyncrasies of the work developed by each of the disciplines from which it is applied. In turn, bibliometric reviews allow scholars to gain an up-to-date and comprehensive understanding of the state of the field (Sianes, 2021) which will help them to better position their future research in terms of which technique to use, as well as exactly which of the many existing streams they wish to expand. Our last aim it enable future studies to compare the production developed by the other techniques of the biographical method in order to establish, in this way, the boundaries of each of them to avoid the existing conceptual confusion.
Furthermore, reviewing the literature in this field becomes even more relevant when the use of life stories not only has a long tradition, but continues to be widely practiced today. This makes it urgent to establish firm and reliable boundaries, as the production of knowledge generated through this technique continues to grow without clear trade-offs in its use. Continued reliance on incomplete and outdated knowledge can be detrimental to addressing current problems and their overall progress (Lim et al., 2022). Thus, the originality of our study lies both in the methodology used and in the results obtained after the application of the methodology. The application of this method allows an intensive review of the academic literature on life stories, shedding light and deepening the state of the art of this object of study (Rey-Martí et al., 2016).
To clearly report the work carried out, the rest of the article is organized as follows. In section “Materials and methods,” we present the method for the bibliometric analysis, and we detail the necessary materials for the application of this method. In section “Results,” we present the main results obtained after applying the different techniques, and we discuss the main findings as well as their implications for academia. In section “Discussion,” we present the conclusions. We point out the need to open new lines of research, and we close the study with the references consulted.
Materials and methods
Bibliometric analysis
The origin of bibliometrics can be dated to the beginning of the 20th century (Godin, 2006), but it was not until the 1960s that key methodological developments occurred (Pritchard, 1969). Since then, it has gained immense popularity due, on the one hand, to databases that facilitate the acquisition of large volumes of scientific data and, on the other hand, to the ubiquity and usefulness of bibliometric software to evaluate them (Donthu et al., 2021).
Large bibliographic datasets make classical review methods such as systematic review or meta-analysis (Donthu et al., 2021) cumbersome and impractical (Ramos-Rodríguez and Ruíz-Navarro, 2004). In contrast, bibliometric analysis is designed to handle large volumes of data, which shows its suitability when working with 1,000 of articles.
Bibliometric analysis allows for the study of the publication patterns of scientific production in a given discipline to quantitatively evaluate, through statistical calculations, said production (Koseoglu et al., 2016). Bibliometry, as a scientific discipline, is based on the search for statistically regular behaviors in the elements related to the production and consumption of scientific information over time (Ardanuy, 2012).
Through this evaluation, it is possible to identify aspects such as the works on which the analyzed matter is based (Jamal et al., 2008); the academics who generate the production (Schmidgall et al., 2013); the journals where the information is transferred (Svensson et al., 2009); and collaboration between researchers (Köseoglu et al., 2015). In the specific case of life stories, the lack of knowledge of these data provided the inspiration and purpose for this study.
Bibliometric research generally involves two main categories of analytical techniques, performance analysis and scientific mapping (Mukherjee et al., 2022). That is what Benckendorff and Zehrer (2013) call evaluative techniques and relational techniques.
Performance analysis is the hallmark of the studies (Donthu et al., 2021). Most frequently developed in traditional bibliometric studies (Koseoglu et al., 2016). Evaluation techniques represent the first level of complexity of bibliometric methods (Serrano et al., 2019). They focus on the impact of academic studies that evaluate performance through productivity measures, impact metrics and hybrid metrics (Sainaghi et al., 2018). These measures allow reaching global explanations of observed phenomena through the formulation and verification of compliance with bibliometric laws (Ardanuy, 2012). In this study, evaluative techniques are applied through three main laws, i.e., Price’s law, Lotka’s law, and Bradford’s law, to understand the level of scientific production and the productivity of the authors.
Scientific mapping examines the structural connections and interactions between research constituents (Cobo et al., 2011). Relational techniques, although less explored in bibliometric analyses, are more interesting from the scientific point of view because they involve a higher level of complexity with respect to the units of information and analysis (Serrano et al., 2019). These techniques allow us to obtain hidden relationships between topics, authors, and documents (Van Eck and Waltman, 2020), revealing the intellectual structure of a research field. These scientific maping analyses can help enrich the descriptive insights provided by productivity analysis (Lim et al., 2022) by pointing out gaps and social dominance or hidden biases in the field, as well as the implications of research for the development of theory and practice (Mukherjee et al., 2022).
In the present study, these techniques are used to assess the relationships between published research (Figueroa-Domecq et al., 2015) by implementing a network analysis that allows a representation of the co-occurrence of keywords as well as the co-citation of authors and documents. The latter are explored with the help of visualization techniques provided by tools such as VOSviewer, free software for creating, visualizing, and exploring maps based on network data (Van Eck and Waltman, 2020). The application of Vosviewer software allows though a clustering algorithm a deeper analysis (Waltman et al., 2010).
Data collection
Preparing a protocol is essential to ensure careful planning, anticipating problems, reducing arbitrariness, promoting accountability, and maintaining the integrity of the research (Paul et al., 2021). In our case, we have used the Scientific Procedures and Rationale for Systematic Literature Reviews, or SPAR-4-SLR based on three stages.
First, once the research domain has been identified, it is necessary to follow a series of steps to acquire the body of literature. We start by with the choice of an adequate database. For this study, the online database of the Web of Science (WoS) is the most relevant to achieve our aim because it allows access to source documents in our area of specialization (Mora et al., 2019) and contains data on results, dissemination, collaboration, and impact (Albort-Morant and Ribeiro-Soriano, 2016).
In addition, the data contained in the documents and indexed in the WoS have gone through a peer review process, guaranteeing “certified knowledge” (Ramos-Rodríguez and Ruíz-Navarro, 2004). Therefore, the search strategy included information pertaining to the journals classified in the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) and the Science Citation Index extended (SCI-E) because both indexes contain journals in which life stories are published.
To extract scientific production from the WoS, a search vector is used. Taking into account these premises, the bibliographic sources were extracted by executing the following query: TS = (“life story” OR “life stories”). The search was not restricted to any particular language to avoid bias in the origin of the production.
Data collection was carried out on 22 September 2021. A total of 2,670 source documents were extracted from the database. The sample size corresponds to all publications related to the field of life stories located in the WoS. Regarding the time horizon, the analysis covers a period of almost a century because the sampling of extracted sources covers 1927–2021.
Once the data has been acquired, a second phase of data organization and purification takes place. It is necessary to take into account the existence of certain limitations in any bibliometric analysis. When using the information reported from science and technology information systems, it is common for there to be errors in the dataset extracted (Adam, 2002). Herein, manual verification was performed (Panori et al., 2019) in which some minor errors were corrected, not allowing the database to rectify the nomenclature when different ways of referencing the same author were identified. However, although it is necessary to consider this detail when interpreting the results of this study, previous studies have shown that the lack of accuracy in these terms does not affect the establishment of general patterns (Rodríguez Gutiérrez et al., 2017).
Finally, the data obtained is evaluated and analyzed below.
Discussion
This study has shown the important role that literature reviews play in integrating and synthesizing existing knowledge and providing state-of-the-art understanding, identifying gaps, and inconsistencies in the literature, as well as pointing to avenues for future research to address outstanding issues and advance knowledge (Paul et al., 2021; Lim et al., 2022).
The work developed herein is relevant because it allows us to shed light on this matter. Through this first bibliometric analysis of the scientific production generated through life stories, we have gained knowledge of one of its techniques.
All the results indicate that we are facing a strongly consolidated technique. With almost a century of use, life stories have gone through different stages, reaching maturity recently. However, based on the analysis of the body of articles, we conclude that such maturity occurs in the field of psychology. We did not find references among the most prominent researchers to those who approach their studies from fields such as sociology, anthropology, or social work, which displaces their work to a more residual position. However, it is possible that the knowledge produced by sociologists or anthropologists will be transferred in other spaces and in other forms (Delgado-Baena et al., 2022).
Likewise, when analyzing the journals in which these researchers publish, there is a diversity of categories. However, among them, those belonging to the field of psychology are once again taking center stage. There are four topics addressed by these publications: personality and narrative identity, autobiographical memory, health and society, and culture. The first two present a clear psychological approach. The third is related to production developed from the health sciences. Only in the fourth category is there a contribution to social problems from sociology or anthropology. However, using bibliometric analysis, we cannot distinguish the weight or perspective of these disciplines because their relational techniques do not allow us to deepen this knowledge.
These topics are addressed by three major schools of thought personality and narrative identity, autobiographical memory, and society and culture, which are led by the main producers of knowledge. Clear cooperation occurs between them, leading to the fact that in these schools, knowledge is based on numerous and current investigations that are discussed, which again shows trends typical of the experimental techniques.
From the analyses completed thus far, we can conclude that the production developed from the field of psychology occupies a privileged position in terms of the production and transmission of knowledge through life stories. In contrast, the contributions that are made from sociology or anthropology in this field are blurred, relegating to the background the work carried out by its scholars. The technique of life history in the scientific field is thus associated with the psychological, being concerned mainly with the development of the personality in its relationship with the social or cultural environment, rather than with the social facts themselves.
The displacement of work from these disciplines is due, above all, to external causes and not intrinsic weaknesses of the specialties themselves. The monopoly of science means that those disciplines with more empiricist approaches, such as psychology, have a greater place in the science market. Meanwhile, other types of contributions do not leave a mark on the scientific literature, blurring the information in the databases, which also do not collect all the production that is developed (Moravcsik, 1989). Similarly, the analysis concentrates only on highly cited publications, and leaves publications that are recent or niche outside their subject groups (Donthu et al., 2021).
The hegemony of psychology over sociology or anthropology can reduce the other forms of observation and theorization to a marginal, precarious existence, or ultimately to their disappearance (Bertaux, 1980).
In this sense, a contribution of this study, in addition to helping researchers and readers understand the general intellectual structure of the field of life stories, is the identification of the need for future research that delves into the disciplinary differences in the use of this technique. Continuing systematic reviews of the literature produced through the other techniques of the biographical method and the triangulation of these studies is a matter of urgency for the optimal development of this method, as well as the advancement of scientific knowledge in this field.
Likewise, the results demonstrate to research communities, government institutions, and funding agencies the need to value scientific spaces with more constructivist views on social problems, such as sociology or anthropology, as well as develop solutions from the perspective of these disciplines.