Narrative Experience Taxonomy: expanding think-aloud analysis for narrative experiences

The Narrative Experience Taxonomy (NET) was proposed to articulate a broader range of responses to narratives than those specified in theories focused solely on comprehension. NET includes descriptions of narrative content, interpretations of events, evaluations, participatory responses, and metacognitive strategies. We leveraged archival think-aloud data produced while participants processed picture- or text-based versions of the same stories. Those data enabled us to assess the extent to which coders could reliably use NET’s category structure, assess if the categories occur together in systematic ways, and explore how they are affected by media. The analyses suggested that some responses are contingent on one another. They also showed differences in the frequency of some responses across media. These analyses illustrate the potential value of the NET for hypothesis testing with think-aloud data and discuss ways in which it can be applied.