Fig. 3: Life histories. | Humanities and Social Sciences Communications

Fig. 3: Life histories.

From: What is wellbeing for rural South African women? Textual analysis of focus group discussion transcripts and implications for programme design and evaluation

Fig. 3

Flipchart recording one participant’s evaluation of her happiness over the life cycle. From left to right on the horizontal axis: childhood, adolescence, marriage, motherhood and parenting, old age (represented by being a grandmother), and death. From bottom to top on the vertical axis, smiley faces mark levels of happiness from unhappy to neutral, happy and very happy. Participants marked their happiness level against each stage of their lives depicted on the horizontal axis with an asterisk as they shared their story with the group. Once the narration was complete, the research assistant would help participants join the asterisks, tracing participants' wellbeing over their lifetime and summarising their story. This activity served as closure and validation for the participant who had shared her personal story, and clarified any misunderstandings.

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