Conducting discovery-oriented qualitative research about the life experiences of hard-to-reach individuals posed several challenges for recruiting participants and collecting rich textual data. In a study pertaining the experiences of Third Culture Kids (TCKs), we explored the benefits of the social media, such as Facebook as a platform to collect data. TCKs are individuals who define their sense of belonging to the third culture trailing their parents moving across borders during their developmental years. Adult TCKs live in many different countries, and accessing and interviewing respondents could be a difficult and costly endeavor. In this article, the authors share their experience conducting online, asynchronous focus groups using a Facebook platform. We reflect upon the process of setting up a secret Facebook focus group for research purposes, recruiting participants, rapport building between facilitator and participants, monitoring and keeping track of participants' responses, and the dynamics emerging within an online focus group. We also discuss the novelty, limitations, and benefits of the Facebook focus group as an emerging mode for collecting qualitative data from hard-to-reach participants.

In this qualitative study, we explored how Chinese rural elders narrate death-related issues and death preparation. Adopting a phenomenological approach, we interviewed 14 participants regarding the particular actions they employ to prepare for death. The findings revealed a death preparation system for rural Chinese elders that is instrumental in how they converse about death, wish for a good death, make objects and symbols, and anticipate an afterlife as a worshiped ancestor rather than a wandering ghost. Family and family honor provide the context for death preparation. We discuss implications and the need for the death preparation education of younger generations.

The lives of Third Culture Kids (TCKs) are characterized by their experiences of living among different worlds that could isolate them from social interaction and establishing long-term friendships. Exploring the experiences of ten TCKs, this paper reports on primary data gathered through the Collage Life Story Elicitation Technique (CLET) in order to gain an understanding of the meaning making of TCKs and their commitment and reticence in establishing relationships during their developmental years. In-depth thematic analysis indicated a struggle building intimacy and companionships and deep friendships, as well as difficulties with maintaining relationships with others and a possible fear of commitment. Implications for counselling of TCKs and their families are discussed.

A basic premise in narrative therapy and inquiry is that life story telling is a mechanism by which experiences are rendered meaningful within some form of structure. However, narrative inquiry has to take cognisance of difficulties ensuing from discursive practices for different populations when eliciting their life stories. In this article I explicate a unique method, the Collage Life story Elicitation Technique (CLET), geared towards scaffolding life story remembering. Based on the theoretical underpinnings of social constructionism (Gergen, 2000), symbolic interactionism (Berg, 2009) and performative strategies in social science research the CLET provides a mode of expression and narrative performance for positioning the dialogical self. As the individual engages in collage-making and narrating, cognitive, motivational and affective aspects of autobiographical memories emerge while telling her or his life story. Different forms of positioning in the dialogical self and significant attachments to people, objects and life events co-exist in the verbal and non-verbal communications elicited with this technique. As suggested by the pilot study, the CLET provides a structure within which non-English speaking participants could explore multiple forms of positioning in the dialogical self without the restrictions of a verbal interview conversation.

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