Determine the following for each narrative: 1) Prologue, 2) Central Issue, 3) Epilogue, 4) average sentence length (MLU), 5) which sentences are significantly above or below the MLU (You can just give me the sentence # and whether it is above or below – such as – Sentence #1 above, Sentence #4, below, etc.). Submit your answers to me through Moodle. I have included an Excel spreadsheet template that will help calculate the standard deviation for you. Just enter the number of words in each sentence in the cell for that sentence and eliminate any rows you don’t use and it will figure the standard deviation.
Download the following narratives and complete all in this section:
Burglary Narrative
Hospital Fire Narrative
Lost Check Narrative
Missing Money Narrative
please see attached
Student Handout – Analysis by Form
1. Identify the formal organization of the narrative. Basically you are going to divide the narrative into a Prologue, Central Issue, and Epilogue. You will then have to evaluate these in terms of balance or proportion.
2. Determine the Central Issue of the narrative. The Central Issue (CI) is the event itself. Initially it can be somewhat difficult to learn to identify this. With practice you will be able to accurately identify the CI every time.
3. Determine the Prologue and Epilogue. The Prologue is the portion of the narrative prior to the CI and the Epilogue is the portion of the narrative after the CI.
4. Length of the Prologue and Epilogue compared to the Central Issue. The more balanced the three parts of the narrative are, the more it indicates truthfulness. Another thing to pay attention to is if the subject is very detailed in one part of the narrative and vague in another.
5. Is the narrative deceptive as to form? A narrative that has one or two of three parts that is significantly out of balance when compared to the others is said to be “Deceptive as to Form.”
6. Identify any non-confirming statements in the narrative. This is where the writer alludes to some action or activity they are going to perform without ever telling you that they actually performed it. Here in the mountains, this sort of statement often starts with “fixin” as in “I was fixin to go to the grocery store.” They did not go to the store, but the way they phrase leads you to believe they did or had every intention of going when in fact they did just the opposite. Weakened assertions will often begin a non-confirming statement. Watch out for phrases like “I started”, “I was going”, “I intended”, etc.
7. One other task to perform at this stage is to identify any non-sequential statements. These are statements that are out of place or chronological order in the narrative. They may take the form of an aside, a second person reference, or something else that interrupts the flow of the narrative. At this point it is obvious that they do not fit with that part of the narrative, but the subject included them for some reason. The answer to “Why the subject included this?” could yield significant information.
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Steps to finding the Mean Length of Utterance
The mean length of utterance is the number of words in a sentence on average in the narrative. Any sentence that is significantly above or below the mean is considered to be deceptive. In order to calculate the MLU, take the following steps:
Burglary
This is a statement given in relation to a burglary (ignore this sentence in your analysis). On Friday ——, 19– I received a phone call from David Jones saying he was in Tenn. and wouldn’t be in to work the next day. Tried to get someone to cover his schedule and couldn’t. Went on about my business. Started paperwork as usual. Check everyone out in their areas. Everything was fine. Finished paperwork. Helped Dan Harley dump trash, back in locked the back door, and pushed button in on door. Mopped floor behind us, so it wouldn’t be streaky. Came up to office, got my stuff together, straightened up. Set the alarm, closed office door and Dan and myself left. We punched out at 24:22 that night. When we got outside, Dan’s ride was here, he got in the car and left. Pulled off parking lot about 12:30. Everything was organized and locked up when we left. Came back in about 5:45 am. Everything looked normal. Sandy Jones, Lane Taylor and my wife. We all walked in together. When we got to the door, to go in the back we looked on the hot cook table and there was some glass and a knife. I told the 3 employees not to do anything. I opened the office door and there was the $300 drawer, $950 bag and the deposit bag cut open. Everything was gone. I told the 3 employees to go sit in the dining room and called 911. I told them who I was and what happened. The only thing I touched was the phone. It took approximately 15 min. for the police to arrive. This all took place between 5:45 am and 6:00 am.
Hospital Fire
This narrative was written by a nurse about some fires at the hospital where she was working (ignore this sentence in your analysis). I arrived for work about 0640. After listening to report and assessed my patients in 5016, 5039, 5041. This was finished by approximately 0830. I started on passing 0900 medications with various interruptions—i.e.: salvaging an I.V. in 5041 and filling the feeding bag in 5016. I cannot honestly give any times for these activities. I believe the first fire was between 0930-1000. I know I did need to retrieve my inhaler from my car since I have asthma that is triggered by smoke. After recovering from that event I continued my rounds on patients and took report from Joan to enable her to go to lunch. During this time, the Secretary Linda and D.A. told me about some threatening phone calls while I was in the nurse’s station trying to do some charting. After Joan came back from lunch she asked all of us (nurses, secretary and assistants) to be more aware of any unusual people or situations. Shortly after this, I started to have another asthma attack and told Joan. The alarms then went off and the fire doors closed. As we went down the hall to close doors, someone opened 5019 and the smoke came out. I left as quickly as I could and sat outside until I could recover enough to function. The remaining 2 hours were spent trying to finish my workload and hoping nothing else would happen. Also, about 11:15 I did an admission on 5014 but this did not take more than 20 minutes.
Lost Check
This narrative is about a lost check (ignore this sentence in your analysis). On December 15, 19– in the late afternoon hours, Don L. Harrington, wife Wanda, and friends Amy Barr, Judy Partin and Myself Bob Boone, went to Taylor’s to pick up some layaway items. We used two cars because there was some bulky merchandise such as bicycles and a battery-operated car. Don had just gotten his paycheck so instead of making a trip to the bank he would pay the balance of the layaway with his check. Wanda usually handles the finances, so she had Don’s check in her purse. So Wanda hands Don his check which in turn he gives it to the layaway clerk. The clerk looked at the check and said that she couldn’t accept it but it was obvious that the clerk was inexperienced, because in fact it was the other clerk working in layaway that told the clerk that she would have to check with the manager first. So the clerk takes the check over to the manager and we all see the manager shake her head “no.” By this time Don sees that he can’t use his check which was a surprise to us because it was a payroll check instead of a personal check. But instead of causing chaos, Don decided to pay for it in cash which Wanda had in her purse. So Don asked her for the money, gave it to the clerk, the clerk gave him the receipt, and we went to the back to pick up the merchandise. In all the confusion, Don thought that Wanda had the check and Wanda thought that Don had it and by this time we had gotten to Don’s house. So Don called ABC Company and told the payroll dept. that his check was lost.
Missing Money
This statement was taken from a security guard. During his shift a lot of money disappeared from the company’s safe. (Ignore this sentence in your analysis) “I work the 12m – 8a shift at the research facility. I am the only guard on duty during that shift. I like to arrive at work a few minutes early, usually 10 – 15 minutes. This gives me time to talk to the guard I relieve. My first reaction was to call the boss. The boss has instructed us to call him in any emergency. He was pretty upset when I woke him up at 4:00 am. At no time did I see any strangers on the facility that night. My boss suggested that we add another guard to the night shift. I told him that I believe this is a good idea since it might help prevent future thefts.1
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1. Count the number of words in each sentence in the narrative.
2. Total up the number of words in all sentences for the total word count in the narrative.
3. Count the number of sentences in the narrative.
4. Divide the total narrative word count by the number of sentences to obtain the MLU.
5. Identify any sentences that are significantly above or below the MLU. A very convenient way of doing this is to figure the standard deviation from the mean and use it as a guideline. For example, if the MLU is 17 words per sentence and the standard deviation is 5, then the range is from 12 to 22. Therefore any sentences that are 11 words or less or 23 words or more are highly suspect of being deceptive. Also as in the above example, a good rule of thumb is to assume your standard deviation is going to be somewhere around 5 and just use it to determine if the sentence is significantly above or below the MLU.
On the night of the break-in, I arrived at 11:50 pm. Jim Jones, the 4p – 12m guard, and I had a conversation about the World Series being interrupted by the earthquake. It was a terrible thing to happen, especially for serious baseball fans. We talked about my being a Giants fan and him being a fan of the “A’s”. We also talked about the weather here locally and the problems with the economy. Joe left at 11:55 pm since he knows I like to start my rounds at exactly 12:00 midnight.
I began to suspect something was wrong about 3:00 am when I noticed the back gate was unlocked. A few minutes later, I was convinced that something was wrong when I found the payroll office door unlocked and the safe open. I recalled reading a story last year about money being taken from another facility. The guy who took the money wasn’t caught.
That’s basically what happened that night.”