When you say narrative research, you mean narratology. Personal feeling is inclined to the category of text research or literature research.

If you mean to prove the theory by describing and analyzing some facts and processes, I personally think this is the research method of case study. I like case study very much, and it is also a good (and difficult) research method, which can be used to do master's and doctoral thesis. Personally, I like a case called Zhong County Cadres, which is my favorite doctoral thesis and highly recommended.