Qualitative Story Completion: A Method with Exciting Promise

Abstract

This chapter introduces the story completion (SC) method of collecting qualitative data, a novel technique that offers exciting potential to the qualitative researcher. SC involves a researcher writing a story 'stem' or 'cue'or more simply put, the start of a story, usually an opening sentence or twoand asking the participants to complete or continue the story.Originally developed as a form of projective test, the use of SC in qualitative research is relatively new. The authors comprise the Story Completion Research Group, a group of researchers that have come together to share their experience of using and further developing the method. This chapter explains what SC offers the qualitative researcherincluding choices about the 'best' epistemiological lens and analytic approach for their research question, the potential to collect data about sensitive or taboo topics and to access socially undesirable responses, as well as the possibility of research designs that allow comparisons (for example between male and female respondents). This chapter provides key guidance, such as what constitutes an appropriate research questions, and sampling and design considerations. As a recently-developed method, SC has fewer published research studies than some of the other research methods covered in this volume. For this reason, the chapter aims not only to provide a description of the method and recommendations for how best to use it, but also to explore some of the unresolved theoretical and practical questions about SC as well as to suggest future directions for SC.

Story Completion: Storying as a Method of Meaning-Making and Discursive Discovery

“…Story completion can be viewed as an innovative, exciting, and flexible method for qualitative researchers, and yet this method has not been widely adopted. Indeed, it is only recently that the method has come to prominence within psychology research, heralded as a method with "exciting promise" (Braun, Clarke, Hayfield, Moller, & Tischner, 2018) and described playfully by Clarke, Braun, Frith, and Moller (2019, p. 1) as "the best new method for qualitative data collection you've never even heard of." Further, this method has not been widely used by educational researchers (the author's home discipline), and yet it has a wealth of possibilities for researchers across the disciplines.…”