“Tell me a story and make me a picture”: Incorporating innovative visual methods in story completion design

Hayfield, Nikki; Wood, Matt

Abstract

In this chapter we set out a novel use of story completion in our study of young people's understandings of sexuality and appearance. In our story completion design, we incorporated a visual element where participants were invited to produce a visual image of the character from their written story. Researchers in psychiatry and developmental psychology have used drawings, images, photographs, dolls, and puppets as part of their designs, hence there is a rich history of the visual within story completion. However, few qualitative social psychologists have moved beyond textual responses. We reflect on how our young adult participants engaged with the visual element and conclude that the combination of story completion and visual methodology resulted in imaginative and sometimes unconventional findings that moved beyond the written stories. We highlight the particularities of this online visual platform and emphasize some considerations for researchers using innovative technologies.

• Deposit Date: Sep 20, 2024
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Book Title: Narrative Story Stem Methodologies
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/12899606