Published: Nov 10, 2026

Qualitative researchers often ask participants to describe their own experiences through interviews, focus groups, or written reflections. Story completion takes a different approach. Instead of asking participants directly about themselves, the researcher provides the beginning of a fictional story, called a story stem, and asks participants to continue or complete it. Researchers can then analyze the stories to explore shared assumptions or cultural expectations. 

A story stem is usually a short fictional scenario involving one or more characters. For example, a researcher interested in students’ experiences asking librarians for help might provide a prompt such as:

Jordan has been working on a research assignment for several hours but still cannot find the information needed. Jordan considers asking a librarian for help. Continue the story.

Participants decide what happens next. Some might describe Jordan approaching the librarian and receiving useful assistance. Others might have Jordan hesitate, feel embarrassed, search online instead, or give up.

The purpose is not to discover what the participant personally would do. Instead, researchers examine the different possibilities participants imagine and the assumptions that appear across their stories. Story completion can therefore provide insight into the broader social meanings and expectations that people draw upon when making sense of a situation.

One advantage of story completion is that participants do not have to disclose personal experiences. This can make the method useful for topics that are sensitive or uncomfortable. Because participants are writing about fictional characters, they may also feel freer to explore possibilities that they might hesitate to express in a direct interview. Researchers have used story completion to study topics involving relationships, health, identity, stigma, and professional interactions.

Story completion can also reveal taken-for-granted expectations. If many participants assume that a fictional student will avoid asking for help, for example, that recurring pattern may point to broader beliefs about help-seeking, expertise, or libraries that deserve further investigation.

Story completion could be useful for many library and information science topics. Researchers might develop scenarios about:

• a student deciding whether to ask a librarian for help;
• someone encountering questionable information online;
• a library user discovering that a book has been challenged;
• an employee deciding whether to use an AI tool at work;
• a community member trying to access digital services;
• an archivist making a difficult decision about access or privacy.

Researchers could then compare how participants develop the scenarios and identify patterns in the choices, consequences, and explanations appearing in their stories.

The story stem is one of the most important parts of the method. It needs to provide enough information to establish a situation without determining what happens next. If the prompt contains too much detail, participants may simply follow the direction suggested by the researcher. If it is too vague, the stories may become difficult to compare.

Researchers can also create multiple versions of a story stem and change one characteristic at a time. For example, the same scenario might describe a student using either a librarian or an AI chatbot for research assistance. Comparing the completed stories could help reveal different expectations associated with each source of help.

Story-completion data can be analyzed using familiar qualitative approaches such as thematic analysis. Researchers might examine recurring storylines, characters, assumptions, tensions, endings, or patterns of meaning across the dataset.

One important caution is that the stories should not automatically be treated as hidden descriptions of participants’ personal beliefs or experiences. A fictional story may draw from cultural narratives, stereotypes, media, personal experience, or many other sources. Story completion is often most useful for exploring the socially available ways of understanding a topic, rather than trying to determine what an individual participant “really thinks.”

Story completion offers researchers a creative alternative to traditional interviews and surveys. By asking participants to imagine what happens next in a fictional situation, researchers can explore assumptions, expectations, and cultural meanings that may be difficult to uncover through direct questioning.

For LIS researchers studying information behavior, technology, professional practice, libraries, or emerging issues such as AI, story completion can provide a relatively simple but imaginative way to investigate how people make sense of complex situations.

Further reading

Gravett, K. — “Story Completion: Storying as a Method of Meaning-Making and Discursive Discovery.”
An introduction to story completion and its potential for exploring how participants draw on broader social meanings when constructing stories.

Urry, K., Hunter, S., et al. — “Qualitative Story Completion: Opportunities and Considerations for Health Research.”
A discussion of how to design story-completion studies, along with methodological opportunities and limitations.