Qualitative story completion: A creative and novel method for psychotherapy and counselling psychology research

Abstract

Story completion (SC) – where respondents are presented with the start of a story (the story ‘stem’ or ‘cue’) and asked to complete it – originally developed as a projective technique for clinical and research assessment. While SC continues to be used in this way, it has also evolved into a qualitative data generation technique, providing qualitative researchers with a creative and novel alternative to the self-report data typical of qualitative research. In this paper, we outline the growing interest in the method within psychotherapy and counselling psychology research and explain what we think the method offers to this field of research. To support psychotherapists and counselling psychologists in adding SC to their methodological toolkit, we also provide practical guidance on the design and implementation of SC, drawing on an example study exploring perceptions of ethnic/racial differences between a therapist and client.