“Tell Me a Story and Make Me a Picture”: Incorporating Innovative Visual Methods in Story Completion Design

The chapter sets out a novel use of story completion in a study of young people’s understandings of sexuality and appearance. In the story completion design, the authors 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. The authors reflect on how the 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. The chapter highlights the particularities of this online visual platform and emphasizes some considerations for researchers using innovative technologies.