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# Build story forms

In NarraFirma, story forms are sets of questions (surveys, questionnaires) you show to people to invite them to tell stories and answer questions about their stories.

A story form combines three types of questions:

1. eliciting questions (in answer to which people tell stories on the form)
2. questions about stories (which ask people to reflect on the story they just told)
3. questions about participants (direct questions unrelated to any story)

These three types of questions come together, in that order, on the story form.

A story form has three possible uses, depending on how you are using NarraFirma.

1. If you collect your stories on-line using NarraFirma, your participants will interact with the story forms you create.
2. If you collect your stories off-line and enter them into NarraFirma, you will interact with the story form.
3. If you import your stories, your story form will describe your data to NarraFirma.

## What to do here

To create a new story form, click the Add button, then give the story form a short, unique name. Give the story form a title, which will appear at the start of the form. Then write an introduction, something like "Please tell us about your experiences."

Next, choose one or more questions that will invite people to share a story on your form, drawing from the eliciting questions you created previously. Use the up and down arrow buttons to change the order in which your eliciting questions will appear.

Continue to work your way down the page, filling in the fields that define the story form. Read the instructions and tips for each item.

After you have filled in all of the fields to define your story form, click Preview to see how your story form will appear to participants.

Now click Show advanced options, then look over the page again. See if you want to use any of the available-but-optional features that don't apply to every story form. (For example, only some forms will include an introductory video.)

If the library of questions you created on the previous pages is identical to the questions you want to include on your story form, you can save yourself some time by generating a form that simply includes all existing questions. A generated story form is not a different type of form; it's just a shortcut you can use to avoid having to click on each question.

You can also use this page to import a story form from a CSV file. See the Guide to importing data for details on this option.

## Connections to other pages

Each story form on this page must draw from the eliciting questions, questions about stories, and questions about participants you created on the three previous pages. A story form is a grouping of questions, not a copy of them. Any changes you make to a question after you add it to a story form will appear in the form. Why can't you just write your questions on this page? So you can reuse the same questions on multiple story forms.

When you associate a story form with a story collection, a snapshot of the story form, as it appears at that moment, is copied into the story collection. Any changes you make to the form or the questions after that moment will not be automatically reflected in the story collection. This is because once you start collecting (or entering) stories, you need all of your data to match up (or you won't see patterns in it).

You can update your story collection to use a revised story form (in the Start story collection page). But you should do this with caution. Use it to fix typographical errors, not changes that could alter the data you have already collected.

## Frequently-asked questions

### Do I have to use more than one eliciting question?

No. If you create only one eliciting question, NarraFirma will show it (without choices) on the story form above the text box for the story. If you have no eliciting questions at all (usually because you imported your data), NarraFirma will assign the question "What happened?" as the eliciting question for every story (and you can ignore it).

### What should I do where it asks me what I want to say to participants?

There are several places on a story form where you can specify messages to participants. All of these places have defaults (shown below in bold), so you don't need to customize them; but you can. Here are some ways to phrase these messages.

Please choose a question to which you would like to respond. Some other ideas are:

- Which of these questions would you like to answer?
- Choose a question that appeals to you.
- Which of these questions connects best to your experiences?
- Pick the question you like best.
- But don't say:
  - Choose the question that best fits your story. (This implies that they already "have" a story, and only one story, to tell.)
  - You must choose one of these questions. (Doesn't invite; is not conversational.)
  - Choose the best question for your experiences. (Asking people to rank questions may cause them to think that you will be ranking their story. You can use the word "best," but use it to describe connection or fit, not quality. Never even hint that quality is what you are looking for.)
  - Do any of these questions relate to your experiences? (Sometimes the answer will just be "no".)

Please enter your response in the box below. Some other ideas are:

- Please answer the question you chose here.
- You can type your answer here.
- Tell us what happened here. What do you remember?
- But don't say:
  - Answer the question to the best of your ability. (It sounds like an interrogation.)
  - Explain what happened here. (You'll only get dry facts if you ask that way.)
  - Give us your story here. (It makes their story into a thing, not a conversation.)

Please give your story a name. Some other ideas are:

- What name would you like to give this story?
- If you were to give this story a name, what would it be?
- How would you like to refer to this story?
- But don't say:
  - Give your story a title. (The word "title" is performative, and it makes people worry that their story will not be good enough. The word "name" puts less pressure on the teller.)
  - If your story was in a newspaper, what headline would it have? (If these are personal stories, people will not want to visualize them being in a newspaper. Also, asking people to write a headline makes the story seem like you want it to be exciting or sensational.)
  - Give us a way to refer to your story. (It makes the story seem like a thing.)

Would you like to tell another story? Some other ideas are:

- Is there any other experience you would like to tell us about?
- Would you like to tell us about something else that happened?
- Does this story remind you of another experience you'd like to tell us about?
- Is there another experience you can recall that you think would be helpful for our project?
- But don't say:
  - Do you have any other stories to tell? (It makes people feel that you are taking things from them, not talking to them.)
  - Think of another story you can give us. (Same problem: it makes the story seem like a thing being taken from people.)
  - Is there anything else you'd like to tell us? (There is no reference to stories or experiences here. People will expect to have a chance to type in opinions or something. You can give them such a chance, but you should use a non-story-eliciting question to do it.)

Yes, I'd like to tell another story. This is the text on the button people push to tell another story. Some other ideas are:

- Yes
- I would like to tell another story
- I remember another time I could tell you about
- I would like to tell about another experience
- But don't say:
  - I have another story (Anything you can "have" is a thing. This should be a conversation.)
  - I have more to say (They might not realize you want them to tell another story.)

### How do I use the "Custom CSS" feature?

Preview your story form and use your browser to inspect any element of the page you want to change. (The usual way to do this is to right-click on a word or area and choose "Inspect" or "Inspect Element" from the popup menu that appears. If you don't see a popup menu or an "Inspect" menu item, look up how to inspect a web page element in the browser you are using. Sometimes you need to turn on "developer" mode to inspect page elements.)

When you have successfully inspected the page element you want to change, you should see its CSS class. Most of the classes start with "narrafirma-".

Next go to the "custom CSS" field for your story form and write a class selector (label) and declaration (set of formatting lines) for that class. For example, if you wanted to change the introductory text of your story form to appear in blue, you would write a CSS statement like this: `
.narrafirma-survey-start-text {
color: blue;
}
`

Then preview the form again to see your change. (Don't reload the preview page; you have to click the "Preview" button again.)

Notes on custom CSS

- The CSS you enter affects the survey's appearance when you preview it and when a participant sees it (using the URL you give them). It is not used when you enter a story on the "Enter or import stories" page (because that form is a popup dialog, not a separate web page). If you need to change how the story entry dialog appears, you will need to change the CSS files distributed with NarraFirma.
- If you don't know how to use CSS, look through one of the many excellent tutorials on the web.
- In addition to classes, some survey elements have numbered IDs. Be careful using these, because the numbers will change if you move the questions around. But you can set styles on particular elements (using the ID selector with #) after you are sure your question order will not change.
- If you don't want people to see a particular element of the form (like say the number on sliders), you can use Custom CSS to set the display tag to "none" (display: none) for that class or ID, and it won't appear on the page.

### How can I make my survey more accessible?

We have tested three aspects of accessibility in NarraFirma's survey forms: scaling, keyboard access, and contrast.

Scaling. Participants can scale up all elements of the survey form using the Zoom function (usually Control- or Command- plus) on any modern browser.

Keyboard access. Each element of the survey can be accessed without a mouse by using the Tab key to move between elements. Slider values can be changed using the left and right arrow keys.

There is one slightly out-of-the-way interaction that you might want to tell your participants about. To the right of each slider there is a little number that shows the chosen value. The number is invisible until the participant has chosen an initial value for the slider.

When you click (with a mouse) on that little number, a popup dialog appears on which you can type in a new number. This is to help people set a specific number even if the slider is tiny on their (possibly tiny) screen. Participants who are using a keyboard cannot click on that little number, but they can Tab to it and press Enter to get the same popup dialog.

Also note that participants who are using (at least some versions of) Safari must turn on tabbing between items in the Preferences window.

Contrast. The default colors in the NarraFirma survey meet WCAG AAA standards for accessible text. If you like, however, you can change the colors in your survey to make it more readable (or just nicer looking). As of version 1.4.2, NarraFirma uses CSS variables to make it easier to set the colors of the various areas on the survey page. To override the default colors, copy and paste the following "root" element into the "custom CSS" field, then change the hex color values.

    :root {
    	--color-background-question-odd-story: #e1ebff;
    	--color-background-question-even-story: #e9f7ea;
    	--color-background-tell-another-story: #faf1d9;
    	--color-background-question-participant: #faf1d9;

    	--color-button-remove-story: #646262;
    	--color-button-remove-story-text: white;
    	--color-button-tell-another-story: #fde5a1;
    	--color-button-tell-another-story-text: black;
    	--color-button-submit-survey: #2c2cbd;
    	--color-button-submit-survey-text: white;
    }

You can of course leave out any lines that define colors you don't want to override.

### How do you import a story form? What is the correct format?

You can read all about importing data in our Guide to importing data.

### Do you have any advice for putting together story forms?

Here are some excerpts from Working with Stories Simplified that can help you design story forms.

A set of questions about a story is half of a conversation you hope to have with people about a story.

Design an interesting experience

If you use different types of follow-up questions (free entry, choices, scales), mix up their order. Don't ask five scale questions in a row, for example. Mixing up question types creates an experience that feels more like discovery than compliance.

Design for skimming

Here's a common mistake: writing choice questions that assume people will read the lists of choices as well as the questions. People don't do that, especially when they are skimming. They just read the questions, and if the questions are confusing, they skip over them. For example, the first of these two questions will be skipped far more often than the second:

- Which of these best describes the relationships in this story? (close; distant; neither)
- Were the relationships in this story close or distant? (the relationships in the story were close; they were distant; they were neither close nor distant)

Design for clarity and ease of use

Grammatical and formatting mistakes on question forms slow people down, irritate them, and reduce their confidence in you. Don't waste your precious opportunity to gather their input. Also make sure your forms are attractive. Show your participants that you put some energy into what you prepared for them. Give them something beautiful that will feel like an honor to use.

Design for feedback

In your question form, give people the time, space, and permission to make comments on your project and on the form itself. Leave white space on a paper form, include a comment box on a web form, or ask people for general comments in an interview.

Testing your question set

Put your question set in front of as many of your potential participants, and as many people who know your potential participants well, as you can. Keep testing and improving your question set until people tell you these things about it:

- They feel safe and free to respond to it as (and if) they choose to, and not coerced, insulted, intimidated, or censored.
- It is interesting; it inspires them to reflect anew on their experiences.
- It is relevant and meaningful to their own thinking on your topic.
- It is simple and clear, free of confusing statements and contradictions.
- It is respectful, tactful, and well presented.