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# Write questions about participants

In your PNI project, you will ask three kinds of questions:

- questions that invite people to tell stories
- questions about the stories people tell
- questions about the people who tell the stories (which you write on this page)

These three sets of questions combine to create a story form.

Participant questions are only asked once, after people have finished telling their stories.

## What to do here

Add some questions to your list. For each question, write what you want to ask people about themselves. Choose what type of question it is (see the FAQ section of the page on story questions for an explanation of the types). Also give each question a short name (so there's room to write the question name in tables and on graphs).

You can copy questions from built-in templates (suggestions). Change the blank spaces (_____) in the question to suit your project and participants.

For help choosing, click the "Recommendations for participant questions" button. You'll see a table that shows the various options, color-coded with evaluations of risk, connected to the answers you gave to questions about your participant groups and resources.

## Connections to other pages

The questions you create here will be available to use when you create a story form. Note that you are not designing a story form on this page. This list of questions is more like a question library from which you can choose when you create a story form.

## Frequently-asked questions

### Why ask questions about participants?

Asking people questions about themselves can provide revelatory context that can deepen your exploration of your collected stories. Also, pairing indirect questions about stories with direct questions about people and their viewpoints can create revelatory juxtapositions.

### How many questions should I ask about participants?

For a kiosk type project, in which people are just walking by and have no commitment to the project at all, you can ask three to five questions about each participant.

For a volunteer type project, in which people feel socially obligated to participate, you can ask six to nine questions about each participant.

For a commitment type project, in which people feel that participating is linked to their identities, you can ask ten to fifteen questions about each participant.

### What do the question types mean? Could you explain write-in answers? Can I use HTML formatting for questions?

See the help for the Writing questions about stories screen. All of these things are explained there.

### How do I set the order of the questions?

You don't set the question order here. You only create the questions here. You set the order of questions when you design your story form.

### Beyond the obvious questions like age, what kinds of questions about people are useful?

Here are some excerpts from Working with Stories Simplified that give some examples of questions to ask about participants.

Views on issues

Embedding a small opinion survey in the questions you ask people can help you approach your topic in two ways at once. There are often telling differences between the things people say about a topic directly (by answering questions) and indirectly (by telling stories). You can ask questions like these:

- How do you feel about ___? Do you think it's helpful or harmful?
- Which of these statements about ___ do you agree with most?
- If you could write a law regulating ___, what would it say?
- What do you think causes ___? What would fix it?
- In an ideal world, what would ___ be like?

Views on the community or organization

Asking people to describe their perspectives on the community or organization can reveal useful patterns when paired with the stories they tell about it. You can ask questions like these:

- How good of a job do you think ___ [is/are] doing with ___?
- What do you think ___ will be like in ten years? Why?
- Do people in ___ [listen to each other, cooperate, argue too much, etc]?
- If you want to ___, why is that? If you think about ___, why is that?
- What would you like to see happen in ___?

Roles and groups

Questions about roles and groups are useful when you want to look at differences among groups within a community or organization. Some of your questions of this type will be specific to the community or organization, and some will be more general.

In a community, for example, you might ask questions like these:

- Do you belong to any of these community groups?
- Which of these hobbies are important to you?
- How often do you visit ___?
- Where do you get your ___?
- Who do you usually talk to about ___?
- How long have you ___?

In an organization, you might ask questions like these:

- What is your position at ___?
- How long have you been at ___? How long have you been in your current position? What did you do before that?
- Do you work alone or in a team? How large is your team?
- To what extent does your work depend on plans or requests made by other people?
- How predictable is your work? Do you do the same thing every day, or is every day different?
- To what extent would you describe your work as fast-paced?
- Do you supervise other people? If so, how many?

Habits and traits

Learning about each storyteller's personality and ways of thinking can help to put their stories into context. You can ask questions like these:

- Are you a big-picture thinker? Or do you tend to wade into the details?
- Are you a careful person, or do you tend to be a little sloppy? How do you feel about that?
- Are you more of a glass-half-empty or glass-half-full person? Maybe somewhere in the middle?
- Does being around people energize or drain you?
- Do people often say that you think in strange or different ways? Or does that never happen to you?
- Do you love doing new things? Or do you do new things only when it's necessary?
- Which of these ways of learning works best for you?
- Do you tell a lot of stories? Or is that something you rarely do?

Demographics

Questions about demographics can reveal useful patterns when it comes to common influences on perspectives, such as generational differences. You can ask questions like these:

- Which of these age ranges do you fall into?
- What is your ethnic background?
- Do you rent or own your home?
- Which of these living situations best describes yours?
- Do you live in a city, suburb, town, village, or rural area?
- What is your income?
- How much formal education have you received? How about informal education?

Be careful with factual questions. Build a strong case for each one you want to use. Why do you need that information? Could you ask the question in a less precise way that provides more anonymity? For example, if you want to know where people live, what is the largest geographical area you can ask them to describe?

When you are asking about demographics, include non-answer options like "I'm not sure" or "I'd rather not say." Also, make each question optional. Sometimes people don't want to say why they don't want to answer a question. In that case, let them say nothing at all.

### Can I create my own templates?

Only if you are comfortable editing the source code files in your installation of NarraFirma. If you are, find the file called "templates.js" and add your template to it. (Backup the file first!) Follow the formatting in the templates you see, and make sure you put your template in the right part of the file. If NarraFirma won't start up after you make your changes, check your browser's console to find out where the error lies.