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# Write questions about stories

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

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

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

## What to do here

Add some questions to your list. For each question, write what you want to ask people. Choose what type of answers you will collect. See below for an explanation of the question types.

Give each question a short name. Make sure the short name is actually short, so there's room to write it in tables and on graphs. As a general rule, short names should be less than 20 characters long. If your question has a fixed list of answers, the answers should also be short.

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 story 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 stories?

Asking questions helps people make sense of their own stories. These interpretations increase your project's breadth and depth of exploration, leading to deeper insights. When you ask not just "what happened" but "what does that mean to you," you've gone further and deeper in.

### How many questions should I ask about each story?

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 story.

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

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 story.

### 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.

### Can you explain the types of answers?

Questions with no answers
| A label is just some plain text. It's not really a question. Nothing gets stored. It's a way to talk to people between your questions.
| A header is the same thing as a label, only it's formatted as bold text.
Questions with a single yes/no answer
| A boolean question shows the options "yes" and "no," of which people can choose only one. If the participant never checks either radio buttion, no answer is recorded. If they check either button, an answer is recorded. There is no way to "uncheck" a radio buttion question (that is, to set it to its original unanswered state) after it has been touched.
| A checkbox question has one solitary check box. It starts out unchecked. Enter a label for the checkbox. If the participant never checks the box, no answer is recorded. If they check and then uncheck the box, their answer is recorded as "unchecked."
Questions with a single answer chosen from a list
| A radiobuttons question has any number of answers, from which people can choose only one. These are like buttons on a radio: when you click one choice, all the others "pop up." Enter the answers you want to make available in the answers box. As with the boolean answer type, there is no way to "uncheck" a radio button selection once you have touched it. (This is standard HTML radio-button behavior.)
| A select question has a single-choice drop-down list. Enter your list items in the answers box. You can also choose to show the list in full (without a drop-down) using the "rows" parameter.
| A slider question has a line with a button that you drag. Labels on the left and right show people what they are choosing between. When the Does not apply checkbox under the slider is checked, it means that the question has not been answered. All sliders start out with this checkbox checked. When a participant moves the slider (using the mouse or an arrow key), the box gets unchecked. They can check the box again to decline to answer the question. If you want a different label to appear on the "Does not apply" checkbox (e.g., "Not sure" or "I don't see how this is relevant"), enter your label here, under the (fake) slider.
Questions with multiple answers chosen from a list
| A checkboxes question has any number of check box answers. Enter labels for your check boxes in the answers box. To limit the number of boxes participants can check, select a maximum number of checkboxes in the drop-down box just after the list of choices.
Questions with free text answers
| A text question has a one-line text box, for short but free-text answers.
| A textarea question has a multi-line, resizeable text box, for paragraph-length free-text answers.

### Could you explain write-in answers?

A free-text write-in answer option can be:

- an "other" option under a list of fixed answers (e.g., "happy / sad / _______")
- a follow-up question asking for more detail (e.g., "Why do you think the story turned out the way it did?")

You can create a write-in answer option for every type of question (except "header" and "label," which are not really questions at all). To create a write-in answer option, enter a label you want to appear before the text box. Some examples might be "other" (after a list of choices) or "Care to elaborate?" (after any type of question). If you leave the write-in field blank, no write-in option will be shown.

If you want to give people more room to write, start your write-in-answer-option label with two asterisks (**). NarraFirma will trim off the asterisks and display a multi-line, expandable text box.

You can access your write-in answers in three places:

- On the Review incoming stories page, you can see the write-in answers for each story. You can also change write-in answers on this page. Sometimes participants troll the survey by writing foul language or reveal too much private information. When that happens, you can (carefully) clean things up here.
- On the Explore patterns page, you can read your write-in answers and create observations based on them.
- On the Print story cards page, you can show (or hide) your write-in answers on your story cards.

### Can I use HTML formatting for questions?

You can use these HTML tags: address, article, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, cite, code, del, div, dd, d1, dt, em, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, kbd, li, ol, p, pre, s, small, span, sup, sub, strong, strike, table, td, th, tr, u, ul.

You can also use a smaller subset of HTML tags (b, big, em, i, s, small, sup, sub, strong, strike, u) in your specified answers (choices) for checkboxes and radio buttons.

HTML tags affect how your question texts appear in your online survey and in the "Enter or import stories" screen. They are stripped out when you print your story form.

To protect your NarraFirma installation from hacking, you cannot use attributes (such as "id") on any of these tags.

### 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.