Story completion (SC) – an epistemological approach to the interpretation of patient-reported outcomes?

ABSTRACT

Introduction

Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) quantitative data are increasingly accompanied by qualitative narrative data, which does not always provide the insights required to inform healthcare.

Areas covered

This perspective considers how story completion (SC) may be used to gain a deeper insight on people’s experiences and guide interpretation of the meaning of PROM responses.

Expert opinion

Story completion (SC) is an epistemological approach involving participants telling a story in response to a pre-determined ‘stem’ they have been presented with.

KEYWORDS:

• Patient reported outcomes
• patient narrative
• story completion
• quantitative PROM data
• qualitative research

Article highlights

• The epistemological approach underpinning PROM development and application is the positivist/nomothetic method, arguably resulting in the loss of the patient’s story.

• Narrative data to supplement PROM data can help to ensure that context is provided.

• Story completion (SC), is an epistemological approach which involves participants telling a story or stories in response to a pre-determined ‘stem’ they have been presented with.

• There remain a number of challenges in the utilization of SC, including, practicability of the method in a research and clinical setting.

• SC should be considered as a potential method for use in combination with an individual’s PROM responses to the PROM’s to gain a deeper insight into the meaning of the metric scores.

Declaration of interest

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with an organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership, or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the reviewers of an earlier version of this article for their constructive comments.

Reviewer disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

This paper was not funded.