What to do with stories you collect

My colleagues on writing projects always laugh at me because I can’t stop myself from using lots of quotes.

I just feel like there are times when I can’t say something more eloquently or powerfully or succinctly than the original writer or interviewee.

So whenever I’m collecting stories – whether for a research project (like this one from my last job) or for a program evaluation (here’s one I’ve been leading), I always think of how I can showcase them.

But first, there’s a little cleaning to do.

Once you have your recordings transcribed or your survey responses exported, you’ll need to read through what your stakeholders have shared for three reasons: 1) clean up the transcript or file, 2) take out identifying information, and 3) flag the most impactful stories.

First, you’ll need to read through everything to make sure the transcripts (or what people typed into a survey) makes sense.

It’s okay to clean up what was said, as long as you stay true to what the original person shared.

For example, if you cut “you know,” “like,” or “um,” from what someone said, that’s okay! If you cut more than that, use an ellipsis (…) to show something was removed.

If they left out an important word (or the transcript missed it), you can add it in with brackets. [ ]

Also make sure to take all names or identifying information off of your transcripts or quote highlights. Your qualitative data should be kept confidential and stored securely to protect your participants.

Finally, you can color-code, highlight, or bold the quotations you like so you can find them quickly in your file. (I highly recommend copying and pasting your list of favorite, cleaned-up quotes into a separate document for quick reference in the future.)

After all that work, here are a few different ways to use this qualitative data (your stories):

If you’re conducting a needs assessment, you can use an example shared by a client about the situation they’re in or the services they have struggled to access to highlight gaps to address.
If you’re writing an annual report or a grant application, a quote singing the praises of your organization will always have an impact, especially if it explains how things got better for the person after engaging with your programs.
Maybe you’re collecting feedback on how people experienced your programs - throw those constructive critiques into a PowerPoint for your next team meeting so that others can also hear directly from the families you serve and strategize together for improvement.
Or perhaps you are trying to market your program to the public - well-placed testimonials on your website, flyers, or social media posts are not only easy to use, but they speak for themselves.

If you want to know what is being said across your group of stakeholders, you’ll have to do a little analysis of the stories you’ve collected.

If you have a lot of text to go through, you can use qualitative analysis software (there are some free or inexpensive ones out there) to select text and assign codes/tags to it.

Then, it will tell you how many times each code was used, and you can start to see some themes emerge.

Or you can easily do this in Excel! (See the screenshot for a sample I made.)

Put all of your quotes in the first column and topics or categories in the rest of the column headers.

It makes it really easy to just check off which quotes fit in which categories as you read through your quotes. You can add a total row at the bottom to calculate the same frequency that the software could give you.

With these frequency counts and emerging themes, you can start reporting on trends in your organization like, “X participants felt that the program was helpful to them.” Or “Y participants felt like we needed to add more sessions.”

Of course, you can always work with an evaluator to help you with this as well!

No matter how you use the stories you collect, always treat them with care and gratitude for the people who bravely shared them with you.