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Story-gathering interview worksheet
A client-ready worksheet for mission-driven and place-based organizations to prepare a story conversation, capture a participant’s own words and context, and plan consent-aware follow-through.
1. Prepare with purpose, power, and participant choice
Cairnwire recommendation, grounded in the published ethical storytelling guide: name the story job, the intended audience, and who benefits before inviting a conversation. Notice whether your organization controls services, resources, access, or visibility that could make a “yes” feel necessary. A story request should leave room for a real no.
Prompts to use
- What should this conversation help an audience understand, and why is a participant’s story needed for that purpose?
- What power, dependency, or timing could make participation feel pressured?
- What can the organization offer, control, or change—and what must it avoid promising?
2. Make consent informed, voluntary, ongoing, and withdrawable
The published guide describes consent as a conversation rather than a one-time signature. Explain the specific purpose, audience, channels, duration, edits, identity choices, and foreseeable risks. Keep participation voluntary, revisit consent when the use changes, and provide a practical way to withdraw without consequences to services or support.
Prompts to use
- What exactly will be created, where could it appear, who may see it, and for how long might it be used?
- How will the participant have time to ask questions, decline, pause, change boundaries, or withdraw?
- What will happen if the participant says no, asks for a change, or withdraws before or after publication?
- The participant can choose whether to be named, quoted, photographed, recorded, anonymized, or represented another way.
- The organization has explained that consent is voluntary and will not affect access to services or support.
- A changed audience, channel, purpose, edit, partner, or duration will trigger a new consent conversation.
3. Capture the participant’s own words and the context around them
Participant agency means more than collecting a compelling quote. Invite the person to choose what matters, keep their words accurate, and record the conditions, relationships, history, and uncertainty that shape the experience. Do not make one person stand in for an entire community or reduce a story to a single outcome.
Prompts to use
- Which words does the participant want preserved exactly, and which language or names do they prefer?
- What context would be lost if this quote, image, or experience were separated from the conversation?
- What does the participant say is incomplete, misunderstood, changing, or not theirs to explain?
- Direct words, paraphrase, interpretation, and organization-confirmed information are visibly distinguished.
- The record keeps meaningful context and disagreement instead of implying a universal experience or guaranteed outcome.
- The participant can correct the record and identify words, details, or topics that should not be used.
4. Name risk and keep the context honest
The guide calls for a risk record that considers pressure, privacy, stigma, retaliation, retraumatization, misrepresentation, decontextualization, and unwanted contact. Capture what is known without presenting a story as proof of a legal position, research finding, identity, or outcome that the sources do not establish.
Prompts to use
- Could a reader identify the participant or someone connected to the story, even if a name is removed?
- What details might create stigma, retaliation, unwanted contact, retraumatization, or a changed interpretation?
- Which statements are participant words, which are confirmed organizational facts, and which still need verification?
5. Build participant review and approval into the workflow
Participant review belongs before sharing, not after publication. Send the actual draft—including words, images, captions, identifiers, links, placement, and call to action—so the participant can identify inaccuracies, exposure, missing context, or a use they did not agree to. Treat a request for edits or a no as part of the process, not as a failure.
Prompts to use
- When and how will the participant receive the actual draft, and who will make requested corrections?
- What is the approval decision for the final words, images, identifiers, placement, and call to action?
- What will the organization do if a material concern cannot be resolved or the participant withdraws approval?
- Review happens before sharing and includes the complete proposed use, not only a summary.
- The participant has a clear way to request changes, decline, or raise a concern without penalty.
- The final approval, unresolved concerns, and permitted channels are recorded with a named owner.
6. Plan responsible follow-through, withdrawal, and contact
Story care continues after the interview. Decide who will maintain the consent record, send the reviewed piece, respond to concerns, honor a withdrawal request where possible, and reconfirm permission before a changed or future use. Promise only the removal, privacy, support, or contact response the organization can actually provide.
Prompts to use
- Who owns the next update, review record, contact route, and response to a concern or withdrawal request?
- How can the participant receive the final piece, correct it, update their preferences, or ask what happened next?
- When will permission be reconfirmed before reuse, and what can or cannot be changed after wider distribution?
- Follow-up timing and a safe contact route are clear to the participant.
- Withdrawal, correction, and preference changes have an owner and a documented response path.
- Future reuse has a consent trigger rather than relying on blanket permission.
7. Keep guide findings, recommendations, and local facts distinct
This worksheet applies the published ethical storytelling guide; it does not replace it. Keep the guide’s research findings, Cairnwire’s practical recommendations, participant testimony, organization-confirmed information, and local facts to verify in separate lanes so a useful prompt does not become an unverified claim.
Published guide findings
The guide’s supplied research snapshot discusses dignity, informed and ongoing consent, participant agency, context, review, governance, and risks of extractive or decontextualized storytelling. Preserve its bounded citation trail when using those findings.
Cairnwire recommendations
The field groups, interview prompts, risk questions, review steps, and follow-through records are planning recommendations for putting those themes into practice. They are not universal standards, legal advice, research results, client results, or guarantees.
Local facts to verify
Confirm current privacy and consent obligations, community protocols, safe contact methods, access and language needs, compensation, permissions, retention, deletion, and what the organization can honor with appropriate local people and sources.
Editable worksheet
Prepare the conversation and care record
Use these editable fields before, during, and after a story-gathering conversation. Nothing is submitted, stored, or sent from this page; the worksheet stays in your browser unless you choose to print or save a copy locally.
No submission or persistence is connected to these fields. Before sharing any completed record, move only appropriately protected information into your organization’s approved system and confirm the participant’s current preferences.
Guide relationship and limitations: This worksheet is grounded in Cairnwire’s published ethical storytelling guide, especially its distinctions around purpose and power, informed and ongoing consent, participant agency, context, risk, participant review, and follow-through. The guide’s supplied research snapshot is truncated before its full bibliography and does not establish local facts, legal conclusions, identities, measured outcomes, or guarantees. Research findings, Cairnwire recommendations, participant words, organization-confirmed information, and local facts to verify should remain visibly distinct.
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