[Editorial Introduction to the Special Issue: Using Story Completion Methods in Qualitative Research]. Story completion: The best* new method for qualitative data collection you’ve never even heard of

What is story completion? How come I’ve never heard of it? Can it be useful for me as a qualitative researcher? A relatively unknown method for qualitative data collection, story completion has a long history of use in psychotherapy practice and (quantitative) developmental psychology research. We believe it has untapped, exciting potential as a qualitative technique in and beyond psychology, offering something quite different to many of the more popular methods used (e.g. interviews, focus groups). In this paper – an introduction to an exciting Special Issue that discusses and demonstrates the potential of story completion – we provide a brief history of the development of story completion as a qualitative technique, and an overview of design, sampling, and data analysis in story completion research. We finish by highlighting potential pitfalls of story completion, alongside discussion of the possibilities it offers, and briefly introduce the empirical papers in the Special Issue.