Academic and health research
The question behind the work
Surveys can miss unanticipated experiences. Open-text coding adds the researcher's interpretation. Some groups remain under-represented.
Collect typed or spoken accounts. Participants interpret their own stories on triads and dyads, connecting quantitative patterns to qualitative evidence.
How it works
Write one or more story prompts. Participants share an experience and answer signifier questions (triads, dyads, and demographics) about their own story. Responses can be anonymous. Export the data for analysis in your own tools, such as R or SPSS. Individual researchers can start with an Inquiry plan, which runs one story prompt across many people; annual Inquiry and Praxis plans can be invoiced on request. Academic and nonprofit organizations receive a 50% discount on the software licence. The discount does not apply to services, pilots, Spryng Care, or Spryng Advisory.
Learning from experiences of emergency care
Queen's University researchers wanted to understand what emergency care felt like to the people receiving it, including patients whose needs are often overlooked. At Kingston Health Sciences Centre, 1,973 people shared 2,114 experiences, a 41.6% response rate. Participants described an experience and answered questions about its meaning, keeping their own interpretation alongside the story. Wells et al., 2024.
The stories and patterns helped identify unmet mental-health needs and experiences of judgment or disrespect. Community partners helped researchers interpret the findings and develop recommendations for more inclusive care. These studies describe patients' experiences; they do not measure the impact of implementing those recommendations. Chard et al., 2025.
Helping communities shape their own response: Our Tomorrows, Kansas
The University of Kansas Center for Public Partnerships and Research asked families about everyday experiences so communities could decide where to act. People shared a story and placed its meaning on triads. The project collected 2,279 stories from all 105 Kansas counties, brought regional story packs to fourteen workshops, and generated 46 action-lab proposals.
That process connected statewide listening to local choices. Minnesota's StoryCollective later adapted the approach through policy-focused action labs, where agency staff and leaders work through community stories and consider changes. The authors describe broad reach rather than a representative sample, and note that impact is difficult to measure. The project used several data platforms, including Spryng; findings are not attributed to one platform. Flinders and Counts, 2024. Read the case story.
Understanding how migration experiences differ by place
Queen's University and the International Organization for Migration studied the experiences of Venezuelan women and girls in Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru, with Elrha funding. People recorded or typed an experience and interpreted it themselves. The team collected 9,339 narratives from 9,116 respondents, then discussed the findings with service providers, refugees, and migrants.
The study showed why support needs cannot be treated as uniform: respondents in Brazil reported more extreme poverty but also more support from host communities; accounts in Peru more often described insecurity and inadequate support. Recruitment was not a probability sample, and stories could describe experiences elsewhere along the migration route. Bartels et al., 2023.
The team also documented practical lessons about noisy outdoor audio, transcription costs, and the emotional demands on enumerators. Bartels and Noriega, 2022. Read the case story.
For your ethics board and IT
Research Organization plans include HECVAT and DPA support, UK and EU review support, and custom data residency. The public summary is the security review page. The program is HIPAA-aligned, and a BAA template is available. See the Trust Center for what else is in the review package.
Spryng's AI-assisted features are transcription, translation and redaction of responses, and the optional AI Pattern Synthesis add-on. Each is optional and is turned off for your organization on request. An account owner can ask us to turn any of them off for their organization by emailing privacy@spryng.io, and we confirm in writing when it is done. Turning off AI redaction does not turn off rule-based redaction.
The method
Designing Sensemaking Studies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026) covers discovering, designing, running, exploring, and using a sensemaking study. Readers get a free year of Sensemaking Studio. How a triad answer is read is on How the method works. The print edition is a softcover.
Next step
A pilot is one question, one collection, a sample report, and a readout with your team. Scope a Research Organization pilot start with an Inquiry plan, or get the book.