Knowing your topic

The topic you want to ask about interacts with the people you will be asking to talk, so it is impossible to consider them separately. These questions pertain to that interaction rather than to the topic alone.

Is the topic sensitive?

Some topics are more private than others, no matter who is talking about them. If you know in advance that the topic is something the group you are talking to will be sensitive about, like things that touch on health, families, religious belief, and so on, you need to take special precautions to make sure privacy is dealt with carefully. You may also need to avoid methods of story collection that involve people talking in front of others.

Is the topic something people will know their own feelings about?

On some emotional issues that may be buried deep beneath the surface, people may need help expressing their feelings. Group sessions and exercises can be helpful with this, as can one-on-one interviews with a real person to provide a listening ear and help people probe deeper into things they hesitantly hint at. In this case a simple survey may not get much useful information because it will not stimulate people to dig deeper.

Is the topic vulnerable to self-promotion?

Some topics may invite people to promote themselves, which can reduce the usefulness of the resulting stories. For example, if you run an open-source programming forum and you ask people to tell stories about their greatest programming success, you are likely to end up with essentially a heap of resumes and advertisements instead of useful stories of real experience. If the topic you want people to talk about has this potential element, you can avoid self-promotion by making the project's goals clear, using group sessions and exercises to draw people out, and asking carefully worded questions that ask people to select experiences based on usefulness to the project rather than boast-worthiness (e.g., "Can you remember the worst day you ever spent as a programmer?").

Does the topic cover a long or short time period?

If you want people to talk about things that happened over a long period of time, you will need different techniques than if you are asking about shorter time scales. People remembering long spans of time, like careers, tend to generalize a lot and may need help selecting particular experiences to talk about. Best-worst questions can help with this, as can exercises.