From SPARK

Summary

Definition and guidelines for creating a Case History or Impact Story.

Case Histories

Case Histories are real-life stories, which help indicate what works and doesn’t work in various situations. Case Histories are usually connected to a people group or a language, and also may reference related materials. Each Case History should relate to one specific language or one specific people group. The people group name and the language name is often the same.

These stories can be analyzed and grouped with other stories using cross-references. Guidelines on how to use products can be added to each case history. The source for the stories is people who are working in the field and have tried implementing Scripture promotion projects. It is important to record what does not work as much as what does work. One source for stories is field reports.

Writing a Case History

• For help in entering your information in the template used for writing a case history or impact story, go to Instructions and Story Outline below.

• “Key factors” is a list of cultural issues that give the pros and cons of choosing a particular media type or method. (See Key Factors for more information.)

• Summarize the positive and negative results from using a particular media type or program.

• If there are differing opinions about your topic, take a neutral point of view when describing the debate. Avoid making negative or personal comments.

• Consider linking to other relevant SPARK articles (internal links). To avoid copyright issues, do not cut-and-paste material from external resources. Also, some users do not have Internet access, making external links useless.

• After saving your work, you can add a relevant image or graphic at the beginning of an article. Copyright-free images are listed on Google Image Search. Do not link to images on other servers. Instead, download the selected image to your computer and use the “Upload File” link in the toolbox on the left side of the page to upload the file to SPARK. Use the “SB” button to load the sidebar to the top of your file. Then replace the “000.jpg” at the top of the page with the filename of the uploaded image.

Impact Stories

Impact Stories are similar to Case Histories. The difference is in the level of detail. Impact Stories do not analyze the results, and look for lessons to learn from them. Instead, they describe the results in a way that is inspirational to the reader. They are stories that might be suitable for church bulletins.

Instructions

Please use the Stories Template (ST). To use this template, go to the Edit bar and click the "ST" button near the top. Enter your information after the equal signs ("="), and it will show up like the outline below. If you do not have information for a certain area, leave a blank space after the equal sign ("="). DO NOT REMOVE the word(s) before the equal sign ("=") as it will affect the output of the template. (You can add headings for sub-topics if desired.)

Story Outline:

Brief Summary

Write a sentence or short paragraph to give an idea of what the write-up is about, especially bringing attention to lessons that were learned. Help the reader understand how your write-up will help him. Pique his interest.

If significant, list the equipment and/or media you used. Be brief; additional details can be given below (in your write-up), if needed.

Introduction

Replace this sentence with the factors which caused you to choose this media type and the plan you chose. See Key Factors for some that may have been factors in your choice.

Key factors:

• Replace this text with the first key factor affecting this Case History.
• Replace this text with the second key factor.
• Etc.

If you have many key factors, consider using only a few in the current document and adding the remainder as a separate page with the same title except something like "- continued" or "- page 2" at the end. Or you may want to have the second page be a complete version, in which case you would use the same title except have "- uncondensed" at the end.

What was done

Replace this sentence with what you or others did. This will be the body of the Case History. This is where the details of what was done are recorded. Work at separating the results from what was done.

Results

• Replace this sentence with a good result.
• Replace this sentence with a bad result.
• Replace this sentence with lessons learned that would apply to other people groups in similar situations.

Helpful Information from the Author

Other helpful info from the author

The following information should be included if it is okay for the public to see. If it can't be made public, please call or email the SPARK Manager or Content Coordinator with the information. (See Contact Us).

• Author's real name
• Country of the people group
• Name of the people group
• Language of the people group
• Religion of the people group
• Source
• Photo(s)/Drawing(s)
• Estimated literacy rate of the language group
• Average educational level of the language group

By: Add a real name or pseudonym for the author(s).

Date entered: Date the Case History was entered into SPARK

Date range of the story: approximate month(s) and year(s) when events took place

Location in the world: country or region of the world where events took place

By SPARK Management team