Jankowitcz D. - Easy Guide to Repertory Grids (2004)(en)

QUESTIONS ABOUT GRID WORK 69

procedure I have just described in Section 4.4.1, ‘pyramiding’. There is, however, a distinction between the two, both procedurally (see Kelly, 1963: 57–58) and with respect to the theory of self-reference (see Jankowicz, 2000b), and I have retained it here as one which I believe to be useful, particularly when you’re coming to grips with construct elicitation for the first time.

THINGS TO DO

Exercise 4.1 Handling the Interview

By way of feedback on your use of basic grid technique and to provide you with a self-check on how much of the above you have found helpful, please read Appendix 2. This is part of a transcript of a grid interview, which starts as the first construct is being elicited. Please don’t look at Appendix 1.2 for the feedback yet.

Go through the transcript and see how many of the procedural issues dealt with by the questions in Sections 4.1.1–4.1.3 arise in the transcript. Take a sheet of paper and, working through the pages of Appendix 2, write down:

(a)the page number in Appendix 2

(b)whether one of the procedural issues occurs on that page

(c)which one it is. (You’ll notice that each procedural issue in Sections 4.1.1– 4.1.3 has been numbered for just this purpose. No expense has been spared.)

(d)how the issue was handled, refreshing your memory about the principles involved, in Sections 4.1.1–4.1.3.

When you’ve finished, check your answers in

Appendix 1.2.

Exercise 4.2 Practising Pyramiding

Read over Section 4.4.2 before you begin.

(a)Go back to the grid you did in Exercise 3.2.

(b)Ask which construct your interviewee feels is the most important to him or

CHAPTER 5

DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS OF A SINGLE REPERTORY GRID

5.1 An Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

5.2 A Stance Towards Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

5.3 Describing the Basic Grid. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

Things to Do. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

Things to Read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

In this chapter, I outline the basic approach to the analysis of single grids, and the kinds of information which can be derived from a grid once it has been completed. The examination of relationships in single grids is dealt with in Chapter 6, and the analysis of multiple grids is described in Chapter 7. As with the other sections of this introductory guide, I can’t be comprehensive. The material is a straightforward foundation, and you would be wise to look elsewhere, as indicated, for more advanced and detailed procedures.

5.1 AN OVERVIEW

There are many analysis procedures. Given the nature of the repertory grid and its underlying theory, both qualitative and quantitative approaches are available to you. If you believe that quantification matters, there are certainly numerate procedures; but if you happen to be uncomfortable with numbers, there are procedures that don’t depend on them.

Hold on a moment.Ihappen to believe that ‘qualitative’and‘quantitative’are misleading terms. They’re certainly not mutually exclusive. The most quantitative technique involves an element of subjective judgement about the nature of things ^ naming the factorsin a factoranalysis, forexample.The most qualitative technique involves some concern for the extent to which the behaviour or narrative being examined is typical or

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idiosyncratic; or how important the features and trends discovered might be ^ both matters of degree, and hence quantity. And there’s no doubt that, to understand what someone is saying in a grid, a blend of both approaches is required.

To make a distinction between the words in which the constructs are expressed, for example, and the ratings used to record the relationship between elements and constructs, calling the former ‘qualitative’ and the latter ‘quantitative’ would be somewhat misleading.

Some people identify the content of what is being said with the words that have been used to label the constructs, and the structure of how it’s been said with the matrix of ratings provided.While that’s a little more useful, it’s still a bit oversimplified.

Meaning is what has been captured in a grid, and, if you think back to what the grid interview involved, you can see that meaning is expressed by both the words and the numbers.You need the words to express and communicate a construct ^ a dimension through which meaning can be expressed. And you need the numbers to characterise the elements with respect to that dimension ^ that is, to express the position of the elements on that dimension ^ in other words, to ascribe the meaning attached to the elements by their positions on the various constructs in the grid.

Agreed. What you’re concerned with when you analyse a grid is a blend of both. My job is to outline the procedures in a way which does not frighten off either the verbally or the numerically inarticulate reader. I stop at the point at which my own inarticulacy prevents me from going any further, and hand you over to other authors.

In a grid analysis, the job is twofold: firstly, to identify the interviewee’s meanings, and, secondly, to draw whatever implications seem to be appropriate to you. This is best thought of in terms of achieving one or more of the following goals. The various techniques I deal with are listed under each heading.

Describing the Basic Grid

The first step in any analysis is description. You outline what’s there, to gain an understanding of what the interviewee is trying to tell you, in detail, staying close to his or her intentions. You know whether you’ve been successful because s/he will recognise the result: there’s a sense of ownership on the part of the interviewee. The following techniques are outlined below:

. process analysis

. eyeball analysis

. construct characterisation.

These are dealt with in this chapter.

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Describing the Structure in the Grid

One possible next step, after the basic description, is to investigate the relationships between elements, and between constructs, in the grid. These may not be immediately obvious to your interviewee, but are usually recognisable, on reflection, when you have pointed them out. The sense of ownership is still there. Four techniques will be outlined, the first two requiring less computation than the last two:

. simple relationships between elements

. simple relationships between constructs

. cluster analysis

. principal component analysis.

These are dealt with in the next chapter.

Index Analyses of the Grid

Another possible next step, which may, depending on your purpose, replace describing the structure in the grid, is to summarise the way in which the interviewee construes, by means of one or more of several indices. They won’t be obvious to your interviewee, who is unlikely to have any sense of ownership, but they can be helpful to you. They depend on the structure within the ratings of the grid, and say something about the interviewee’s style of thinking in this one grid. A comparison with other people is implied.

There are many such indices, each summarising some structural characteristic of an individual grid. They can be broadly classified as follows:

.cognitive complexity: the number of constructs about a topic; the number of constructs being differently used (functionally independent construction: see Landfield & Cannell, 1988); the number of distinct construct clusters (articulation). Burleson et al. (1997) provide a review of measures and an interesting example.

.extremity scores of various kinds, such as ordination, integration, and constriction, which examine the proportion of extreme as distinct from midpoint ratings.

These measures are used in counselling and therapy, where they are likely to be just one of many information sources which the interviewer has about the interviewee. I don’t cover them herein. That’s because I’m wary of making statements about an interviewee (‘he has a cognitively complex way of thinking about this issue; she construes in a differentiated way’) on the basis of just one grid elicited from that person, with no other information or personal

DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS OF A SINGLE REPERTORY GRID 75

privileged view? More generally, how much of myself do I put into any study as a result of the analysis that I do?

The simple answer is that you have as much right to make your sense of the world as your interviewee has. The judgements and interpretations you make of the material you analyse are as much part of your own view of the world as the material you’re analysing is part of the interviewee’s. If interviewees believe that constructs are found under gooseberry bushes, that is their right. They are the final authority in managing the interpretations they make of their own worlds. But, by the same token, you have yourown understandings, and these include your interpretations of the other person. You are the final authority in managing any interpretation of your interpretations. You may have good reason, based on your own experience, for believing that gooseberry bushes don’t come into it and that one should look elsewhere for constructs.

But what if the interviewee doesn’t agree with your analysis and conclusions? That’s a bit more complicated, isn’t it? I understand the reason for being a faithful recorder and taking the interviewee at their word in eliciting the constructs themselves, as we discussed in Section 4.1. ‘Credulous listening’ is all very well, but ‘credulous analysis’ is a flabby way of resolving a disagreement of interpretation, I’d have thought.

Okay, let’s look at it step by step.

Firstly, there is the question of representation. Given that you have jointly negotiated the interviewee’s meanings, and that you initiated the encounter in the first place, it doesmean that you’re responsible if you misrepresent theinformationthe interviewee provides, just as the interviewee must live with the consequences of his or her own way of construing. Before you do your analysis, you have to get the basic information down accurately, even if you believe that information to be‘erroneous’in some way.

Next. You have access to a body of knowledge and technique (personal construct theory and repertory grid technique) which the interviewee has not.

The purpose of all analysis, investigation, and research is to come to understandings which are useful ^ which seem to lead to accurate predictions about what willhappen next.This is true whether we’re talking about the investigation that is being carried out by theinterviewee trying to understand his or herexperience, or the one being carried out by you as you try to make sense of your interviewee as part of your own investigatory or research purpose.

Now, your own activities are informed by a body of knowledge, personal construct psychology, to which a lot of people subscribe; a lot of work has been done on it. It’s a consensus that has emerged because it made sense in the past to those who seek to understand other people, and it may (I do not say will) lead to predictions which work better than your interviewee’s. And, provided you have used the techniques as they

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are intended, you are likely to come to conclusions which those other people would also have come to, given the same information.

So if, after all that, you and the interviewee still disagree, then, ultimately, all you can do is agree to differ, and see whose predictions turn out to be more accurate.

Either of you could be unsuccessful in those predictions. The interviewee because s/he’s stopped checking some part of his or her beliefs, perhaps.And you, because no technique or procedure is perfectly reliable, or because you’ve made a misjudgement in makinginferencesin the analysis, or because you and the collegial consensushave yet to realise that the interviewee’s understanding is indeed more effective than their own since the appropriate evidence isnot yet in, or is unrealised by them to be relevant to the issue in question.In the meantime, you’re both trying to get by in understanding the bit of the world that’s engaging you at that time.

I can’t be sure if this line of reasoning works with people who are in spectacular, bizarre, and distressed disagreement with others ^ I’m thinking of some of the clinical patients with whom the repertory grid can be used as part of diagnosis and treatment. I rather think that it does, but it’s not my field.

Now, take this line of reasoning one step further. In talking about a body of knowledge to which many people subscribe, I’m saying that knowledge is socially defined. (This argument is best outlined in Berger & Luckmann,1976.) Personalunderstandings may have to relate to a constituency. Indeed, to more than one constituency (you will probably have heard of role conflict, for example?), and the people in those constituenciesmay vary inwhat they expect andunderstandwhen they, inturn, seek theirown meaning in existence. Whatever you discover by means of your analysis will also be given sense and meaning by other people; they will construe your construing of your interviewee’s construing! This needs thinking about, and carries implications for your choice of analysis technique.

In fact, your choice of analysis technique depends on three factors:

(a)how well it summarises your interviewee’s meanings

(b)how well it allows you to draw inferences and conclusions from them

(c)how well it communicates this to your own constituency.

If you’re a student reading this book to help prepare a term report, bear your lecturer’s expectations and knowledge of grid technique in mind. This is particularly important in the case of doctoral students and their supervisors: what kinds of analysis does your supervisor expect, and what is s/he comfortable with given the subject matter of your dissertation? Repertory grids are not a widely known technique. How much explanation of what you’re doing will you have to provide them? How important is it to them that you take an approach that comes over as quantitatively inspired? And how will you explain it all to them?

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If you’re a manager or professional with an occupational application in mind, the issue of communication with a constituency is the same, but the question is slightly different. When you write the report and executive summary of your grid-based job analysis/development review/OD intervention, how can you best summarise the results of your analysis without all the technical jargon?

Finally, if you’re neither a student nor a manager – simply someone who’s interested in understanding other people – you also have a constituency, and that’s the interviewee himor herself. How well can you explain the basis of your analysis if s/he asks you about the ways in which you have come to your understanding of his/her understanding?

5.3 DESCRIBING THE BASIC GRID

This is a straightforward account of what the interviewee thinks, and how s/he thinks. The immediately obvious relationships within the grid are examined.

5.3.1 Process Analysis

This examination should best be done in context. You can glean a lot about your interviewee and his/her stance towards the topic by ignoring the grid results for a moment, and simply thinking back to the interview itself.

The grid interview is not a psychometric test. It has no norms, to be sure; but, less obviously perhaps, it does not have to have ‘results’ to be useful. The process by which the information is obtained is informative in itself, and understanding this will provide you with a background for the other analyses you’ll be doing – the ones in which you ‘look at the results’.

In point of fact, when counsellors use the repertory grid for counselling and guidance purposes, they frequently give greater priority to what goes on during the elicitation, and far less to what’s in the grid when the elicitation process has been completed. The grid becomes a specialised form of counselling dialogue – a technique for directing attention during a social encounter – rather than a procedure which has to be completed to be enlightening (Jankowicz & Cooper, 1982). You may not be engaged in anything remotely resembling counselling, but you do want to understand your interviewee, don’t you?

And so, you should always carry out a process analysis if you were the person who conducted the grid interview. It’s your basic first step whatever other analysis you do later. If someone else conducted the interview, it may be possible to talk to the interviewer about any process issues which s/he noted

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or can recall. If the grid was a self-grid, try to think about how it went, following and amending the questions shown below, as appropriate.

Run through them, jotting down anything which occurs to you. Keep the notes as a refresher when you use any of the other analysis techniques.

The Topic

How did the interviewee react to your introduction of the reasons for doing the grid; how did s/he handle his or her side of the negotiation over the topic? Indeed, who initiated the contact which led to the grid: did the interviewee approach you, did you approach the interviewee, or was it through a third party? What was the implied contract? Is any of that remarkable or significant?

The Elements

How did the interviewee respond to the elements you proposed? If they were proposed by the interviewee, did you use them all? Which ones didn’t you use, and why not? – does this tell you anything about the way the interviewee views the topic?

If you used eliciting statements to choose elements, which elements were offered under which characteristic? In a grid which evaluated a training programme, for example, suppose you agreed on the element set proposed by the interviewee in response to a request to think of two training sessions that were ‘very good’, two that were ‘poor’, and two in between. You could glean some useful information simply by seeing which actual training sessions were proposed in each category, and how readily the interviewee proposed them, even before you see how they were construed in the grid itself.

If you’re conducting a classroom exercise in which you want to discover and discuss how pupils construe the eight most important social developments of the twentieth century, and you ask each pupil to nominate their eight as elements, then a simple examination and classroom discussion of all their elements is surely de rigueur if you wish to understand their perspective on recent social history before you start eliciting their constructs!

The Constructs

The qualifying phrase helps the interviewee to address constructs which are especially relevant to the topic. How did the interviewee respond when you introduced it? Hopefully, s/he received it as a useful but otherwise unremarkable part of your technique.