Repertory Grid Interviewing - Back to a Few Basics

 

A Few Hints on Interview Administration

A few hints on interview administration - nothing to do with content or purpose, just how to master an unfamiliar technique.

1. Make the Elements Moveable

By this I mean write their names on separate cards, or have them on pictures if it’s that kind of Grid. When you lay them in front of your interviewee and explain the two-against-one process, physically shift them about so that the pair can go together and the singleton is separated.

Please don’t just give people a list of elements and ask them to look at three from the list. People who aren’t very analytical will find it close to impossible, and even very bright people find it much easier when they can shuffle. It also allows you, by shuffling them yourself, to indicate that you can pair and re-pair in different ways. (Enquire Within has a facility called WorkSpace, which allows you to click on the elements, move them into a workspace, and pick them up and move them around with your mouse pointer).

2. Use Big Cards For Constructs

Use big cards for constructs - assuming that you’re not entering the constructs directly into the program. Five inches by eight inches (I haven’t gone metric) is about the right size. Then you can write the construct in the middle of the card, and you can write your ladderings up and down above and below the construct itself. I usually write an upwards arrow indicating a laddering up, and a down arrow for laddering down.

3. Let the Works Show

If you can, sit catty-corner with your interviewee so that he or she can see what you’re writing. When I’ve got about six to eight constructs, I usually pat the pile and say something like ‘You can see what we’re doing here - and the more of these distinctions you can give me the better.’ Further patting of the pile with the implication that you’re doing well is good also. (Careful to be seen to be rewarding quantity not quality - certainly in the early stages. You don’t want to give the impression that you’re more interested in certain kinds of constructs.

If you sense that the interview is genuinely going in the wrong direction - for example, if you get lots of propositional constructs and you want behavioural ones, then deal with it by repeating one of the qualifiers; for example ‘...these three in terms of how they behave’.

4. Go With the Flow When It’s Flowing

If you’re getting lots of helpful constructs, don’t stop the flow by going into laddering. On the other hand, if you haven’t got many constructs it might be a good idea to start laddering - you can always come back to construct later. What’s important is to make the interviewee as comfortable with the process as possible as early as possible.

5. You Don’t Have to Ladder Every Construct

And you don’t have to start laddering with the first construct. Take a sneaky peek at the information as it emerges and choose one or two elements which you’re pretty certain will be easy and interesting to ladder on. And if you’re deluged by constructs - the record stands at 82 in an hour from someone who fell in love with the process - then you could first ask the person to sort the constructs into high, medium, and low priority and ladder only the high priority ones.

6. Suppress Everything You Learned on Your Active Listening Course

This means, don’t summarise the construct yourself (you could ask the interviewee to summarise it, but generally it’s best to stay with the construct as it is). Don’t supply the contrast pole yourself - say ‘And how would you describe the other by contrast?’ And don’t be afraid of the silence when you’ve presented a new element set. Silence means that the person is thinking.

7. Keep Your Own Stuff Identifiable

I have a self-imposed procedure, when I’m doing a Grid interview manually (i.e. not straight into Enquire Within), if I need to summarise or otherwise add my own touch to a construct. It’s simply to put square brackets around the text; this indicates that it comes from me, not the interviewee.

8. Check for Missing Information

Don’t forget at the end of the interview to ask if you’ve missed anything important (referring back to your purpose). If you’re using cards, hand the cards to the interviewee to flick through. If you’re using a program which prints a construct list, print off the list. Usually you’ll get one of two answers: either they’ll say that they’ve told you more than they thought they knew themselves, or you’ll get a highly non-redundant summary of the content of the interview. Or sometimes they’ll add one or two more constructs.

9. Tell the Interviewee What Happens Next

Don't forget to tell the interviewee what will happen to the information, how they will get feedback, etc.

Prepared by Dr Valerie Stewart

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