A Brief Illustration of the Importance of Laddering in the Repertory Grid Interview

 

The Example - Doctors' Specialities

Many years ago, I was asked by the Department of Health to research why doctors chose their particular speciality. The overall purpose was that the Department was concerned that some specialities were overcrowded - in effect, the ‘glamorous’ specialities - and some, such as psychiatry and geriatrics, were under subscribed. Obviously it was a situation highly suitable for Grid - just to the point of construct elicitation, no more.

I took the precaution of asking the Department’s experts in advance what they thought the key issues would be. Pay and status figured highly in their answers.

Using Element Creation Questions

Then I interviewed over 200 doctors. I used element creation questions, such as ‘Name your current speciality, Name another one you might have chosen, Name one which under no circumstances you would have chosen, Name one which you wish you’d known more about, etc.’ So it stands as a good example of what you can learn by content analysis of the elements if your sample’s big enough and you keep the order of the questions consistent.

The Findings

The findings were fascinating. For example, would you believe that a lot of doctors don’t like working with sick people? So they go into mending broken limbs, or delivering babies, etc. And you could tell the difference between a surgeon’s constructs and the rest at a glance: surgeons’ constructs were very black-and-white, reflecting the nature of the job: you cut or don’t cut, you remove or let it stay in place, the patient dies or gets better ...

Using Laddering Up

Anyway, back to laddering, and in particular to laddering up. Laddering up is the process where you try to get closer to the person’s core values and preferences, with a question like ‘which end of the pole do you prefer, and why?’ or ‘why is that an important distinction to make about the elements?’

Almost every doctor gave us a construct like ‘working with young people - working with adults.’ But when I asked the laddering question - which do you prefer and why - there were two completely opposite answers. One group (typified by paediatricians) said things like ‘It’s a real test of my diagnostic skills when I can’t really talk to the patient ... and if you save a life, you save so much life.’ The other group said things like ‘It’s really hard to do a good diagnosis if you can’t talk to the patient ... and if you lose a life, you lose so much life.’

In other words, the same construct, but two entirely different views of what it signified to the interviewee.

Three Lessons

There are three lessons (at least) to be drawn from this example, thus:

1. Don’t discard propositional constructs, laddering them up or down. ‘Working with young people - working with adults’ is a propositional construct - i.e. it refers to objective properties of the elements - but it generated important personal information.
2. Simple construct elicitation without laddering is hardly ever enough. If you’ve got a lot of constructs, you can ask the interviewee to prioritise and work only with the high priority ones.
3. The importance of feedback, of fully involving the interviewee in the process, of not construing other people’s construing. The only way I was going to learn this fascinating and important fact was by asking the interviewees at the time.

Grid is a Structured Conversation

It’s just another illustration that the best way to think about Grid is as a structured conversation and that it is not up to us to judge, but to listen skilfully.

Prepared by Dr Valerie Stewart

Click here for an example of laddering in a session in which an experienced teacher reflects on his perceptions of his class.

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Related Resources

• Personal Construct Theory and Method: another look at laddering, Personal Construct Theory & Practice, 4, 2007, Trevor W. Butt, Division of Psychology, University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, UK

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