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A Purpose for the Repertory Grid Interview

The repertory grid interview takes time and, to ensure that it is time spent well it is important to be clear as to why the interview is being done. A clear statement as to purpose will go a long way toward ensuring a successful interview, ensuring that the end result achieves what you set out to do and avoiding the grief resulting from gathering lots of data and not knowing how to use it.

"Grid is a powerful empty procedure"

- Professor Laurie Thomas

Grid is content-neutral, but unless the interviewee has no experience of the subject, you will always get data. The problem, is that the data might not be suitable for your purpose. That can only be solved by good research design and that starts with a well thought out purpose.

Purpose

The purpose has two parts. The Superordinate Purpose and the Purpose Statement.

The Purpose Statement

The Purpose Statement is a reflection of the Superordinate Purpose and is relevant to the individual user, defining the immediate end you want to achieve in the interview.

Purpose statements usually include words like `to help me choose / clarify / explore / identify / determine / discover my perceptions / feelings / understanding / thinking about ...'

Because the Repertory Grid interview is a exploration of the user's own personal experience, their own world - not someone else's it is important to keep the Purpose Statement personal. For that reason the word `my' is important even if the exploration is part of a wider research project. For instance, if you are part of a project with a Superordinate Purpose to explore a company's management competencies an effective Purpose Statement might be `to explore my perceptions of my collegues at work'.

The Superordinate Purpose

The Superordinate Purpose is why you are planning grid sessions. It represents the larger picture, the overriding objective and may be someone else's. For instance your supervisor may wish you to find a better conference venue or you may need to differentiate your brand of camera from your competitors. Or it may be personal such as an exploration of personal development opportunities. If you don't have a superordinate purpose the process will fail when you come to working out or analysing what you have discovered.

As an example you could have a counselling contract, where your Superordinate Purpose is:

to help the manager gain insight into what kind of incidents are the most troublesome, or
a competency analysis, where your job is to understand how people construe the demands on their skills, or
to see whether there are any differences between people who find it easy to get on with new technology and those who don’t, or
to find out whether the organisation is more or less stressed than it was two years ago,
etc.

For each of these your Purpose Statement could be `to explore my perceptions of critical incidents at work'. That is, one Purpose Statement could serve several Superordinate Purposes. Therefore, unless your Superodinate Purpose is clear you will not be able to frame your grid compare and contrast questions or analyse the results to arrive at relevant conclusions.

35 Purpose Statements, Mostly for Counselling and Personal Development

to explore my perceptions of times when I have been given feedback
in order to clarify my understanding of assertiveness skills
to help me choose a career
in order to identify the characteristics of a successful job selection interview, as I see them (in order to prepare job interview tips)
in order to clarify the characteristics of useful job interview questions, as I see them (as a job interview guide)
to determine the skills needed by the new jobholder (as part of job interview preparation or to prepare sample interview questions)
to clarify my understanding of success factors in organisations
to clarify my understanding of how our organisation manages change
to explore my relations with colleagues and people I work with
to explore my perceptions of colleagues at work
in order to explore how I managed critical incidents in my job
in order to clarify my understanding of customer situations
to identify the key issues involved in unfair dismissal
to clarify my understanding of organisational successes and failures
in order to explore how I managed critical incidents in my job
in order to clarify my feedback skills
in order to clarify my perceptions of major businesses
to clarify my understanding of situations needing influencing skills
to explore my experience as a graduate recruit
to clarify my thinking about management writers
to clarify my understanding of characters in childrens' books
to clarify my understanding of the contribution of business leaders
to explore my perceptions of world leaders
in order to help me understand how and what I have learned in my life
to capture the important features of my business school course
in order to examine my thoughts about negotiation situations
in order to clarify my understanding of negotiation situations
in order to clarify my views of magazines and journals
in order to explore the factors underlying my key achievements
to clarify my perceptions of operations people
in order to clarify my feelings about significant people in my life
in order to explore how I manage relationships at work
to help me clarify my perceptions about fashion retailers
to explore my experience of stress factors at work
in order to explore what I want from an airline

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