Using The Repertory Grid: Nonparametric Factor Analysis Idiographic

Repertory grid is an interviewing technique which uses nonparametric factor analysis to
determine an idiographic measure of personality.
1. A topic: it is about some part of the person's experience

2. A set of elements, which are examples or instances of the topic. Working as a clinical
psychologist, Kelly was interested in how his clients construed people in the roles they
adopted towards the client, and so, originally, such terms as "my father", "my mother",
"an admired friend" and so forth were used. Since then, the grid has been used in much
wider settings (educational, occupational, organisational) and so any well-defined set of
words, phrases, or even brief behavioral vignettes can be used as elements. For
example, to see how a person construes the purchase of a car, a list of vehicles within
that person's price range could be a set of elements.
3. A set of constructs. These are the basic terms that the client uses to make sense of the
elements, and are always expressed as a contrast. Thus the meaning of "good"
depends on whether you intend to say "good versus poor", as if you were construing a
theatrical performance, or "good versus evil", as if you were construing the moral
or ontological status of some more fundamental experience.
4. A set of ratings of elements on constructs. Each element is positioned between the two
extremes of the construct using a 5- or 7-point rating scale system; this is done
repeatedly for all the constructs that apply; and thus its meaning to the client is
modeled, and statistical analysis varying from simple counting, to more complex
multivariate analysis of meaning, is made possible.
Using the repertory grid[edit]

Careful interviewing to identify what the individual means by the words initially proposed, using a
5-point rating system could be used to characterize the way in which a group of fellow-employees
are viewed on the construct "keen and committed versus energies elsewhere", a 1 indicating that
the left pole of the construct applies ("keen and committed") and a 5 indicating that the right pole
of the construct applies ("energies elsewhere"). On being asked to rate all of the elements, our
interviewee might reply that Tom merits a 2 (fairly keen and committed), Mary a 1 (very keen and
committed), and Peter a 5 (his energies are very much outside the place of employment). The
remaining elements (another five people, for example) are then rated on this construct.
Typically (and depending on the topic) people have a limited number of genuinely different
constructs for any one topic: 6 to 16 are common when they talk about their job or their
occupation, for example. The richness of people's meaning structures comes from the many
different ways in which a limited number of constructs can be applied to individual elements. A
person may indicate that Tom is fairly keen, very experienced, lacks social skills, is a good
technical supervisor, can be trusted to follow complex instructions accurately, has no sense of
humour, will always return a favour but only sometimes help his co-workers, while Mary is very
keen, fairly experienced, has good social and technical supervisory skills, needs complex
instructions explained to her, appreciates a joke, always returns favours, and is very helpful to her
co-workers: these are two very different and complex pictures, using just 8 constructs about a
person's co-workers.
Important information can be obtained by including self-elements such as "Myself as I am now";
"Myself as I would like to be" among other elements, where the topic permits.
Analysis of results[edit]
A single grid can be analysed for both content (eyeball inspection) and structure (cluster
analysis, principal component analysis, and a variety of structural indices relating to the
complexity and range of the ratings being the chief techniques used). Sets of grids are dealt with
using one or other of a variety of content analysis techniques. A range of associated techniques
can be used to provide precise, operationally defined expressions of an interviewee's constructs,
or a detailed expression of the interviewee's personal values, and all of these techniques are
used in a collaborative way. The repertory grid is emphatically not a standardized "psychological
test"; it is an exercise in the mutual negotiation of a person's meanings.
The repertory grid has found favour among both academics and practitioners in a great variety of
fields because it provides a way of describing people's construct systems (loosely, understanding
people's perceptions) without prejudging the terms of reference—a kind of personalized grounded
theory.[5][6][7]
Unlike a conventional rating-scale questionnaire, it is not the investigator but the interviewee who
provides the constructs on which a topic is rated. Market researchers, trainers, teachers,
guidance counsellors, new product developers, sports scientists, and knowledge capture
specialists are among the users who find the technique (originally developed for use in clinical
psychology) helpful.

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Repertory grid is an interviewing technique which uses nonparametric factor analysis to

determine an idiographic measure of personality.

1. A topic: it is about some part of the person's experience

Using the repertory grid[edit]

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